Mercedes, Red Bull & Racing Point F1 Launches

As this year’s F1 new car launch season continues in full swing, the Mercedes, Red Bull and Racing Point teams have also now revealed their new challengers and driver line-ups, so let’s cast a quick eye over each of them.

The Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport team, to give it its official name, revealed its new car at Silverstone and hopes it will propel the outfit to domination of the Drivers and Constructors Championships for a sixth year running. The Brackley based outfit is retaining its Lewis Hamilton/Valtteri Bottas driver pairing, so there will be continuity on that front, and the new car’s livery looks very similar to its highly successful previous incarnations.

Meanwhile, just like last year, the Aston Martin Red Bull Racing team revealed its new challenger sporting a one-off special livery, this time a striking red and blue colour scheme. This will change shortly though to a traditionally more recognisable Red Bull livery.

Much will be expected of young Dutch charger Max Verstappen, who will be the team’s lead driver, and it will be fascinating to see how Frenchman Pierre Gasly performs, having been promoted from the Red Bull junior team, Toro Rosso.

The Racing Point outfit is the team which used to be called Force India until a change of ownership part way through last season. The new official name is SportPesa Racing Point F1 following the arrival of the SportPesa global technology and entertainment company as title partner.

Their blue corporate colour appears prominently on the car, although it remains predominantly pink to reflect the status of BWT (an Austrian water specialist called Best Water Technology) as the team’s ongoing principal sponsor.

On the driver front the experienced Mexican Sergio Perez has been retained, whilst the other seat will be occupied by young Canadian driver Lance Stroll who has arrived from the Williams team. Stroll’s father Lawrence is a key figure in the small group of businessmen who bought the team.

This leaves three further F1 teams to reveal their new cars - McLaren, Ferrari and Alfa Romeo - a process which will be completed by next Monday when the first pre-season test begins in Barcelona.