Antonio Pizzonia and Juan Pablo Montoya

Yesterday Williams announced signing of Pastor Maldonado, a Venezuelan driver, to partner Rubens Barrichello, the Brazilian. As a result, Williams will contest the 2011 F1 season with two Latin American drivers. There have been many drivers from Latin America in F1 and Argentina and Brazil also gave the world some World Champions. But having both drivers from that part of the world hasn’t been that common. Here is brief look back to the recent F1 history.

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1995 Australian Grand Prix

We have been used to see 10 teams and 20 cars on F1 grid for the better part of the last decade – the most teams we had was 11, the biggest number of teams was 22. Twelve teams were on cards twice in the recent past. Once in 2002 when Toyota was to join the other eleven teams but following the demise of Prost it was back to eleven. Then again in 2008 when Prodrive was granted the entry. But Prodrive failed to turn up (the whole customer car fiasco), four races later Honda pulled the plug on the Super Aguri venture and instead of 12 teams F1 was back to ten.

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Eleven out of the thirteen 2010 F1 teams have revealed their liveries already. Here are all of them line up in alphabetical order. We may still see some changes before the season kicks-off in about 1 months time. USF1 and Campos Meta may come up with their cars, some of the teams may add a new sponsor logo here and there, the BMW Sauber racing livery probably will not feature names of both their drivers … What do you think of the 2010 liveries ? Which one is the best ? Scroll down and vote in the 2010 Liveries Poll !

2010 BMW Sauber Livery

2010 Ferrari Livery

2010 Force India Livery

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The F1 Livery History is back with season 1989. The last season of the 80s and the first one in the post turbo era featured 20 teams. Onyx was the only new team on the grid, Brabham name returned after one year absence. It was to be the last season for Zakspeed (see the tobacco free East variation of their original West livery). Euro Brun failed to qualify for a single race that season, but at least they made the 1989 line up more colourful by changing their livery midway through the season (reflecting the Jagermeister sponsorship).

McLaren- Honda

Williams-Renault

Ferrari

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It is time for another post in the F1 Livery History series. Here is the final episode of the 90s – season 1990. There were 19 teams on the grid that year and one of them – Coloni – even managed to get classified twice – in 19th as Coloni-Subaru and 18th place as Coloni-Ford *. This F1 season was the only one for Life F1 team. Interesting fact – one of the AGS drivers back in 1990 (and in 1989 and 1991) was the 2009 WTCC champion Gabriele Tarquini.

McLaren-Honda

McLaren-Honda (no tobacco)

Ferrari

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It has been a while since the last F1 Liveries History post but the regular off-season feature is back with the look back at the F1 liveries of 1991 season. This was the year when Jordan joined the F1 circus and Michael Schumacher entered the scene (Jordan, Benetton). Eigteen teams, nine different engine suppliers, two tyre brands made up very colourful grid…

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Although the Mercedes engines will power the McLaren F1 cars for few years to come (the new deal says 2015 at least) their privileged partnership is coming to an end. Following the takeover of Brawn GP Mercedes will run their own team and McLaren will turn into a customer. Let’s look back at the images of Mercedes powered McLaren since 1995:

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End of the F1 adventure for Toyota

The (off-)season of announcements continues with news of another withdrawal. This time it is the rather expected news from Toyota. Toyota confirmed today they are pulling out Formula One. There goes the commitment to stay on board till 2012 …

“Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) announces it plans to withdraw from the FIA Formula 1 world championship at the end of the 2009 season. TMC, which had viewed its participation in F1 as contributing to the prosperity of automotive culture, remained dedicated to competing at the pinnacle of motor sports even in the face of the abrupt economic changes that started last year.

However, when considering TMC’s motorsports actitives next year and beyond from a comprehensive mid-term viewpoint reflecting the current severe economic realities, TMC decided to withdraw from F1.”

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Bridgestone will quit F1 after 2010 season

We have all expected the off-season full of announcements. The first one came shortly after the end of 2009 F1 action. And it is a rather surprising one – Bridgestone announced they will not continue supplying F1 with tyres after 2010 season.

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Ayrton Senna

The Brazilian embassy in Rome is paying tribute to Ayrton Senna this weekend (September 18-20) to mark the 15th anniversary of the driver’s death during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola. Here are two videos. One introduces the event (have to click here), the other one shows what is on display:

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Keke Rosberg, winner of 1982 Swiss GP

The last six races this season had six different winners – Button, Vettel, Webber, Hamilton, Barrichello and Raikkonen. I scanned the results of the F1 past to see how often something like this happens. Not that often …

There were several recent seasons with 5 different winners in 5 consecutive races:

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Mark Webber celebrating his first F1 win

Mark Webber finally has an F1 race win under his belt, let’s have a look how his German GP win changed the F1 statistics:

Mark Webber has officially become the driver with most F1 races before first win. Here is how the table looks now:

1. Mark Webber – 130th race
2. Rubens Barrichello – 123rd race
3. Jarno Trulli – 119th race
4. Jenson Button – 113th race
5. Giancarlo Fisichella – 110th race
6. Mika Hakkinen – 96th race

Interesting that current F1 drivers make up the top 5 …

Let’s have a look who has the best chance to take away Mark Webber’s top spot. Here are the current F1 drivers without a race win after Webber’s name disappeared from this list:

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