Moment of Smoking Zen

The Eddie Irvine video down below reminded me that at Suzuka in 1993, The Ligier of Martin Brundle had one of the prettiest sponsor liveries in F1 history.  The abstracted "Gitanes" cigarette paint scheme took over the whole car and the effect was utterly beautiful while partially obscuring the brand name in keeping with the ever-tightening tobacco sponsorship laws of the early 90s.  For sheer purity of form and design, you can't really beat the F1 cars from 1990-94.  That was when Ferraris were still almost completely crimson red, McLarens looked like a Marlboro packet, and who can forget the first year of Rothmans sponsorship on the Williams-Renault?

Martin Brundle drives us through 60 years at Silverstone

This excellent 7-part series produced in 2008 gives us some wonderful onboard footage of a racing car from each decade of Formula 1, and is narrated by retired F1 driver Martin Brundle, who shares his driving impressions of each machine. Each segment is about 5 minutes long.