Miami related rabbit holes
with added dramatic pause based poetry
VCARB goes vaporwave
The team formerly known as Alpha Tauri have launched a new livery for the Miami Grand Prix this weekend - and it looks really good. Very vaporwave. Very (to my limited and non-local understanding) Miami. Their regular livery doesn’t look bad, but I didn’t realise how corporate it was until I saw this Miami livery.
The VCARB team supports Amna Al Qubaisi in the F1 Academy series, and she seemed the only one looking forward to racing in a pink and purple car. In other words, she’s the only one with style.
The official media release said it was inspired by a particular design of Visa card. I was a little disappointed but hey, what are F1 cars if not high speed billboards.
But something caught my eye in the description:
“Channelling the ‘oil slick’ look of the Chameleon Card and the vibrant colours of Miami…”
Does Miami have a lot of oil slicks? Are oil slicks cool now? If you’re a design type person, do you refer to a vaporwave colour gradient as ‘oil slick’? Do the cool kids still even say vaporwave now? I have a half written article on sustainability in motorsport around somewhere (ok, a few actually) so I’ll come back to oil slicks and motorsport later, but a lot of attention goes into wording media releases. I found it curious that Visa would want to use the imagery of an oil slick with their brand, and no one thought it might be an unpleasant juxtaposition with a race car. Yes, I know I’m focusing on the wrong thing from the media release, but I thought it was bold, even if unintentional.
Then I discovered that Visa is a recursive acronym. (Yes, I fell into the trap of looking up the sponsor that was being advertised, please don’t think less of me.) The trademark assertion part of the media release sent me off down another wikipedia rabbit hole, and, indeed, the full name is Visa International Services Association. The card was initially launched in a small-ish town in California (big enough for proof of concept, small enough to cover up any clusterfucks), gradually took over the world, and at some point acquired a recursive backronym that makes a non-zero number of people groan.
And why do I keep calling them VCARB? Because they start off all their media correspondence with this:
Red Bull update
In more significant news than a car getting a new livery, did you know that Adrian Newey is leaving Red Bull? (Or are you perhaps living under a rock with me? In which case: *waves hello*)
The timing of the announcement was, I think, an announcement in itself. Red Bull Racing released the statement that Newey is leaving the team on May 1st 2024. The 30th anniversary of the death of Ayrton Senna. Newey has previously said he did not want to be the centre of attention near the anniversary as Senna was driving a car Newey had designed. It was something that affected Newey significantly, not least because he was briefly under investigation for a manslaughter charge for his involvement in the development of the car Senna was racing.
Christian Horner describes Newey as a friend, not surprising as they’ve been working together for about 20 years by now. If you’ve been friends with someone for 20 years you probably get around to sharing a thing or two about yourself, so Horner was very likely aware of Newey’s disdain for the spotlight and particularly so around this anniversary. That the press statement was released on the 1st of May anyway indicates a lack of respect for the Senna family and for Adrian Newey, his so-called friend. I’m not saying it was Horner himself who pressed publish on the statement. I’m saying that if he didn’t want the statement to go out on May 1st it wouldn’t have.
When the Newey rumours first started flying with more intensity last week, some were suggesting he may just want to retire, and I was thinking the same. Why not? He’s 65 already. But with more detail coming to light, specifically that he will immediately step back from the F1 side and focus on the hypercar and America’s Cup projects to serve his non-compete clause, I doubt he’s retiring.
I’m going to hypothesise a little and suggest the timing of the statement is jab (or stab) from Horner. He doesn’t want any of his stars leaving, especially given The Situation is still ongoing, and the barely contained power play that won’t leave the headlines.
Will Buxton Poetry Corner
Every world champion has what I term an inner bastard And it is that ability to make a tough decision when you have to You see a gap You take it
This has been another edition of Formula Curious; a brain child of Maggie Anderson. If you liked it why not tell a friend?