National Colours (was: Bugatti)

French racing cars were blue just like all Bugatti's racing cars were

> blue, German-white, Italian-red and British dark green...

Which German cars were white? Mercedes-Benz as you went on to say were silver (the "Silver Arrows") and afaik so were Auto Union. USA used white with blue stripes.

British makes used different shades of green. Lotus had a mid green with a yellow stripe, Vanwall was slightly darker. Jaguar and Bentley were similar, BRM was darker metallic (later with the dayglo orange nose), Aston-Martin used a light metallic green, Coopers were dark green with white stripes, and ERAs were anything you like.

Australia and New Zealand (Brabham and McLaren) used variations on the BRG theme.

National colours continued in F1 into the 60s and in some cases beyond, until corporate/brand liveries took over. The first such that spring to mind are the Yardley McLarens and Durex sponsored Surtees cars.

I remeber being given a Yardley McLaren model with a bar of soap and some afteshave. I never got a Surtees model though ;-)

Nowadays only Ferrari and Jaguar still race in national colours. Renaults are blue but that's a sponsor's colour that hasn't changed much since Benetton days.

Reply to
Richard Porter
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Richard Porter ( snipped-for-privacy@address.uk.invalid) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

As usual, it was Colin Chapman that dived in there first, with the Gold Leaf Lotuses.

Reply to
Adrian

I was referring to pre-WWII period (1900-1939). German cars were white including Mercedes-Benz all the way up to one race in late '20s or early '30s when Mercedes-Benz cars faced with a problem (they were to heavy), so they decided to scrape off all white paint from the cars in order to loose some weight. Since than silver- color that reminds the most of the plain scraped metal is used on Mercedes-Benz racing cars. That is how the "Silver Arrows" legend was born.

Most of the manufacturers from Germany and Austria-Hungary used white, but some of them unfortunately don't exist or don't produce cars anymore.

BMW remained white even during last GP held in Belgrade 1939. Later they added some dark blue and M-stripes on M models.

Porsche's color is white even today...

Auto-Union was founded much later and they just took over Mercedes-Benz scheme or to be more precise, the bodywork of the '30s racing cars was made of aluminum so they didn't have to paint it at all. . In general, it is perhaps better to use term silvery than silver...

As you've mentioned British different shades of green, that's right. There was a difference in shades of green just like there was difference in the shades of blue on French or red on Italian cars. For example, Renault's blue was much darker than Bugatti's.

Yellow nose on Lotus and other variations you've mentioned are something from post-WWII period, and I was focusing on Bugatti's era.

Reply to
HAL 9000

One of them's Marlboro red, the other Corporate Ford Marketing Green, though.

Reply to
Stuffed

Perhaps he meant to say that Ferrari and Jaguar are still racing in U.S.A national colors ; )

Reply to
HAL 9000

Indeed, but could you imagine a works Ferrari in any colour other than red? They don't use the white part of the Marlboro design like McLaren did.

Never heard of FCMG, but of course the Jaguar GT cars did appear in Silk Cut purple one or two years.

HAL 9000 - thanks for the clarification of German white.

Reply to
Richard Porter

Oh it's nothing..., just something I've read in Alfred Neubauers (first Mercedes-Benz motorsport chief) autobiography years ago. I just think that one can't fully understand presence without awareness of the details from the past, that's why I'm "full" of history.

And please don't consider me as someone who had the opportunity to follow racing in Fangio's time or earlier, I'm only 31 ; )

Reply to
HAL 9000

They don't use it the way McLaren did, no - But I seem to recall them having that white "twin peaks" type logo on the engine cover in the late 90s. I don't know if Ferrari have "works" cars in other series as such or not, because I'm sure there's one or 2 yellow racing ones around. Not F1 though, and my knowledge doesn't stretch much further :)

I remember Ford had one of those "very expensive but well worth it strategy studies" into what colour the Jag F1 cars should be, hence my piss take. IIRC they were very concerned about getting the shade right to suit TV cameras and sponsors. But then, the Jag F1 team is all about marketing, and very little to do with Jaguar from what I understand :(

I'm not sure if I'm a fan of sponsor coloured cars or not to be honest. In a way it would be good to see, but the cars can look bad enough now plastered with logos, imagine how they'd clash with nationsal colours.

Reply to
Stuffed

Stuffed ( snipped-for-privacy@theworld.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

I think you may have a few superfluous words in that sentence - "the jag" and "team".

What nationality? That of the constructor? With one or two exceptions, they'd all be green.

If it weren't for the sponsor logos, there'd be a tiny fraction of the money. Whether that would be a good thing or not is open to debate... It may well even things up a bit - less of the vicious circle where success=sponsorship=money=success

Reply to
Adrian

On one occasion, commenting the increased number of teams whose cars are painted in sponsor's colors, Enzo Ferrari said - "...my cars will never be moving advertisements..."

And they weren't until Montezemolo, Todd and Schumacher spitted on his name and turned Ferrari into "dirtiest" team of the '90s and 2000.

Enzo was never basing his success on "cause justifies the means" logic while the "gentlemen" mentioned above shown that they are ready to "walk over bodies" to achieve success if necessary.

If Enzo was alive in 1997 when Schumacher tried to disable Villeneuve's car, his career in motorsport would be over for good.

To be honest, I believe that Enzo would never even hired Schumacher if he was asked, especially after so many illegal moves from Schumacher's pre F1 career and Benetton days.

