The Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team has been having fun in the last 24 hours, asking fans to Twitter about the new F1 car. The more twittering there was, the more of the car would be revealed, with a virtual garage door being rolled up to reveal a machine in the shadows. This was such a success that the team’s servers failed to cope with the traffic and the garage door stayed down until a more stately flow was achieved. The garage door edged upwards. The image revealed did not show much because of the amount of shadow, but with the magic of computers and a fair bit of photo enhancement, I have managed to reveal the basic shape of the new car. This looks at first glance rather similar to the other cars we have seen thus far, with a straighter nose and very conventional side pods.
The rear wing appears to be a little odd, but it looks like there has been a glitch in the picture as the top of the airbox also seems rather flat.
joeblogsf1 
There have been rumors that Bernie wants to buy the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as of late. If F1 cars ever did run the real track there again, this rear wing would be the one they’d use! If that’s not a Super Speedway wing, nothing is! 😉
Why would Bernie Ecclestone want to buy Indianapolis?
It’s just a silly rumor that’s been bantered about. Kind of like “Paul is dead”. obviously no truth to the matter, but it does fit in well with the rear wing shown here! 😀
He never would. But if he did, it might be to try and seduce the only F1 market which has eluded him (on a consistent basis) all these years.
The speedway is not for sale..the Indy Car Series probably is… if and when the speedway gets sold look to Daytona for the buyers..not Bernie.
Robin Miller mentioned the sale in one of his recent Miller’s Mailbag columns. About the rumor, he said “I heard it from a buddy in England who works at McLaren”.
Something tells me not all of the image is loaded properly. The top of the air-intake looks to be missing…
Probably just where the original image is cropped.
Bit of a reveal fail though! There’s really not a lot of suspense about this years cars, at least from learned fans that know the designs will be fairly similar to last year.
It could be a good way to reveal the. 2014 car though, assuming its better conceived!!
The entire top of the image is missing (airbox/wing).
Lets wait for a real picture…
It is a real picture. It just has a bit missing.
Looks like the virtual “garage door” is still hiding the top of the wing and air box. Otherwise, looks similar to last year’s car.
Joe, if this is a world exclusive you could make some serious money here.
Yes but I guess tomorrow it will be worth nothing…
Fat chance, he’s simply copied what other people have already been sharing on twitter. Granted he may of done image himself he’s hardly trail blazing.
Get off the high horse Joe, slagging off ‘internet journalists’ yet you’re copying them!
You are a rude (and wrong) person. I did no such thing. I took the image from Twitter (as I am entitled to do) and I reworked it myself.
So I think the term you are looking for is “Sorry”.
So because Joe occasionally ‘calls out’ people whom ONLY recycle the work of others and slap it under some bullshit headline passing it of as a scoop you’ve decided he cannot use the Internet for reference himself. Brilliant logic.
You’ve ‘got him’ (according to yourself), and for that you get a virtual badge, congratulations and enjoy reading 10 versions+ of the same news elsewhere, the different adjectives are particularly newsworthy.
I would have thought it’s not copying so much as it’s fair game. Unless it’s utter drivel, why should Joe be excluded from a bit of online fun? Strikes me as hypocrisy when 99% of online fun is just garbled garbage jittering in the echo chamber. And this idea Joe somehow stands against youngsters coming through is even more rot, you don’t have to look far back in this blog to a handful receiving very solid positive advice.Now before I get accused of my own hypocrisy, I support any internet experiment that might allow serious contenders coming to the fore. Publishing has suffered inordinate damage through the rise of the internet, notoriously through corporate mis-steps and heads buried in sand, and who can claim a serious career through the ‘net deserves a chance. Just let them earn their spurs. Looks like a very harsh game, lately, but that’s good too if not too harsh. It’s meanwhile illogic to imagine a established journalist would feel a threat. If there’s a problem, it’s the market as a whole, and widespread outbreak of “freetard” attitudes, expecting free access but somehow they can themselves recognize quality, because that’s what they moan they cannot have gratis. Combine that with structural inefficiencies that have me quietly polishing other skills, in case, (no, not near F1 in any way, and in circular fashion aimed to feed back into my main calling in any event) and of course there’s pain. But to invert that and attribute a attitude to another is unadulterated bunk.
