By Dirk Gibson
With the turn of the New Year comes anticipation for the beginning of the racing seasons in NASCAR and Formula One. Both have been hit by tough economic times and made radical changes to lower costs. If you thought the Car of Tomorrow was ugly in NASCAR, you have to get a gander of the new F1 cars.
Formula One doesn't begin racing till late March, but that doesn't stop teams from launching their cars starting in early January. Launching is, of course, just another way to drum up a media event for sponsors to see the new car, take plenty of pictures and publish them in periodicals around the world.
Ferrari is the first team to launch the new car this year. Ferrari has always had a sleek car of deep red, black and some white. Regardless of how your feel about the team, the colors are breathtaking and the cars are beautiful. Well, till now.
The new Ferrari, the F60, reminds one of the joke about the fact a person wasn't hit by the ugly stick, the entire tree fell on them. This is one ugly car. It starts with a front wing that is so wide it extends out to the outer edge of the front wheel. It looks bad, but is made far worse by the fact the back of the car has a wing that is very narrow. Frankly, it looks like the parts from two different cars where mashed together in a Frankenstein design.
Alas, this is not Ferrari's fault. The powers that be in Formula One have mandated new regulations designed to increase passing. The car is a reflection of those regulations and other teams have the same look based on testing photos. Still, the sheer ugliness of the car is compounded by two big concerns.
The first concern has to do with passing. The new design is supposed to make passing easier. If so, it seems an odd design. The vast majority of down force now appears to be on the front wing. As a car pulls up to a slower one, the air will be lost off the front wing. A sudden lack of down force hardly seems to be a tonic to help passing, but perhaps there is another element of the car that compensates for this.
The second concern is the sheer extension of the front wing. Formula one starts from a standing stop. The first corner is always a bang up affair - pun intended. With the new design, it seems impossible that the drivers will be able to see the ends of the wing. Given this, one can expect a bevy of crashes as front wings clip the tires and bodies of other cars. The resulting carbon fiber on the ground should make for plenty of laps behind the safety car.
How will the new car perform during the 2009 season? For the first time in a very long time, nobody really knows. Every team is starting from scratch, so the first race should be very exciting and well worth watching.
With the turn of the New Year comes anticipation for the beginning of the racing seasons in NASCAR and Formula One. Both have been hit by tough economic times and made radical changes to lower costs. If you thought the Car of Tomorrow was ugly in NASCAR, you have to get a gander of the new F1 cars.
Formula One doesn't begin racing till late March, but that doesn't stop teams from launching their cars starting in early January. Launching is, of course, just another way to drum up a media event for sponsors to see the new car, take plenty of pictures and publish them in periodicals around the world.
Ferrari is the first team to launch the new car this year. Ferrari has always had a sleek car of deep red, black and some white. Regardless of how your feel about the team, the colors are breathtaking and the cars are beautiful. Well, till now.
The new Ferrari, the F60, reminds one of the joke about the fact a person wasn't hit by the ugly stick, the entire tree fell on them. This is one ugly car. It starts with a front wing that is so wide it extends out to the outer edge of the front wheel. It looks bad, but is made far worse by the fact the back of the car has a wing that is very narrow. Frankly, it looks like the parts from two different cars where mashed together in a Frankenstein design.
Alas, this is not Ferrari's fault. The powers that be in Formula One have mandated new regulations designed to increase passing. The car is a reflection of those regulations and other teams have the same look based on testing photos. Still, the sheer ugliness of the car is compounded by two big concerns.
The first concern has to do with passing. The new design is supposed to make passing easier. If so, it seems an odd design. The vast majority of down force now appears to be on the front wing. As a car pulls up to a slower one, the air will be lost off the front wing. A sudden lack of down force hardly seems to be a tonic to help passing, but perhaps there is another element of the car that compensates for this.
The second concern is the sheer extension of the front wing. Formula one starts from a standing stop. The first corner is always a bang up affair - pun intended. With the new design, it seems impossible that the drivers will be able to see the ends of the wing. Given this, one can expect a bevy of crashes as front wings clip the tires and bodies of other cars. The resulting carbon fiber on the ground should make for plenty of laps behind the safety car.
How will the new car perform during the 2009 season? For the first time in a very long time, nobody really knows. Every team is starting from scratch, so the first race should be very exciting and well worth watching.
December 30, 2011 at 6:17 PM
It's really exciting to have Formula 1 Holidays. The race is awesome.