Pictures: First glimpse of Force India F1 team

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Spyker, which becomes Force India F1 Team in 2008, are testing at Barcelona in an interim livery today. Giedo van der Garde (McLaren development driver, Renault Word Series racer) and Roldan Rodriguez (GP2 racer) drove.

Hopefully the final car will look totally different, otherwise F1 looks set to lose the distinctive bright orange of Spyker for yet another pair of red and white cars. More pictures below, click for larger versions..

Giedo van der Garde

Giedo van der Garde

Roldan Rodriguez

Roldan Rodriguez

Roldan Rodriguez

Roldan Rodriguez

Roldan Rodriguez

Photos: Peter J Fox / Crash Media Group

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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35 comments on “Pictures: First glimpse of Force India F1 team”

  1. I’m very proud to see the first Indian team in F1. Hope with Mike Gascoyne and better resources they can turn the situation around.

  2. First comment! WOOP :D

    anyway… i really like the force india(P.K.A spyker)colours. i thought the renault colours were the worst change of 2007.

  3. ok maybe not the first comment :(

  4. Well the new logo they revealed today has a burgundy “I” in it… The burgundy may stay on the livery… Let’s hope they redesign the livery before the start of the season. It looks now like burgundy version of Toyota or early 2006 Super Aguri

  5. Oh dear, it’s just so bland! They need to take a leaf out of the Jordan/Spyker book and brighten things up a bit.

  6. On it’s own it’s not bad, quite nice actually. But put in context along with Aguri/Toyota it’s a bit samey. But I suspect it is just an interim livery and the 2008 one will be quite different.

  7. I’m a tad colourblind and I thought it was green/white :s In only one of those pictures I can actually see the red tinge….

    Although, I’m welcoming the change to anything but orange – the number of times those [spyker] cars broke down or had an accident I kept mistaken them for Ferraris!

    I have to agree with Craig though, Jordans livery was at least something to look at even if the performances didn’t always suggest the same. The B&H Bitten & Hisses [snake] and Buzzin Hornets [bees] (bypassing tobacco) liveries and campaigns were pretty cool.

  8. Does being colour blind make following races difficult Loki?

  9. red and white – does anyone remember team lotus in (pardon this as non smoker) – gold leaf colours – maybe they wil add a dash of gold and then it’s nostalgia time for me again!!

  10. sorry the gold is there – need new glasses

  11. The A1GP Team India livery is rather stylish – pale blue and white – and it stood out well at the Silverstone test earlier this year – see http://www.a1teamindia.in/car.php

    Presumably sponsors’ branding will prevent something similar showing up on Force India, but the comparison between the two cars does show one area where A1GP does succeed in knocking the socks off F1.

  12. It’s not bad. But if they do use those colours, they should use a lot more of the red, which I think is quite distinctive from the Ferrari red, so it should be alright.

    But honestly, if they could somehow have yellow cars, just like when the team was Jordan, well, that would be fine by me too. ;)

  13. The should just paint Blue flags all over it. This should give the stewards a little break on the race weekends.

    Spyker was nice enough to be a bright orange, so when there was a crash they wouldn’t even need to put the orange cones all over the place!

    What is the color for ‘Pedestrian Crosswalk’ Williams Blue?

  14. still have not found any website of the team. interestingly if you enter http://forceindiaf1.com/ you come to an empty site, with the title Kingfisher training Academy..

  15. “Does being colour blind make following races difficult Loki?”

    I wouldn’t say it’s difficult. The only problem, if I can even call it that, came with Midland/Spyker oranges being mistaken for a Ferrari. However, I know other non colourblind people who say it happens to them so maybe it just doesn’t help in such a situation.

    Usually I’d mistake them visually, but get corrected by the computer updates, or commentary. If they were around a bit longer I reckon I would’ve adapted to some other recognition with the Spykers.

  16. The interim Honda cars used to be plain black – not exactly an awesomely attractive colour. Interim colours can give little or no clue at all to the actual livery.

  17. All that is fine, but are these guys going to have a ‘Force India’ team without an Indian driver? There is total silence at the moment on that. Mallya’s plans for marketing F1 in India might fall flat without it.

  18. just a fun thing; since yesterday the website http://forceindiaf1.com/ has changed, see post from yesterday. no the message is errror. a search on whois gives kingfisher airlines as owner. so things might be happening..

  19. i feel very proud to see Indian f1 car. hope it will perform well.

  20. i am really proud to c an indian car on da circuit.da car looks excellent better than spykar.

  21. Looks like the new official site all right. I don’t know how fast the Force Indias will be on the track next year, but at least the website is good.

  22. I cant believe u guys like the car’s paint job, don’t u guys think think the tricolour would have been better

  23. Depends how they would have gone about colouring the car. While I like green and orange (white’s not too bad, but it’s a little over-used on the grid), the wrong method of combining the colours can totally ruin the paint job. These things can only really be judged when the car has been given its paint job. What I can say is that this paint job is that the white and burgundy have been combined tastefully.

    The other thing to note is that Force India is 50% owned by Michel Mol and his companies. He’s Dutch, so there is probably a limit as to how patriotic the team can be without causing a problem at board level.

  24. hey guys forget about the colour…..mallya is gonna run the car without an indian driver in it….i bet narain is a far better race driver than all these rickshaw drivers that are testing the car now in jerez….narain is a little bull headed guy but i thought mallya with all his age and experience could mentor him and make him a winner for our country.

  25. What mallya doing is right! if he goes with narain or other indian drivers there wont be a team called force india in 2009 season…….mannn think about the future of the team. i say Ralf and fisichella would do good.

  26. i think it will be tough for forceindiaf1 in the formula 1 circuit. But Mallya has done a gr8 job & put india in the most exciting motorsport. Cheers to him!!!.

  27. you said it right, three cheers to Vijay Mallya and Chakde India

  28. Go INDIA Go………..

  29. FORCE INDIA HAVE PUT BRIGHT RED ON ALOT MORE OF THE CAR NOW AND ITS DAY GLOW RED TOO…

  30. NO THATS THE OLD GREY , THERE IS RED ON THE REAR SIDE PODS AND REAR WING http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/photolarge.php?photoID=93438&catID=1101-3070

  31. Ah I see thanks for that – there weren’t any pictures of the car in Australia when I checked their site before. (There’s no need to shout though!)

  32. WOW finally coming of age..An Indian Car on the F1 track..hopefully they wil get into top 8 by 2010. and also our own F1 track..Go kingfisher Go ForceIndia

  33. anizilla aka anirudh
    28th February 2009, 13:40

    as i said in 2008 and I quot –

    “I cant believe u guys like the car’s paint job, don’t u guys think think the tricolour would have been better”

    Force India listened to my precious comment and this year(2009) they have designed a tricolour livery

  34. proud to see india on f1 track its greate
    keep it up force india pls anyone post here for me when will be the next f1 championship started…..

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