The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

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The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by watka »

Wanted to discuss this news, but wasn't sure where to put it:
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/fia-reveals-plan-for-bigger-driver-numbers-and-names-898408/

Needless tinkering or a welcome move? Being kind of old school myself, I quite like the idea of bigger numbers. Not only does it make it easier to identify who's who (what's not to like?), it's something to fill up the space on the car considering the dearth of sponsors these days. There's nothing wrong with giving things a bit more personality through the numbers. The names, I'm not so sure about, but it does bring back a welcome memory of HRT.

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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by UncreativeUsername37 »

I'll give it a shot. Not being able to identify the cars within a team has never really bothered me, though, and I feel like giant driver abbeviations (giant compared to the names the cars already have, anyway) would. With each passing season, F1 feels less like a sport where people get their cars out and go racing and more like a product made for televised entertainment....
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by CoopsII »

Yeah, why not. As with the HRT it could inspire a little more creativity from the design departments.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by DemocalypseNow »

You don't really need the driver names. You just need the numbers to be extremely visible, ala NASCAR. They tend to get this right - every time I see the #2 Penske car, I can't help but think of Rusty Wallace. I still struggle to get my head around the fact Joey Logano is at Penske now, my mind always associates him with the #20, which is a Joe Gibbs Racing car, his old team.

If you make the numbers larger, everyone will start making reference to them, including the commentators. Often during NASCAR races, instead of referring to something like "Kyle Busch and Corey LaJoie into the wall!", they'll instead instinctively react with "#18 and #83 in the wall!".

We don't need names, because teams tend not to change their drivers mid-season unless they absolutely have to. Number exposure just has to be bigger.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by mario »

DemocalypseNow wrote:You don't really need the driver names. You just need the numbers to be extremely visible, ala NASCAR. They tend to get this right - every time I see the #2 Penske car, I can't help but think of Rusty Wallace. I still struggle to get my head around the fact Joey Logano is at Penske now, my mind always associates him with the #20, which is a Joe Gibbs Racing car, his old team.

If you make the numbers larger, everyone will start making reference to them, including the commentators. Often during NASCAR races, instead of referring to something like "Kyle Busch and Corey LaJoie into the wall!", they'll instead instinctively react with "#18 and #83 in the wall!".

We don't need names, because teams tend not to change their drivers mid-season unless they absolutely have to. Number exposure just has to be bigger.

As it stands, there aren't really that many drivers who have made a major public link between themselves and their number in the same way that, for example, drivers do in NASCAR or Rossi in MotoGP. Bottas has, to some degree, incorporated his number into his public persona, as has Vettel, though ultimately Hamilton seems to be the driver who has created the strongest association between himself and his number.

Whether that will change in the future is another question, but at the moment I get the impression that the drivers probably prefer being referred to by their name than by their number.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by UncreativeUsername37 »

I wouldn't mind bigger numbers at all. Not huge numbers on the side NASCAR-style (incidentally, another thing which goes back to HRT), just making everyone more like Penske or Mercedes rather than Williams, which seems to be where the FIA are going with that. If it wasn't for the codes....

And I agree that really strongly associating yourself with your number isn't something most of them seem to care about, it's an American kind of thing and most drivers (and fans) on the European side of things won't be into that. But they aren't going that far anyway.

Something less important (even compared to number sizes), but that I want to tell people: the thing DemocalypseNow has with #2, I have with #24. Even though I don't care about NASCAR anymore, it was what I watched a lot when I was quite young, and when I saw that someone other than Jeff Gordon was using that number in that font, it sort of... bothered me.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by mario »

UgncreativeUsergname wrote:I wouldn't mind bigger numbers at all. Not huge numbers on the side NASCAR-style (incidentally, another thing which goes back to HRT), just making everyone more like Penske or Mercedes rather than Williams, which seems to be where the FIA are going with that. If it wasn't for the codes....

