There comes a time, as you grow older, wiser, fatter and balder, that something strikes you as a sign that the world has gone utterly wrong in every sense of the word. That we have finally reached the tipping point in the fight against any sense of normality. For romantics, that might be the sight of a Pizza Hut in view of the Egyptian pyramids. For racists, it might be some media-fabricated nonsense about how the Muslims have banned Christmas. For people with any sense of decency, it might be when Skins was commissioned for a second series. And for F1 fans, it must surely be when Ferrari painted their cars the wrong colour.
Ferraris in weird colours is no recent invention. A yellow Ferrari popped up in the 1961 Belgian GP in the hands of Belgian driver Olivier Gendebien, for example. And John Surtees wrapped up the 1964 world title in a Ferrari painted in the white and blue of the North American Racing Team, in a row over sportscar homologation or something or other. But in 1996, something horrible happened that ruined every Ferrari F1 car built since then forevermore.
Without meaning to go all rose-tinted on you, back when the F1 championship was first conceived, motor racing was very much a gentlemanly pursuit, far removed from the sponsorship nonsense we have today. Which meant each car entered was run in the "national colours" of their country of origin. So we had British Racing Green, German Racing Silver, French Racing Blue, American Racing Different Blue, and so on. And we had Rosso Corsa, Italian for 'racing red'. The colour of Italian F1 cars throughout history.
Whether it was an Alfa Romeo 158, or a Maserati 250F, or even a Ferrari 412T2, the colour was always the same, the racing colours of Italy. And, after Alfa Romeo and Maserati buggered off, very much the racing colours of Ferrari.
But then, in 1996, something changed. Nothing particularly distinguishable by anyone who wasn't the sort of sad, pathetic F1 obsessive who writes an article about a shade of red, but something rather significant all the same. The 1996 Ferrari contender was painted, not in rosso corsa, but in a new shade of the colour, sickeningly called Marlboro Red. And even the staunchest of F1 anti-traditionalists, of which I am a badge-carrying member, cannot help but hold back the bile rising in their throat when they hear that.
There went all the credibility of Ferrari when pompously referring back to their history in the sport whenever the FIA tried to implement something they didn't want. They then became no better than any other team that flashed some thigh and painted itself up for whichever rich sponsor demanded they did for this particular year. There went the mad, passionate, pure racing team that had remained on the grid since F1's formative years.
Many people cite Michael Schumacher's arrival in 1996 as the end of a purer, passionate Ferrari. But it was mere coincidence that he took up his saddle in that year. The dropping of the national colours on the whim of a brand of cigarettes meant that from that point on, Ferrari were a modern F1 sponsor slag. May as well paint them yellow and pink, for all the history there was in the livery.
The shade of red changed again, very recently, from the pinkish tones of Marlboro's chosen hue. But not back to rosso corsa. This wasn't a deliberate move to win back the marque's history by respraying the 2007 Ferrari in the traditional Ferrari colour. Instead it was changed to a darker red that looked better on TV. That was it. No sense of seasons past, no attempt to quietly shuffle the Marlboro years away in favour of a return to Ferrari's true shade. They changed from Marlboro Red to something that would look better on television. And it does, certainly. Of all the shiny, sexy cars at the Singapore night race, the Ferrari looks utterly sensational. But it's not a Ferrari livery. Any more so than the aforementioned yellow and pink idea would have been.
And so this new Ferrari F10 does indeed have a stinked-up livery. It very much stinks the room out entirely. But not really because there's too much white, or because the sponsor decals are all weird. But because it is fundamentally the wrong shade of red.
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