Is this Force India’s 2009 livery?

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This picture from the Force India 2009 F1 calendar shows a new livery

Anirudh spotted this picture of Force India’s 2009 official calendar on their website.

The car in each of the pictures isn’t in the team’s 2008 colours: a bright flash of green on the front has replaced the red of last year. The colours are much closer to the flag of India.

Is this, as Anirudh suggests, a leak of Force India’s 2009 colour scheme two months ahead of the VJM02’s launch? More pics below (including one that Fisichella lovers will enjoy…)

Or are Force India going to experiment with a different livery over the winter as they did last year?

That mainly red colour scheme was apparently dropped at the insistence of former engine supplier Ferrari, who apparently thought the shade was too close to their own red. Perhaps McLaren, who are supplying Force India with various components for 2009 including Mercedes engines, feel the day-glo flashes on the 2008 VJM01 were too easily confused with their paint scheme?

Or perhaps whoever designed the Force India calendar got the colours wrong. What do you think?

It’s not unusual for images of teams new liveries to sneak out ahead of their official dates: Williams denied leaked photographs of their 2008 livery were accurate although it later turned out they were.

We’ll know for sure in March when the Force India VJM02 is launched.

Thanks to Anirudh for the tip!

More pictures from the 2009 Force India calendar

Force India 2009 F1 calendar - January (click to enlarge)
Force India 2009 F1 calendar - February (click to enlarge)
Force India 2009 F1 calendar - March (click to enlarge)

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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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36 comments on “Is this Force India’s 2009 livery?”

  1. Seems Fisi will do anything to keep his seat. Put a shirt on mate…

    About the colours, well it makes sense to put India’s colours on the car as India is a huge market, and if a GP is going to India soon then it’s a bonus towards enlisting more fans and supporters to the team…

  2. LMAO at Fisi!

  3. looks like it might be, the front wing is huge, so is the rear… 50/50 that it could be an in production design

  4. what does fisi on that picture without shirt -.- give him his race suit.
    I like the livery though… including the first girl^^ :P

  5. As an Indian; I am proud to see that livery.

    As a neutral; the colors look awesome. Stick with it!!!

  6. av had a rather long hiatus from the blog but am glad to be back.

    i hope this is not the official force india livery it makes the car look like a go cart made of boxes. it would be majestical poor taste……

  7. Sumedh…you gotta to be kidding me. I guess it takes an Indian to appreciate it, maybe that was VJM’s goal when he went down to the paint shop.

    I don’t know, this seems too partiotic to me, pretty quintessential. My advice to VJ, if you want to patriotic, use the sky blue that the rest of the indian sports bodies use. The Indian Cricket shirts are class

  8. I don’t care what livery they use as long as they get rid of their current one that looks like a McLaren at distance, or even at mid-distance.

    I think it should be written into the F1 rules that each team should have a distinct livery, in no way similar to any other.

  9. Wa-hey! Fisi with his kit off! Way to go…

    Never mind Ferraris. This, Keith, is what a significant proportion of your discerning readership wants and the undoubted cause of your server outage last night.

    I’m trying to find an excuse to use this picture on our site at a large size, possibly under the headline: “A purely gratuitous picture of a good-looking Italian with his shirt off.”

    Never let it be said that Force India isn’t promoting equal opportunities in F1, at least as far as eye-candy goes. It’ll be a tragedy when he finally retires.

    1. Think it should be the new header image?

  10. Mussolini's pet cat
    13th January 2009, 12:43

    LJH, prefer pic 1

  11. MPC: Let a thousand flowers bloom :)

  12. Pitpass has some different pics of the calendar showing the 2008 car.

    1. They’re not just different pics, like a different month – they’re a completely different design of the same calendar.

      The Fisi pics (and pecs) appear on the Feb09 page of the calendar both here and on Pitpass.

      So what’s going on? Is the 2008 car on an old version of the calendar which has been hastily replaced because the new livery has been settled on? Or perhaps a decision has been made to drop the old livery but nothing’s in place to replace it, forcing a ‘holding’ design with the colours of the Indian flag?

      At any rate, we can be glad FI’s drivers are not Bourdais and Davidson…

    2. Lol, on pitpass that they claim that Fisi and Sutil can forget a job as an air steward after this :)

  13. I don’t know, this seems too partiotic to me…

    Isn’t that the whole point of Force India F1?