For the record, I have spent a bunch of time elsewhere, and it’s fun, and support a novel experiment, and that is quite contrary to my earlier stance I simply didn’t care to look at any other F1 source, except during a time there was some remarkable misinformation emanating from a certain place, which I considered ought to be cut down a peg or two, and might even have been highly suspect in terms of affecting a public market. My reason for what might be thought of as a volte face is because collaborative projects can throw up gems, and other than that, small online communities can be a hotbed or thought. It’s not defecting to “the competition” because there’s no comparison nor need of envy either way. Personally, I do think Joe somewhat mis-calibrates his exposition about “internet journalism”. I think it just a expression of disdain at the lack of dedication and serious work in general, not blanket condemnation. Patently, I agree. Good writing will find its own market and audience. As a child paid for in no small part by a father who wrote novels and plays, it was hard then, and is hard now, to break through. Having never been socially amongst the F1 crowd, I cannot vouch, but in all fields there’s professional respect. Maybe instead the problem you find vexing, is that culturally, it is extremely hard to become accredited with only a online presence, or without the basics of professional organization. That’s not the fault of the accredited journalists, it’s a much wider problem of how one can assess and vet the vastness of scribbling. Unfortunately we do not have a perfect world, and neither do most people find perfection in randomly googled stories about complex sports.
Despair not disdain, I think is more accurate, if I could edit the above, and if I think somewhere else is interesting, it’s because I give it a chance to mop up much of the mess of websites, denude them of eyeballs, and so the endeavor has a role to play I do not think negative. If people presumably can make some living from almost institutional misinformation, well I’d rather someone else eat the misinformers’ dinner.
Very rude and very wrong.
Your first two sentences contradict themselves, quality post. Not.
Excellent. What a crap way to reveal your new car ! And some PR “expert” has been paid more than I earn in a year to come up with that ? Think I’ll stick to the BTCC.
Joe, I took the same image and applied a more retro filter to it to see more details of the car – and look what happened: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubbergoat/8442196598/
I agree that the top of the airbox is definitely missing from the photo 😉
In answer to Paul..
Why is that you and others come to post here, if all you are going to do is be critical and rude ?
The top of the car must have been still behind the not fully elevated garage door.
Anybody else find it a bit curious/interesting that up to now only Red Bull & Lotus have designed their cars with the stepped nose design while McLaren, Ferrari, Force India, Sauber & Mercedes have all designed their cars with a nose that has that uniform slope to it? It does leave me to wonder what will come from Toro Rosso, Caterham & Williams.
Although its not entirely clear – the Mercedes looks to have the partial side vanity ‘ridges’ like the sauber. Mclaren and Ferrari seem to have full vanity fairings. The lotus currently has none but the red bull seems to have a tiny partial vanity plate according to Adrian newey – so we have had a host of approaches so far.
Be interesting how many stick with it by the end of testing.
Mercedes-Benz is also making a big tease ad for the Super Bowl today..unvieling the “A” class smaller benz to the market..hence Ms Huston!
For mine, this reveal seemed to be a case of ‘good idea at the time’. The site crashed on numerous occasions, barely any of the tweets were relevant… there’s a consensus about capturing the imagination of the technocratic youth, but I’m not sure this was it. And given Merc’s money and resources, it can’t be passed over as ‘well, at least it tried something different’…
The real sensation about this is that Mercedes have announced Anne Boleyn is to be their test driver this season.
Me 109
Now I’m curious – I wonder if it can be reverse engineered and unlocked- or if they’ve locked it down properly.
The latest piece has a little bit more shape to the rear wing
Well that’s a little better, but the appalling lighting is very obviously the result of an “artiste” who has no knowledge of the subject, let alone the premise that people might want to see what the damn car looks like. Yes very atmospheric, wonderful, have an award for use of shadow, now bugger off and put the lights on on the way out.
Flash? In 2012?! The web developer needs to sit a dark corner and think very hard about what they have done.
I agree. Terrible in 2013 as well.
Agreed, the McLaren site – while not perfect from a usability point of view – at least looks like it was developed in 2013.
The Force India site looks reasonable modern too.
Low res images and flash – urrg
Just noticed the comments above – at least 2 Paul’s BTW
Looks like Lewis will be using a blackberry to tweet this year.
Or not. Apparently, his and Nico’s tweets containing “#BlackBerry” at the roll-out test this morning were posted via “Twitter for iPhone”….