And I agree that really strongly associating yourself with your number isn't something most of them seem to care about, it's an American kind of thing and most drivers (and fans) on the European side of things won't be into that. But they aren't going that far anyway.

Something less important (even compared to number sizes), but that I want to tell people: the thing DemocalypseNow has with #2, I have with #24. Even though I don't care about NASCAR anymore, it was what I watched a lot when I was quite young, and when I saw that someone other than Jeff Gordon was using that number in that font, it sort of... bothered me.

I would say that perhaps the one area where the number tends to be used more often in European series would be in sportscar races, such as the WEC - because you have changes in driver across the race, it tends to be more common for the commentators to refer to the number of the car as it won't immediately be obvious who is in the car at the time (especially if the team has been forced into unscheduled pit stops).
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by DonTirri »

You know. F1 has had a way to recognize the driver for decades. HELMETS.
You know back when a driver would use the same helmet for his entire career, when you could actually SEE the driver in the car. Maybe it's just me, but I still identify the driver by the helmet.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by watka »

DonTirri wrote:You know. F1 has had a way to recognize the driver for decades. HELMETS.
You know back when a driver would use the same helmet for his entire career, when you could actually SEE the driver in the car. Maybe it's just me, but I still identify the driver by the helmet.


Purely from a size perspective, I find it difficult to quickly identify a driver (except from the onboard shots) as it is in effect only a small part of the car. In recent years, drivers have changed their helmet design regularly and with sponsorship all over the helmets, they are even less identifiable.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by dr-baker »

DemocalypseNow wrote:You don't really need the driver names. You just need the numbers to be extremely visible, ala NASCAR. They tend to get this right - every time I see the #2 Penske car, I can't help but think of Rusty Wallace. I still struggle to get my head around the fact Joey Logano is at Penske now, my mind always associates him with the #20, which is a Joe Gibbs Racing car, his old team.

If you make the numbers larger, everyone will start making reference to them, including the commentators. Often during NASCAR races, instead of referring to something like "Kyle Busch and Corey LaJoie into the wall!", they'll instead instinctively react with "#18 and #83 in the wall!".

We don't need names, because teams tend not to change their drivers mid-season unless they absolutely have to. Number exposure just has to be bigger.

"I am not a number, I am a man!" Oh wait... :)
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by yannicksamlad »

watka wrote:Purely from a size perspective, I find it difficult to quickly identify a driver (except from the onboard shots) as it is in effect only a small part of the car. In recent years, drivers have changed their helmet design regularly and with sponsorship all over the helmets, they are even less identifiable.


I still use helmets to differentiate, but as noted- its a lot more difficult these days, and with less helmet visible ..it will get worse. But I dont like numbers- commentators using numbers give the impression they dont know who is driving the thing and are just looking at the pictures and saying what they can see. And for a many fans even a big 77 on the car won't tell them who is driving it.
So..I do like the ideas from the HRT and McLaren pics- maybe have a bigger name, incorporated in the 'house style' of the team..Perhaps on a single piece of flat carbon fibre that takes the position currently occupied by 5 elements of front wing
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by Salamander »

As someone who's watched NASCAR for years, there is nothing wrong with identifying a driver by number. Some have become synonymous with their number (Check Riccardo's helmet for a prime example). Commentators frequently refer to a driver by their car number, almost as much as their name. Its the easiest way to differentiate two cars, because a number is a number, and its pretty difficult to get a number confused with another. Especially with the FIA's system of assigning numbers to a specific driver rather than a team.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by DemocalypseNow »

Salamander wrote:As someone who's watched NASCAR for years, there is nothing wrong with identifying a driver by number. Some have become synonymous with their number (Check Riccardo's helmet for a prime example). Commentators frequently refer to a driver by their car number, almost as much as their name. Its the easiest way to differentiate two cars, because a number is a number, and its pretty difficult to get a number confused with another. Especially with the FIA's system of assigning numbers to a specific driver rather than a team.

yannicksamlad wrote:But I dont like numbers- commentators using numbers give the impression they dont know who is driving the thing and are just looking at the pictures and saying what they can see. And for a many fans even a big 77 on the car won't tell them who is driving it.

