Formula One teams seeking to go faster have been stripping paint from the cars they revealed with pride before the season started.
McLaren, Aston Martin and Williams were among those at last weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola, Italy, with notable expanses of raw, black carbon fiber replacing previously liveried areas.
New rules for this year, with the introduction of larger wheels and an increased use of standard parts, have left some struggling to get down to a new minimum weight limit of 798kg. Every excess 10kg translates into about 0.3 seconds of lost time per lap.
Photo: AFP
“With the halo, the bigger tires, the longer cars, we were all overweight. I think all but maybe one team,” McLaren chief executive officer Zak Brown said. “When you’re overweight you do everything you can to save anything you can, and it’s all incremental.”
Brown said some sponsorship deals, such as McLaren’s with Google’s Android, had accelerated the process of stripping paint.
“Our engine cover was initially papaya, but that was before we landed Google as a partner. We took the opportunity: “Hey, you want black? Fantastic,’” he said.
“We didn’t modify anything that wasn’t kind of in line with our brand or what a partner wanted, but it saved some weight. Not a lot, but it’s about finding a little bit in a lot of different places.”
Saving weight by going back to bare metal, or carbon fiber, has a long history in motor racing.
According to lore, the original 1930s Mercedes Silver Arrows acquired their nickname when the cars raced with bare aluminum bodies after the team removed lead-based paint to shave off 1kg and come in under a maximum weight.
The paint on a Formula One car weighs about 6kg, Alfa Romeo team manager Beat Zehnder said.
Aston Martin’s technical head Andrew Green last month said that removing some of his car’s green paint had saved 350g.
In 2016, McLaren sponsor AkzoNobel said painting each car involved six liters of paint and three liters of gloss lacquer totaling more than 8m2 of painted surface.
Dave Robson, Williams’ head of vehicle performance, was reluctant to quantify the exact gain from removing paint, but said it was “meaningful.”
“The paint might be light, but to get a good finish you end up doing quite a lot of filler work and prep on the bare carbon before you put the paint on,” he said.
Robson said that stripping off paint was the fastest way to remove weight, and even if a car was below the limit, it was still beneficial to have an extra saving so the team could add ballast to improve balance.
“It will be expensive and time consuming to find the weight [saving] some other way,” Robson said, indicating that the bare look is set to stay even if marketing departments are less happy.
“The car has to have some visible personality, but at the same time it’s in the sponsors’ interests to make it as quick as possible,” he added.
Manchester United on Tuesday confirmed Michael Carrick as interim manager until the end of the season, tasking him with leading the Red Devils back into the UEFA Champions League. “Having the responsibility to lead Manchester United is an honor,” said Carrick, 44, who won 12 major trophies in his 12-year playing career at United. The former midfielder previously had an unbeaten three-game stint as caretaker boss at Old Trafford in 2021. Carrick then took on his first permanent managerial role at second-tier Middlesbrough in October 2022 and was sacked in June last year after the club finished 10th in the
MARRED FINAL: As most of Senegalese players walked off the pitch after a controversial decision, some supporters threw objects and attempted to get onto the pitch Senegal on Sunday won the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) as Pape Gueye’s extra-time winner sunk hosts Morocco 1-0 after a chaotic final that saw the eventual champions storm off the pitch late in the game. Brahim Diaz could have won the trophy for Morocco with a controversial spot-kick in the 24th minute of added time at the end of normal time as ugly scenes broke out in the stands. However, Senegal goalkeeper Edouard Mendy easily saved the weak attempted “Panenka” chip by the Real Madrid winger, who was clearly distracted by the long delay that followed the penalty award.
James Harden on Friday scored 31 points and came up big in overtime to help the Los Angeles Clippers erase a double-digit deficit on the way to a 121-117 NBA victory over the Toronto Raptors. Harden scored 16 points in the fourth quarter and overtime as the Clippers pushed their wining steak to five games despite the absence of star Kawhi Leonard with a sprained right ankle. The Clippers trailed by 11 entering the fourth quarter, but Harden drilled a pair of free-throws with 1:24 left in regulation to tie it and after misses from both teams, they went to
Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg on Wednesday was ruled out for the second half of their 118-109 loss to the Denver Nuggets after the No. 1 pick sprained his left ankle in the first half. Flagg was called for a foul while defending against Peyton Watson and turned the ankle as he fell to the floor with 6 minutes, 1 second left in the second quarter. Flagg limped to the bench and continued to the locker room, but returned for the final 2 minutes, 35 seconds before the break. The 19-year-old did not come out for the second half before the announcement that
RSS