The funny thing is: in the old days of F1, Mercedes scratched off the paint for weight reasons, revealing the aluminum beneath. Hence "silver arrows". Today they are doing it for the same reason, only revealing carbon fiber instead of aluminum.

Aston Martin managed to work with the exposed carbon really well this year too, imo. There is actually quite a bit of it, but thanks to the clever paint job it doesn't look like it. One of my favourites this year, alongside Ferrari of course.

Contrary to us though, he has had a taste of how good this car is in the simulators and still jumped ship. Time will indeed tell everyone but that's not encouraging.

It'll likely be painted irl, at least on the more prominent parts of the car, but because it's carbon fibre underneath, you can apply a much thinner layer of black paint without it looking terrible

The render makes it all look nice & shiny but it's just an illusion, the black surfaces will be carbon for shure.

I agree. The sidepod inlet is very unique looking with the fillet feature on the bottom, similar to what I remember on the zero-pod car. The subtle water slide on the top of the sidepod kinda looks like last year's Alpine.

The lack of stays on the floor is another obvious change for them from last year. And I don't remember the big scoop on the tip of the front wing either.

I doubt these would be the sidepods on the cars they will be running in a few days.

On the plus side it now looks less like a dog's.... Erm.... Lipstick.

Really? I particularly dislike it. I think it's too much, too many colors. And it doesn't work well with the red imo.
Anyway I think I'm in the minority, most comments I've seen are positive towards it.