In Enzo's days, no one could even imagine that a Ferrari's driver could do something to get disqualified at the end on the season by FIA.

Reply to
HAL 9000

As a long time Schumacher fan, I have to disagree with some of that! But Todt (or however you spell it, sure there's a T in there somewhere) doesn't seem to have much of a clue about anything other than numbers mounting up, which I don't think is a good thing :(

I don'tt hink there's much in Schumacher's record to suggest a history of "illegal" moves. Hard racing yes, but the only dodgy issues I can find are Macau (Mika was as much to blame from what I've read, haven't actually seen the incident), Adelaide (still to find proof the car was damaged, and Schumacher was ahead going into the corner, so by most definitions the corner was his to choose his line around) and the Villeneuve incident. I think only one of those was a "dirty" move, that being the one with JV, and it was certainly no worse than a certain Mr Senna had been known to do a few years before.

As for the Benetton issues, they are surely more to do with the team (Flav, I'm guessing) than the driver, after all, there were 2 cars out there, not just Schumacher's.

Maybe this has gone just a little bit off topic for this group, might be worth taking it to rasf1? I can't get the UK F1 group on my server unfortunately :(

Reply to
Stuffed

I was tempted to shorten it to simply "Ford" actually :)

I suppose you'd have to work out who's who. Are BAR Honda British, American, or Japanese? Toyota - Jap, German (or wherever they're made)? Etc. It could be difficult when you've got McLaren having heavy investment from Merc, BAR being team Honda when the smokes sponsorship ends (that's my impression anyhow) and so on.

I don't think less money would be a bad thing, but then, I don't think less manufacturers using the sport to sell reshelled Mondeos would be a bad thing either, I prefer to see private teams with an interest in racing (even counting Ferrari as a private team in this, just) filling the grid, as they are less likely to take their ball home when they've either sold engough cars or stopped trying to.

But I really must keep my F1 rants in the right place, and stick to coming here to talk about old cars, not computerised plastic boxes that come out every fortnight for a couple of hours! :)

Reply to
Stuffed

Stuffed ( snipped-for-privacy@theworld.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Yes, well.... That's a bit like saying that Fred West wasn't that much worse than Charles Manson.

Reply to
Adrian

Hard racing?

How do you call running a F3 car (or F3000, not sure..) with engine from different manufacturer, which is what he did and get caught?

Than, don't blame it on Briatore, yes I know that Briatore made the rules but if Schumacher had the honesty he'd never race the F1 car with illegal launch control. That is what exactly what I'm referring to, Schumacher has great technique but his moral simply doesn't exists.

Adelaide is something that could be considered questionable.

Regarding incident with Villeneuve, 99.9% of motorsport world condemned his move, there is just no space for discussion abut that. If you like him than like 100% of him including his moves however dirty they might be.

How many times was Ferrari under FIA investigations in the 50yrs of Enzo's era and how much during less than 5yrs of Schumacher's???

He was also the only driver that didn't bothered to show up on Senna's funeral.

And finally please don't ever compare Senna with Schumacher using the hard racing as the excuse.

Personally, I never was Senna's fan, most of all because as you've said "hard racing" and I've preferred Prost's style more, still I find equalizing two of them as the great insult to Senna's career as well as the career's of all other great drivers.

Senna is a legend, while Schumacher will only be the star in economy statistics and among beer drinkers in Munich!

Perhaps this talk strayed from this group's purpose, still it has more to do with classic cars than "DEATH to all drunk drivers" which is overflowing with posts ; )

Reply to
HAL 9000

...or like saying that there is no difference between Mother Theresa and Theresa Orlowsky, because they bare the same name ; )

Reply to
HAL 9000

Quite true - Senna is no more than overblown hype wrapped up in a sinister care-nothing-for-other-drivers attitude whose ill-gotten legacies in F1 are soon all to be removed by the only real driver of the past 20 years, the Schumacher you seem to hate so much.

What really cracked me on my view of Senna was a report that under black flag conditions at practice for a Portuguese Grand Prix one year Mr. Senna did 5 or so laps at full racing speed - with an injured driver & medical personnel attending to the driver on the track. Watching any race he was involved in was a tense affair because you could never be sure that he wasn't going to ram someone off the road and kill or injure himself or others.

Let's not start griping about Schumi's record - which is near-perfect in terms of on-track incidents. All drivers to have lapses of reason or temperament, and Schumi has not been an exception, but no-one could ever come close to the terrible on-track attitude that Senna possessed.

Ciao

Zak

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Reply to
Zak McGregor

Zak McGregor ( snipped-for-privacy@mighty.co.za) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

And the difference between that and Schumacher is?

Reply to
Adrian

Well explained in the post you have just replied to. Schumi's record is just about as clean as you can get. Senna was a perpetual threat to other drivers.

Ciao

Zak

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Reply to
Zak McGregor

HAL 9000 ( snipped-for-privacy@neobee.net) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Could this be time to shout "Godwin!"?

Reply to
Adrian

You're right, rah rah, down with fascism. But I'm not seeing the connection to Mike Schumacher's racing career and the resurgence of the Reichstad, which seems to be what you were implying. Could you clear that up for us, please? Is it the mere fact that he's German? Is a tendency to such behavior genetic now? Or perhaps, just perhaps, you're full of crap? Emanuel

Reply to
E Brown

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