Wednesday March 8th, 2000

By Alan Baldwin

How do you turn black into orange? The answer, at least in Formula One, is by spending $110 million.

That is roughly the amount that British mobile phone operator Orange have agreed to pay Arrows, who won just one point last season, over three years to change the team's 1999 black livery to a brilliant orange.

The sponsorship deal, announced last week, confirmed once again the hugely-expensive sport's ability to suck in cash and also offered further proof that the face of Formula One is changing.

Spectators at Sunday's season-opening Australian Grand Prix will notice a range of new colours.

Technology companies are moving in while tobacco firms, who have in recent years provided 70 percent of motor racing's sponsorship revenue, have lost some ground.

A European Union ban on smoking advertising is due to be completed by 2006 while the return of a U.S. Grand Prix, at Indianapolis from this season, has prompted increasing interest from high-tech industries.

The three most successful teams from last season - constructors champions Ferrari, runner-up McLaren and third-placed Jordan - are still heavily backed by tobacco in the form of Marlboro, West and Benson and Hedges.

But five of the 11 teams - Jaguar, Williams, Arrows, Minardi and Sauber - have no cigarette involvement.

That makes one more than last season, when Williams were sponsored by the Rothmans Winfield brand and sported a multi-coloured paint scheme. This season Williams' primary sponsor is Compaq Computers.

Internet Money

Prost have meanwhile combined tobacco and technology, securing the backing of internet giant Yahoo! as well as regular tobacco sponsors Gauloises.

They also remain blue, the traditional colours of French racing cars, in a year that has seen the national colours of old returning more to the fore with Jaguar adopting a form of British Racing Green.

McLaren's silver reflects the involvement of Mercedes, whose cars raced in that colour in the 1950s. Ferrari are the only team to have kept a consistent and globally-recognised identity over the decades, staying in red and earning the support of an army of loyal fans.

With major manufacturers such as BMW and Jaguar now joining them, the days of dramatically changing liveries could be numbered.

BMW are providing Williams with both engines and a blue and white scheme to match the German carmaker's colours.

Jaguar, formerly Stewart, hope their green machine will attract the same army of British fans who flocked to Silverstone to follow the likes of Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell.

But Jackie Stewart, whose tartan has now vanished from the grid, believes it will still take some time for Jaguar's green to rival the Ferrari red, even at Silverstone.

"I don't think it will be a sea of green to begin with," he told Autosport magazine recently.

"Sure, we could buy the sea of green; we could give everybody green hats or green T-shirts...but the passion of Ferrari is that everybody has bought their red hats and flags. We've got to earn that by winning races and championships."