After the first of the 2014 Formula 1 cars were revealed last week, I was left with just one question: will the BBC have to pixelate the McLaren's pornographic nosecone appendage before the watershed? Presumably Jenson's rivals will clock his MP4-29 in their rear view mirrors, burst into laughter and simply forget to brake for the forthcoming corner. Could be a smart strategy.
Team dynamics are going to be interesting...
We've also now seen images of the new Lotus, Ferrari and Sauber. Although none are quite as alarming as the McLaren, it must be said that none of them are terribly handsome either, thanks to the new technical regulations that stipulate a much lower tip to the leading edge of the nosecone for safety reasons.
Remember when the taller, narrower rear wings were introduced a few seasons ago? They looked appalling at first sight, but once the racing proper got underway most of us, I suspect, stopped noticing them. I'd love to believe that the same will be true of these new nosecones, but for the moment I just can't.
A racing car should, of course, be the very definition of function over form, so it's quite understandable that aesthetic merit didn't figure on the designers' lists of priorities. There is a fairly significant consequence for racing fans, though; if what first makes a racing car iconic for decades to come is success on track, second is surely the way it looks (or perhaps third after the way it sounds, depending on your own preferences). That, to me, means that none of this generation of 'you ain't got no alibi' F1 cars will ever be pin-ups years from now.
New turbo engines sound pretty brutal
Talking of the way cars sound, Mercedes became the first team to release a recording of one of the new-for-2014 power units on circuit
in this video
. To my ear it sounds far from bad, just a little generic for what we're told is the pinnacle of motorsport. That sound could come from any other form of turbocharged circuit racer, no?
Moans aside, I for one cannot wait for the new season to get underway, which it does - in a sense - tomorrow, with the first of the four-day pre-season tests at Jerez in Spain. The weather forecasts suggest most of the week will be dry, with a chance of rain on Wednesday. Watching Lewis and Kimi wrestling their unfamiliar, torque-rich machines in the wet could be an awesome spectacle.
This week's test session will almost certainly be used by the teams as little more than a systems check, given all the new and complicated technologies, and we really should wait until the first qualifying session of the year before we reach any conclusions as to the relative performance of each of the cars. I do not doubt, however, that when a Marussia has the legs on the Ferrari after day one, I'll be as vocal and excitable as everybody else on social media. That's just the fun of pre-season testing, though, isn't it?
Brits on the podium at Daytona in post-ALMS age
Away from F1, it was great to see a Briton standing on the top step of the podium at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Porsche factory driver Nick Tandy co-drove his 911 RSR to victory in the GTLM category, narrowly beating the BMW Z4 GTE of fellow Brit Andy Priaulx to the flag.
The Daytona 24 was the first round of the new Tudor United Sportscar Championship - TUSC for short - an amalgam of the American Le Mans Series and Grand Am. With 12 further races to come this year at North America's most famous circuits, including Watkins Glen and Laguna Seca, there is much to look forward to, not least because Britain looks set to be well represented throughout. I counted some 18 Britons on the Daytona entry list, including the likes of Tandy, Priaulx, Darren Turner, Oliver Gavin and Richard Westbrook, as well as young guns Oliver Webb, Sam Bird and Alex Brundle. Many of that 18 won't contest the full season, but we will still have more than a handful of home-grown drivers plying their trade in the series this year. With Tandy and Priaulx performing so well at Daytona, perhaps we'll be celebrating a British championship win come the end of the year.
Mercedes teases F1's turbo age with a little sound clip...