Apologies for the silence over the last few days; I think I exhausted all the latest political trends last week and was left with nothing to say until some real news stirred the F1 pot. And that amounts to the unveiling of Ferrari's latest offering, designated the F60 just to confuse us. Keith Collantine has a list of Ferrari's previous F1 naming systems if you wish to attempt to understand them.
Felipe Massa in the Ferrari F60
Photographs of the launch of the car can be seen at the F60 website and Autosport has an interesting article on the technical aspects of the new design. Apparently, the car will change considerably in the run up to the start of the 2009 season so we cannot take its appearance as fixed, but it does give us another angle on the much-discussed look of the new cars.
We are told that the Ferrari is the first of the new designs to be shown, that the BMW tested to date has been only an interim car. It seems to me that, considering the F60 will change considerably before its first race and that the Beemer already has the major visual indicators (front and rear wings, no winglets, altered sidepods, slick tires) of the 2009 regulations, it hardly matters whether we consider a car a new design or merely a step on the way. F1 cars are honed and adjusted throughout each season and so there is no such thing as a finished product - what we are seeing is the general look of the cars for the coming season.
Consensus seems to be that the Ferrari is beautiful and the BMW ugly. Whilst agreeing that the F60 looks great (apart from the odd little rear wing - that will take a bit of getting used to), perhaps even better than the F2008, I do think the BMW suffered from being the first to demonstrate the changes that all will have to accept. Whenever regulations influence the look of the cars, the enthusiasts react with horror so it is no surprise that our initial impressions were negative. Even were the BMW F1.09 to look very much the same as the interim car, it will not be any uglier than other cars on the grid in Melbourne, I think. We are just getting used to the new look.
It is the technical aspect that should concern us more, anyway. F1 cars are never designed to look good - what matters is how well they perform. Autosport makes the point that Ferrari "exploits every blind spot in the bodywork rules to recoup the 50% loss in downforce" and it does seem that the designers have kept as many add-ons from the past as possible. The F60 is not yet the clean and uncluttered shape that the regulations intended, devoid of aerodynamic protrusions.
This will be the approach of many, I am sure, and there will be a lot of copying of Ferrari's barge boards and fancy mirror supports in the offerings from other teams. I am not sure that this is an indication of great design, however. Surely it indicates a lack of innovation and invention, that a designer cannot accept that the answers of the past are no longer applicable and new ground needs to be broken. It seems to me that a Colin Chapman or a Gordon Murray would have looked for completely new ways to claw back downforce or perhaps even to have found ways to make the car function better with less downforce but more mechanical grip.
There are fewer completely new approaches to designing a race car these days, partly because the regulations change so often that there is little time for a designer to conceive and develop fresh ideas. The record of the FIA over recent years also suggests that any really startling innovations would be promptly banned by an administration that wants a standard spec for the sport. Whether such standardization is really necessary is a debatable point but the plain fact is that a spec series would regulate the engineers and designers out of the sport and it would no longer be F1 therefore.
But I digress. To return to the subject of the F60 launch, I admit that the car is both pretty and technically interesting. But Ferraris are always so, perhaps because they have the unfair advantage of being that gorgeous deep red color. It is on the track that we shall see the proof of the pudding, however, and I suspect that there is one alteration to the rules that might prove Ferrari's undoing, and I don't mean KERS (which I think will make no difference whatsoever).
In the past two seasons we have witnessed a gradual decay in Ferrari's legendary reliability, the team suffering several engine failures, most notably Massa's in Hungary. With the engines now having to last twice as long in 2009, further problems could very easily erupt in this area. Even though the maximum rev limit has been decreased to 18,000 rpm, the need to stay ahead in the power output stakes will still put pressure on the engineers and I think we will see more engine-related retirements this year. And the form book says that most of them will be Ferrari's.
Maybe that is just wishful thinking from a non-Ferrari supporter. But it is something to bear in mind, at least. I was right about the team becoming more chaotic after Brawn's departure, remember...