It’s the first time the sport has held a single launch event in a move designed to capture interest from television audiences and transform traditionally dry, niche unveilings into something with a little more razzamatazz and mainstream appeal.
Only it won’t be what it seems.
When is F1 75 Live?
The live F1 launch event will be held on February 18 at the O2 Arena in London.
It begins at 8pm local time (7am Wednesday in Sydney/Melbourne).
What is F1 75 Live?
The F1 75 Live event is a collective unveiling of all 10 teams racing liveries for the coming season.
Held at London’s O2 Arena in front of a sell-out live audience of 15,000 it offers fans a snapshot of the year ahead.
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Teams will present their new looks and have been charged with putting their own stamp on proceedings.
Drivers, team bosses, and other luminaries, as well as the world’s media, will attend.
The event will also be broadcast and streamed, starting from 8pm local time on Tuesday (7am AEDT Wednesday).
Will teams reveal their F1 2025 cars?
While all 10 teams will be in attendance and will be showcasing the look they’ll carry throughout the forthcoming season, they won’t be sharing any secrets.
The cars launched on the night will be show cars, a close approximation of those that will actually race but not the actual car itself.
Those are being released on a different schedule, with McLaren the first to have broken cover on Thursday and Williams following suit on Friday.
Others are set to follow, offering fans a look at their new machine in addition to the livery design set to be unveiled on Tuesday.
Why aren’t teams using their new cars?
Teams will use show cars for a multitude of reasons, the simplest of which is that the new machines simply aren’t ready.
While McLaren and Williams have run on track, others are not yet in that position as they work against the clock to manufacture the necessary components.
However, there’s also an element of anti-espionage involved; by using a demonstration car they are not affording their rivals an early look at their machine.
The F1 field is as tight as it has ever been and monitoring rivals for developments is par for the course.
As a result, early imagery is carefully selected and often deliberately obfuscated to limit any intel rivals can glean from the shots.
Why is F1 running a single live launch?
Once upon a time, teams would run their own ship in terms of launch events.
Some have been overly lavish and used world-class media acts, though in recent years the trend has been to a digital rollout with a press release and a few images.
The booming interest in F1 has driven its commercial rights holder, Liberty Media, to look at new ways to boost the sport’s profile, build hype, and cash in on the early-season interest in the championship.
For teams, it’s a double-edged sword as while it sees them pas art of a lavish spectacle, there’s a good chance the smaller teams will simply be forgotten in proceedings.
Traditionally, teams have set their own agenda with livery and car launches scheduled based on car build timelines and sponsorship obligations.
In the F1 75 Live event, those barriers cannot be catered for, giving each team less control of their own fate and portrayal.
It also means the smaller teams will likely receive less exposure than they once did as, where once they could dominate the news cycle for a day, they will simply be another (less important) face in the crowd.
There’s now no real way for smaller teams to capture the headlines, nor a way for the media to offer fair coverage for those outside of the top end of town.
With all 10 teams set to present their cars (or at least a version thereof) at the O2, their window of opportunity reduces from a day to a few minutes.
Instead, the bulk of the interest will be focused on the major players; Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari, Liam Lawson at Red Bull, and Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes,
Even McLaren, as last year’s constructors’ champions, cannot reasonably expect to dominate the show – the headline images will all be Ferrari with the rest mopped up in secondary coverage (if at all).
It’s a significant reduction in the media exposure that smaller teams and their new sponsors can achieve.
Who is the F1 75 Live event aimed at?
F1 is working to appeal to the casual viewer, to give them an early look at the cars while keeping them abreast of the major storylines in the sport.
The event is not for anoraks whose interest extends beyond colour schemes and into what clever diffuser trick Aston Martin might have found.
Some teams are looking to fill that void separately, though not all.
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