The FIA has published an entry list for the 2019 F1 season which reveals details of the rookie driver race numbers and also some changes to the team names.

Starting with the team name, the biggest change comes to Force India which has been registered as ‘Racing Point F1 Team’ from this year’s mid-season Racing Point Force India with the company name being ‘Racing Point UK Limited’.

It remains to be seen if this will be the official name as the team is yet to issue and official release on the same. The chassis name has also changed to ‘Racing Point’ with an abbreviation – like what was used this year, ‘VJM11’ – not yet revealed.

Among other changes, Ferrari has changed its team name to ‘Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow’ in official capacity as part of the on-going brand promotion for ‘Mission Winnow’ by longtime supporter Philip Morris International.

Renault as well has changed its team name from ‘Renault Sport Formula One Team’ to simply ‘Renault F1 Team’, with Haas now to be known as ‘Rich Energy Haas F1 Team’, while ‘Williams Martini Racing’ changes to ‘Williams Racing’.

Apart from the team names, the rookie drivers have their race number fixed as well with current champion Mercedes Lewis Hamilton to keep on using hiss 44 and not 1 for winning the title for the fifth time.

There are no changes to the existing numbers of the drivers continuing on even with new teams with 2, 9, 31 and 35 no longer in use which were taken by Stoffel Vandoorne, Marcus Ericsson, Esteban Ocon and Sergey Sirotkin respectively.

McLaren’s Lando Norris has opted to use 4 as his number which was previously used by Max Chilton in 2014. The Williams’ pair of George Russell and Robert Kubica will use 63 and 88 respectively – the latter getting his first official race number.

The 88 was partly in use by Rio Haryanto in 2016. Sauber’s Antonio Giovinazzi will use 99 which was used by Adrian Sutil in 2014, whereas the number for Toro Rosso’s Alexander Albon is yet to be revealed.

Update: Following the provisional entry list released by the FIA, Toro Rosso has since revealed the race number to be used by Albon from the 2019 season onward. The Thai racer will use 23 which is the first time anyone will be using it as his official number.

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