Interesting how both these arguments appear to be the opposite of one another, yet are both simultaneously valid. A specific incident comes to mind, during the crash which took out Ryan Blaney at Talladega yesterday. Mikey Waltrip was commentating on a replay and couldn't for the life of him identify Gray Gaulding as the driver of the #23 at the first two attempts, and eventually got there much later.

My point though is that the numbers aren't to be utilised as identification for the neutral viewer. They have symbolism, they are a marketing focus and be used in their styling to connote something above simply being a number.

If you are to put the visual symbolism to one side, think of it from a logical perspective. The official race stewards refer to competitors by their car numbers in an official capacity already. If anything, it's odd given the former fact that we don't do the same.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by Bleu »

With drivers having their own numbers now, I think referring with numbers makes more sense than what it did when numbers were decided by WDC (1/2) and WCC (others). At least now I can instantly remember everyone's number and not think like "what number does Nico Hülkenberg have this year"

For example Jenson Button had 10, 8, 15, 17, 9, 3, 12, 7, 16, 22, 1, 4, 3 and 5 in his first 14 seasons before the permanent driver numbers came and he then drove with 22 three years.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by yannicksamlad »

DemocalypseNow wrote:If you are to put the visual symbolism to one side, think of it from a logical perspective. The official race stewards refer to competitors by their car numbers in an official capacity already. If anything, it's odd given the former fact that we don't do the same.


This is an interesting point; and I feel that it may be about putting some 'distance' between the authorities and the particular driver, to remove any element of the 'personal'. And also it caters for cases where different drivers share the same car - endurance racing etc. Finally it also reduces the possibility that a spelling mistake could lead to arguments along the lines of " Jim isnt banned, only some bloke called 'Jom' is banned" and it saves them from writing out Ferdinand Hapsburg's full name.

But overall I think I see that it's cultural; if people are used to identifying a driver with a number ( and in Nascar you can't see their helmet) then numbers are good enough on their own. But fans who are not so used to that ( and havent memorized Sergio's number yet) , and all casual fans , will find the number of no real use.

My logic is that rather than associate a driver and a number, and then use a number to identify the driver..the 3 letter 'Name' is a better idea; if you know there's a driver called Perez in the race and there's a car with PER on it, that is likely to be more helpful for most people than his number, notwithstanding the occasional issues of drivers with similar names ( we managed with the Schumachers after all )

And I still think commentators who know what they are talking about should refer to the driver by name, even if many fans will know his number. Referring to his number...is lazy, and doesnt help fans who don't know the number.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by Aislabie »

yannicksamlad wrote:If you know there's a driver called Perez in the race and there's a car with PER on it, that is likely to be more helpful for most people than his number, notwithstanding the occasional issues of drivers with similar names (we managed with the Schumachers after all)

We even somehow managed to cope in 2006 when Montoya, Monteiro and Montagny all raced together for six rounds.
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Post by dr-baker »

Aislabie wrote:
yannicksamlad wrote:If you know there's a driver called Perez in the race and there's a car with PER on it, that is likely to be more helpful for most people than his number, notwithstanding the occasional issues of drivers with similar names (we managed with the Schumachers after all)

We even somehow managed to cope in 2006 when Montoya, Monteiro and Montagny all raced together for six rounds.

Would have made life easier if Montoya had been JPM?
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by girry »

dr-baker wrote:
Aislabie wrote:
yannicksamlad wrote:If you know there's a driver called Perez in the race and there's a car with PER on it, that is likely to be more helpful for most people than his number, notwithstanding the occasional issues of drivers with similar names (we managed with the Schumachers after all)

We even somehow managed to cope in 2006 when Montoya, Monteiro and Montagny all raced together for six rounds.

Would have made life easier if Montoya had been JPM?


