Brief news from Fuji paddock
It emerged at Fuji Speedway on Thursday that while Coulthard will use a special dark livery in honor of his late countryman Colin McRae, Toyota's Jarno Trulli's normal chrome lid now features splashes of flower-shaped colors.
Less color, meanwhile, filled the Japanese skies, amid paddock chatter of likely rain for both qualifying and the race.
In pitlane, it emerged that Toyota – racing for the first time on the circuit it owns this weekend – has added Ferrari-style front wheel covers to its package for the first time this year.
Initially, it appeared that Ferrari may have removed the innovation in recent races, but in fact the Italian team had simply cleverly painted its own black carbon-fiber covers to mimic a normal set of BBS wheel-rims.
Another change at Fuji this weekend is that the stickers of Super Aguri's defaulting major sponsor SS United have now been removed.
It follows the signing of new sponsors for the rest of the 2007 season, including new main sponsor Four Leaf, a Japanese health food company.