NOVEMBER 26, 2003

BAR black ship

BAR Honda ran its development car at Barcelona. This will be used this winter testing parts for the BAR-Honda 006. The interesting thing at the Valencia test, apart from the fact that the car had teething problems, was that it was running in a completely new black and silver livery, moving away from the Lucky Strike colors that the team has run since its inception.

This is probably due to the fact that the previous color scheme was rather too close to that of Panasonic Toyota racing. BAR spends considerable time and money on getting its image just right and it will interesting to see if the black and silver will remain the color scheme next year. The team may have decided that without its main sponsor BAT the team does not have an identity (a problem which hit McLaren during at the end of the Marlboro years) and may be looking at new color schemes to give the team an image of its own, just as McLaren has done with its carefully thought out silver livery.