The risk of F1’s long-awaited car launch experiment

Formula 1’s first ever joint season launch is a brave experiment, although it is likely to be just a showcase broken up by entertainment acts in a launch turned mini-concert.

While some teams, fans, media and F1 itself should be a little nervous about what this plan might take away from a massive chunk of a new season, it’s certainly interesting. And it’s about time F1 tried something different.

Shaking up the usual launch season has been talked about in the F1 fold for a long time. It’s a running joke that for all the technology and ingenuity and money in this championship, no one has found a better way to reveal a car than to pull a layer.

The process has only been modernized in terms of a mix of digital and real-world events, still hosted by the teams themselves.

There is clearly value in taking the launches seriously, otherwise F1’s biggest teams wouldn’t do it – most will know that they can still get a lot of attention by doing a half-baked launch themselves, but there is a certain standard that they most are trying to reach.

When done right, launches tick all the right boxes: teams and partners get plenty of coverage, we see all the new cars and designs, we hear from key team personnel and get our first impression of how well prepared Team X is or not, and F1 gets a wonderful drip of coverage and fan engagement for two weeks or so leading up to the crescendo of pre-season testing.

As long as the collective F1 launch still meets the basic requirements of at least giving us a glimpse of the cars, even in rendering form, everyone will at least get something out of it.

But there will also be dependence on some supplementary efforts from the teams. And it may come down to a mutual understanding that a single combined launch will not be enough. Especially for smaller teams who otherwise lose their moment in the spotlight because the focus on February 18 will be elsewhere.

The risk is that F1s give up more than what can be achieved. One massive event could get a huge peak number of eyes on F1 for a night or the 24 hours that follow, but can compromise everything else that makes the launch season fun, informative and rewarding, for the teams involved and for the fans who follow den: one day of chaos, then the rest of February will be boring with nothing new to look at.

That’s the worst-case scenario, and we won’t know if it’s been avoided until teams confirm their plans. It has been suggested that the majority of teams will try to do something of their own, but much is unclear.

Will there be renderings of the 2025 car alongside the livery reveal? Will the real cars remain under wraps until testing, or is there enough time between the event in London and flying to Bahrain to sneak in some shakedowns? If the only view we get of the cars are renderings, will anything be accurate or mean anything?

Of course, some might question whether any of this actually matters, given how much teams hide their real designs around launches today. The test is just a little further down, this is where teams stop hiding, so we should all just wait until then, right?

There is some truth to that argument, but it overlooks the value of a fascinating fortnight or so in the F1 ecosystem.

If F1 swaps 10 launches (admittedly of varying quality) for one big showcase, it could strip away the most impactful parts, leaving teams, fans, all of us behind.

Sometimes a fair compromise means leaving everyone a little disappointed. While it might not be good enough for something as important as the launch season, F1 will only find out by finally trying something new.