Similarly, I get disappointed every race because VER is somewhere high up the standings and then I realize it's actually not JEV...
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by Salamander »

yannicksamlad wrote:But overall I think I see that it's cultural; if people are used to identifying a driver with a number ( and in Nascar you can't see their helmet) then numbers are good enough on their own. But fans who are not so used to that ( and havent memorized Sergio's number yet) , and all casual fans , will find the number of no real use..


In fairness, as someone who has never at all been able to identify drivers by helmet, I used to have quite a bit of trouble telling teammates apart back around 99-01, when I first started watching. Numbers were no help because even as they changed from year to year, they were too small to make out most of the time. So when I moved to Canada and my only motorsports fix could come through NASCAR, it was a lot easier to identify drivers, as not only were numbers were more static, and larger and easier to make out on TV, but the cars themselves were all quite distinct in livery - I could identify Jeff Gordon in seconds just by looking for the car with flames on it.

Now, when I got back into F1, there was still the same problem of no readily available way of telling teammates apart. I can't remember when the fluorescent red and yellow strips on the TV camera on top of the airboxes came in, but eventually I relied on those (as a side note, scrapping the red strips really threw me off for a while).

Admittedly, I'm probably in the minority in how I identify drivers, but ultimately, I can't see any harm in at least trying to make numbers more legible. It won't work for everyone, but then, neither did helmets (not that we'll ever go back to drivers never changing their designs, for better or worse). The only other alternative is having different livery designs for teammates, but I can't see that ever happening in F1.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by mario »

yannicksamlad wrote:
DemocalypseNow wrote:If you are to put the visual symbolism to one side, think of it from a logical perspective. The official race stewards refer to competitors by their car numbers in an official capacity already. If anything, it's odd given the former fact that we don't do the same.


This is an interesting point; and I feel that it may be about putting some 'distance' between the authorities and the particular driver, to remove any element of the 'personal'. And also it caters for cases where different drivers share the same car - endurance racing etc. Finally it also reduces the possibility that a spelling mistake could lead to arguments along the lines of " Jim isnt banned, only some bloke called 'Jom' is banned" and it saves them from writing out Ferdinand Hapsburg's full name.

The race stewards don't exclusively refer to the driver by their number alone though - it is not uncommon for them to state both the name of the driver and their number in their reports. Here, for example, is how the stewards referred to the collision between Grosjean and Palmer in the Russian GP:
The Stewards heard from Romain Grosjean, the driver of car 8, Jolyon Palmer, the driver of car 30 and the team representatives, reviewed the video evidence and determined that no driver was wholly or predominately to blame for the collision.

I do agree that, although a few drivers in the past did develop a stronger association with a particular number (such as Mansell and No.5), there has not been a strong tradition of using numbers to refer to a particular car or driver. It's true that numbers are more commonly used in endurance racing, given that drivers will drive in stints, but even then the association is between the car and the number - even then, some of the smaller teams do vary their numbers over time.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by Wallio »

The bigger numbers themselves aren't a bad idea, but the "Everybody putting them on the Sharkfin" is lame. I was watching some races from 2003, and It was cool to see them everywhere, on the front wing of the Williams, the bardgeboards of the McLaren, the nose of the Ferrari.

I personally still use the cameras myself.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

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If they really want to push the numbers thing then they need to do what MotoGP does and let each driver develop a brand and look for their number - their own font, colours, etc. None of this co-ordinated crap in bold Arial font or whatever it is. So uninspiring and dull and means there's no reason for the driver to push it (look at all the individual rider merchandise in the MotoGP store to see what I mean).
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AndreaModa wrote:If they really want to push the numbers thing then they need to do what MotoGP does and let each driver develop a brand and look for their number - their own font, colours, etc. None of this co-ordinated crap in bold Arial font or whatever it is. So uninspiring and dull and means there's no reason for the driver to push it (look at all the individual rider merchandise in the MotoGP store to see what I mean).


