The calculations will only be made at the end of the pre-season tests scheduled for next week in Bahrain, because the Formula 1 teams have gotten into the habit of “playing” in the presentations with images that have been “brushed” with Photoshop or, worse , with terrible humorous taste they added parts in the rendering that do not exist.
A malpractice that is spreading in the paddock: the increasingly evident trend is to skip traditional media (newspapers, websites and TV) to dialogue directly with fans through their social channels. The objective is to go on a “binge” of clicks with increasingly insignificant launch videos in which the show counts, the search for the “wow”, in which the less you see the car (the theoretical subject of the day), the better. Single-seaters that are… ghosts!
McLaren MCL38: the background was brushed with Photoshop
Photo by: McLaren
Cinema for cinema: the important thing is to satisfy customers and sponsors. Communication is changing: the fall of the veil occurred at the most unusual times, regardless of time zones and media closing times. The important thing is to create hype.
Red Bull Racing RB20: the mouth of the radiators cannot be understood after the interventions on the images
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
Red Bull and McLaren “worked” the images with Photoshop to hide the crucial areas of their cars, while James Allison, Mercedes technical director, took pleasure in adding an arm in the front suspension in the renderings that does not exist in reality.
The expert eye of Giorgio Piola he was not surprised by the Mercedes mockery: the extra element was added in a clumsy way, with a terrible quality of workmanship, perhaps to make the… mockery evident and draw attention to a detail, to mislead the curiosity of the ingenious front wing with the last “wire” flap which is causing discussion about its legality.
Mercedes W15: the last flap is the result of a brilliant interpretation of the rules
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
But the gentlemen of the teams, when they decide to speak directly to their fans, did not understand that they were not playing the joke so much on the journalists, but on their fans. And so the game becomes dangerous.
We are in the world of the clever: yesterday Red Bull had set the image embargo for 9pm, but authoritative communication figures wanted to make their click-bait previews with photographs. We all had the images, but the rules of the game are worth less for some. Nothing ever happens anyway…
#fakes #presentations #mockery #fans
