Force India have unveiled their 2009 contender for the title in the VJM02, and it’s quite striking. You’ll want to follow the jump for the gallery on this one, trust me. If nothing else, the official photos for their unveiling are really quite nice and dynamic.

I’m afraid I have to confess something here. I’ve a bit of a soft spot for underdogs, you see. And as a result, although logically it makes little to no sense, I really would like to see Force India do ridiculously well. Yes, even despite how unlikely that is to happen. If I had any sort of vidding skills, in fact, I’d love to put together a fantastic video featuring awesome ForceIndia race footage to the song titled Hockey Remix from a Bollywood film called “Chakde India!” (In Hindi, the title simply means “Go for it, India!”, and the film centers on the fictional Indian women’s national field hockey team and is actually quite fantastic.)

This might also have something to do with being a previously disappointed Jordan fan, a thing to which I can also lay claim. And the belief that even though he might be difficult to work with, clearly Mike Gascoyne is brilliant…although ForceIndia managing to do well post-Gascoyne would counter that idea, but that’s a minor snag! So now we’ve got all that out of the way, do I really expect much to come out of this? Unlikely. But if it does, some part of me would absolutely love to see it.

In other actual news, will Honda make it to the starting grid at Australia on time or won’t they? F1fanatic.co.uk has unearthed a rather interesting tidbit on this front: apparently, someone’s already registered the domain names Brawnracing.com and Brawnracing.co.uk. Whether that’s factually based or merely pre-emptive remains to be seen, of course, but if that would be what a team management buyout ultimately called it, it wouldn’t really be that surprising, would it?

In the midst of the big superlicense fees debate that’s finally resolved itself, the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association has raised an argument that has become something rather more interesting than just a bunch of rich (if quite talented) guys moaning and complaining about spending a bit more money than everyone else. Apparently, RBS and ING aren’t the only three-letter acronyms in the F1 world who are facing some major budgetary issues right now; it turns out the FIA has a €1.7m hole in its own budget that needs spackling for the upcoming season. New McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh is confident that F1 will be able to find new backing once ING and RBS have exhausted their contracts, but clearly the FIA itself is a different kettle of carbon fibre entirely.

Finally, it seems that the Australian GP is facing a somewhat subdued level of financial anxiety of its own: ING, BMW and Foster’s are massively curtailing sponsorship budgets for the Australian GP, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill instead.

Perhaps we should retitle our ongoing F1 drama “As the Belt Tightens?” At any rate, tune in next week for more news as we have it.