Yes and no.
I guess I am a little biased, being a LH44 supporter, but I do think that Mercedes have a gorgeous looking car. Unfortunately, not quite the easiest to shoot, the metallic livery is quite reflective, but luckily the weather on that particular Friday was quite cloudy, so there wasn't much glare. It being cloud also meant I didn't have to pack out my neutral-density filters to bring the shutter times down and cloudy weather also means the whole scene is rather 'neutral', which was a huge bonus.
I did try my best though to capture all the cars without selective favoritism or bias. Which wasn't easy, as my aim was to go for more stylized shots with slow shutter speeds to capture more motion blur to eliminate/mask the background and put more emphasis on the cars. Because you are rather close to the track, even the 35mm can be used. Overall, most of my shots were done using the 50mm with a shutter-time around 1/60s to 1/100s. I tried slowing down the shutter-speed to 1/10s and 1/20s but it's extremely difficult to get the cars reasonably sharp. The dilemma being; Is it better to go ultra-slow for that perhaps 500th chance to hit the lottery with a perfect sharp shot or better to find a good middle ground, e.g. 1/60th-1/80th and walk away with 10% usable shots? I opted for the latter and am quite happy. Perhaps if I'd visit more F1 races, I would probably go super stylish and slow, but give this is the first time in 7 years that I visited an F1 race, it was important to me to make it a worthwhile visit. Even so, capturing these cars at >200kmh even at 50mm focal length at sub 1/100s shutter times is no easy accomplishment. Most shots are still hit and miss, but with a bit of practice, you get the hang of it. For those of you who might try to attempt the same; Use manual focus and pre-focus on the surface (or use back-button-focusing in conjunction with continuous focusing [AF-C on Nikon]), use manual-mode for consistent shots. Don't over-expose, better to be too dark than too bright (blown out areas can't be recovered), and always, always shoot RAW.
Anyway, to my surprise, I did manage to get quite a few of the Mercedes super sharp. The Torro-Rosso (and RedBull) to my surprise also had a higher success rate. On the other side of the spectrum, the McLaren seemed to be rather difficult, also the Renault too. The Renault is a very nice looking car, but there's a lot of black on the car, so it was difficult to bring out the details as the contrast between the yellow and the black is extremely high.
Here are some more shots:
