Mercedes GP launched their 2010 car in Germany yesterday, by unveiling last year’s Brawn GP painted silver. Brilliant. The big news to come out of the event, as far as I’m concerned, is that there’s a bit less minty green than the mock up released when Petronas was signed up as the team’s title sponsor.

Inevitably, Formula 1‘s proper news sites have made the most of the opportunity to hear what the team has told their drivers to say to the media. It’s too closely controlled to get anyone to say anything interesting. So what purpose does it serve? I’ve no idea.

Ferrari and McLaren are both launching their 2010 cars this week, and I fully expect them to be similarly underwhelming affairs.

What we need is for Bernie Ecclestone to get involved. He never misses an opportunity to create headlines, as proved by his trip to Ferrari and Ducati’s Wrooom ski shindig, where he proposed having short cuts on all Formula 1 tracks to generate more overtaking. It’s ludicrous, and clearly never going to happen. But does he let that get in the way of a good story? Of course not!

If he was involved in launching Red Bull Racing’s 2010 contender, for example, he’d have an actual bull’s head, painted red, mounted on the front wing. He’d claim it’s there to intimidate other drivers, and that it’s well within the regulations. That would, of course, be a massive lie, and it would be gone when the car hits the track. But it wouldn’t matter by then; it would be a surprise, it would be plastered over the news, it would get people talking, and it would be a whole lot of fun.