    Personally I think its great. I expected to see this sort of colour scheme last season. On various blogs and sites I’m increasingly seeing Force India referred to as the McLaren B-Team and its good to see them trying to retain their own identity.

    Plus in that Fisi shot, the green section reminds me of the old Marlboro McLarens. Only green. Obviously. :D

  14. > Think it should be the new header image?

    :D

    Sadly, it might not be *quite* the right branding for you. Otherwise, I’d say: go for it!

    1. Could be a new niche: who’ll be first to create a gay Formula 1 blog? Or has someone got there first?

  15. yeeeeee Im famous !!! :D

    Now into the topic…. some other non-F1 teams also have liverys similar to Force India, like FMS of gp2 and WSR team Draco cus of their partnership. Now, no way these teams are gonna don that saffron-green livery.(or will they?)

  16. > Could be a new niche

    Put it this way – I’m not going looking, for fear of finding some types of team-branded merchandise that would leave my eyes watering for weeks. Or some new uses for the current stuff…

    :O

    There are probably a lot of incoming links of quite a specifically educational kind to be scooped up – by some very brave webmaster…

  17. @Andy, those shots in the pics above look CGI and I suspect were used purely for design purposes before they put the final shots of the VJM01 to use. Don’t all calendars for sports teams usually use images of the previous year’s cars…??

  18. besides VJ surly wouldn’t want people to think FIF1 is Mclaren B team with similar liverys… maybe thats why this change to saffron-green

  19. It’s OK I suppose… apart from the green which is far too bright.

  20. I’ll take 3 Januarys, please.

  21. I just think it would be nice to see some different colours on the grid again. Have we had any green at all since Jaguar left?

    1. Keith, I think (it was a while back) there used to be a team called “Honda F1”. They may have had some green on their car at some stage. If my memory serves me correctly.

      The car is a CG mock-up. ’09 spec front wing with an ’08 spec rear wing. That spells “interim” to me, though I think it’d be silly to put out a calendar with the car in different colours to it’s racing livery. People have to turn the page only once every month, and it’s going to look pretty silly come April or May if it’s an interim livery.

      While Fisi looks a bit silly, and Sutil very nearly manages to look worse (is that Brillo?!), I think it’s great to see FI-f1 actively marketing themselves. It shows (in a small way, obviously) that Mallya is serious about his team and F1. Anyone recall a MidlandF1 calendar, complete with driver’s photoshopshoot?

    2. How quickly I forget…

      Rubbish though Jaguar were I always liked their green colour, though.

  22. Well it would certainly enhance my F1 viewing pleasure if we got to see a few more drivers sans shirts ;)
    Although maybe the two (three?) Sebs and Kazu could be excused from those duties.

    AS for the car & colour scheme, I’ll have to go back for a second look as I was too distracted by Fisi’s pecs to look at it properly.

    *later*
    It does look a bit CGI & not real. It’s growing on me though, and it is nice to see some green that is not featured on the-team-formerly-known-as-Honda’s pants….

  23. There is an article on formula1.com about the calendar:
    http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2009/1/8839.html

    Apparently Mallya feels that Force India is “Widely billed as the most improved team on the grid during the 2008 racing season”. Reeeeeeeeeeeally now?

    In his defense, Force India wasn’t last. They improved so much that they finished ahead of … Super Aguri.

    1. To be fair, they did gain over a second on the opposition last year. It was only because the grid compressed by about half-a-second that they weren’t midfield. Still, in objective stopwatch terms, they did improve more than any other team.

  24. Not only is it not real, the lines on the car look to me like the VJM01 is the basis.

    Sadly for Force India fans such as myself, this does not constitute a sneak preview of the new car. I imagine playing with the colour palette for the car liveries must have been fun, though…

    Also, I cannot recall anyone’s F1 calender making quite this much fuss before. Which shows that this is a very good marketing move for Force India, whether Pitpass likes it or not!

    1. Well put. There’s a whole lot of Kingfisher on F1 sites at the moment. I remember pictures of Minardi’s and the Minardi name only started appearing flat out on the net when the team were in the process of being sold to Red Bull. About time a back-of-the-grid team got some exposure in media. God knows the big boys get enough.

      They’ve also killed two birds with one stone. They’ve got their brand splashed all over the net, and I bet they’ve gained several new fans from the fairer sex in the process!

  25. ain’t the shark fin engine covers banned for 2009?

  26. It is concerned with the size of organisms, more particularly with the size of our own corporeal selves. ,

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