Isn't that what they're already doing? I mean, look at Hamilton and 44, Bottas and 77...
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by UncreativeUsername37 »

So the new numbers haven't ruined F1. Or made it any better, for that matter. All they did was remind me of how I want the 1996 system back. But yeah, it's nothing really garish.

What I'm saying is this was all pointless.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

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Salamander wrote:
AndreaModa wrote:If they really want to push the numbers thing then they need to do what MotoGP does and let each driver develop a brand and look for their number - their own font, colours, etc. None of this co-ordinated crap in bold Arial font or whatever it is. So uninspiring and dull and means there's no reason for the driver to push it (look at all the individual rider merchandise in the MotoGP store to see what I mean).


Isn't that what they're already doing? I mean, look at Hamilton and 44, Bottas and 77...


Nah their font is tedious and predictable. No excitement, no brand possibilities, just a generic font that looks like it was slapped on in a hurry,

Now Ferrari on the other hand, have absolutely nailed it. Not only have they taken the time to properly integrate the numbers into the livery, they've done it in an unusual, unique and attractive font that they can use on merchandise without it looking cheap. And, it's relatively easy to read!

I'd rather see each driver develop their own 'brand' and have unique colours and font styles, but I guess we can't have everything.
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by Ataxia »

AndreaModa wrote:
Salamander wrote:
AndreaModa wrote:If they really want to push the numbers thing then they need to do what MotoGP does and let each driver develop a brand and look for their number - their own font, colours, etc. None of this co-ordinated crap in bold Arial font or whatever it is. So uninspiring and dull and means there's no reason for the driver to push it (look at all the individual rider merchandise in the MotoGP store to see what I mean).


Isn't that what they're already doing? I mean, look at Hamilton and 44, Bottas and 77...


Nah their font is tedious and predictable. No excitement, no brand possibilities, just a generic font that looks like it was slapped on in a hurry,

Now Ferrari on the other hand, have absolutely nailed it. Not only have they taken the time to properly integrate the numbers into the livery, they've done it in an unusual, unique and attractive font that they can use on merchandise without it looking cheap. And, it's relatively easy to read!

I'd rather see each driver develop their own 'brand' and have unique colours and font styles, but I guess we can't have everything.


I'm with you here. Would MotoGP have the same aesthetic if, say, Valentino Rossi had to run the 46 in Arial and was precluded from including his trademark yellow on his leathers? Of course not.

Par example...(quick and dirty Photoshop time)

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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by DemocalypseNow »

AndreaModa wrote:
Salamander wrote:Isn't that what they're already doing? I mean, look at Hamilton and 44, Bottas and 77...


Nah their font is tedious and predictable. No excitement, no brand possibilities, just a generic font that looks like it was slapped on in a hurry,

But that is their brand. That is the Mercedes style. Anything standout-ish would be against the brand values of Mercedes and the image it deliberately tries to sell. The style is also a nod to history. Tight and constrained sans-serif is in line with the image they look to project.

I think the problem is they've missed the mark as to why the numbering may be valuable. If the visual identity is associated with the team rather than the driver, what is the point at all?
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Re: The A E S T H E T I C S Thread

Post by dinizintheoven »

And now that I've seen it on TV, Valtteri Bottas' 77 is much harder to see than it was before, since it's been shifted to light blue. Admittedly the Mercs' numbers being half-hidden behind that Sauber-esque hole in the nose doesn't help, but I'm surprised they've overlooked that.

And (it's been said elsewhere) if the whole idea is to have the numbers visible on the cars, then someone needs to have a word with Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Force India - merely slapping oversized numbers where they were before on the top section of the nose, facing towards the sky, won't help us. Sauber have got it right - they have the numbers where they always used to be in the good old days, and yet they're the ones who will only get TV time when they're being lapped.
James Allen, on his favourite F1 engine of all time:
"...the Life W12, I can't describe the noise to you, but imagine filling your dustbin with nuts and bolts, and then throwing it down the stairs, it was something akin to that!"
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