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Formula 1’s first ever joint season launch is a bold experiment even if it is likely to just be a livery showcase broken up by entertainment acts in a launch-turned-mini-concert.
While some teams, fans, media and F1 itself should be a little nervous about what this plan might take away from a massive part of a new season, it is certainly interesting. And it’s about time F1 tried something different.
Shaking up the usual launch season has been mooted in the F1 paddock for a long time. It’s a running joke that for all the technology and ingenuity and money in this championship, nobody’s found a better way to reveal a car than pulling off a sheet.
The process has only been modernised as far as a mix of digital and real-world events, still hosted by the teams themselves.
There’s clearly value in taking the launches seriously otherwise F1’s biggest teams wouldn’t do it – most will know they can still get a lot of attention by even doing a half-baked launch but there’s a certain standard that most try to hit.
When done right, the launches tick all the necessary boxes: teams and partners get lots of coverage, we all see the new cars and liveries, we hear from key team personnel and get our first impressions for how well prepared or not Team X is, and F1 gets a wonderful drip feed of coverage and fan engagement for two weeks or so leading up to the crescendo of pre-season testing.
As long as the collective F1 launch still satisfies the basic requirements by at least giving us a glimpse of the cars, even in render form, everybody will at least get something from it.
But there will be a reliance on some supplementary efforts from the teams as well. And that might come down to a mutual understanding that one single combined launch won’t be enough. Especially for smaller teams, who will otherwise lose their moment in the spotlight because the focus on February 18 will be elsewhere.
The risk is that F1’s giving up more than what might be gained. One massive event could get a great peak number of eyeballs on F1 for one evening, or the 24 hours that follow, but could compromise everything else that makes launch season fun, informative and rewarding, for the teams involved and for fans following it: one day of chaos then the rest of February will be dull with nothing new to look at.
That’s the worst case scenario, and we won’t know if it’s avoided until teams confirm their plans. It has been suggested that the majority of teams will try to do something of their own, but a lot is unclear.
Will there be renders of the 2025 car alongside the livery reveal? Will the real cars stay hidden until testing, or is there enough time between the event in London and flying to Bahrain to sneak some shakedowns in? If the only sight we get of the cars are renders, will anything be accurate or mean anything?
Of course, some might question whether any of this actually matters, given how much teams disguise their real designs around launches nowadays. Testing’s just a little further down the line, that’s where teams stop hiding, so we should all just wait until then, right?
There’s some truth to that argument, but it overlooks the value of a fascinating fortnight or so in the F1 ecosystem.
If F1 trades 10 launches (of varying quality, admittedly) for one big livery showcase, it might subtract the most impactful parts and leave teams, fans, all of us shortchanged.
Sometimes a fair compromise means leaving everyone a bit disappointed. While that might not be good enough for something as important as launch season, F1's only going to find out by finally trying something new.
