Ferrari – what do you think?

I like it. Do you and why not?

Looks like every other F1 car of the last 20 years.

Christ, hadn’t realised exactly how much wing the new rules were mandating! Certainly looks like it’s going to make a difference, and a welcome return to slick tyres too.

Looks unbalanced with the huge front wing and tiny rear.

Like most of us 😉

It’s certainly strange looking but not bad, very different to 640 from 20 years ago.

Sorry, don’t like it.
Front 3/4 view on BBC website just looks silly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7812490.stm

Front end reminds me of a fish slice

Formula 1 is a joke of a sport, its incredibly boring and a complete farce.

According to Massa who did a couple of laps in it today, its very much the same size as a formula 3 car – Just hope the racing this season offers the same level of excitement..

So what are the big differences / ever changing of rules then?

Whoever said F1 cars were pretty? 599 please!

With the noses getting higher and higher, don’t the drivers find the blood drains from their feet?

nasher – Member

So what are the big differences / ever changing of rules then?

Mainly centred around the aerodynamics, to reduce downforce primarily. There are other changes too though, to compensate for reduced aerodynamics, proper slick tyres are back in, cars are now narrower track (should be less draggy through the air), they have to have an “energy recovery system” fitted (think like the way when you brake in a Hybrid car such as a Prius energy “recovered” from braking is used to charge the battery) which then allows them a “boost button” which gives them a few more horsepower for a pre-determined number of times to promote overtaking moves.

Fingers crossed, all the changes SHOULD make for more overtaking and a more interesting race series, that said though, at what cost. It seems a very expensive way of going about doing something that could be acheived by much simpler rule changes, or even just capping the bloody budgets allowed by each team! Cap each team’s budget at £10m for the entire year say, and it’s going to be a much more effective leveller than most of the new rules are going to be, cos as it is the team with the biggest budget that allows them to get round the new rule changes most quickly, is likely to win. In other words, don’t expect anything other than a Ferrari/McLaren show all year long.

They will never go with such a cost capping system because the big players will pull out, since they would no longer have the advantage of their cash. Less big players means less revenue, so why would F1 go that way?

Looks very, very thin at the nose section, though a bit unbalanced with the relatively small rear wing and large front wing. Nice to see the demise of all the aerodynamic add-ons that the cars seemed to grow over the last couple of seasons, which made them look ridiculous.

Hope the racing builds on the (relative) excitement of last year. Be nice to see a few more challengers to the title than last years two horse race.

yuk

looks terrible with that rear wing

The battle of funny cars. 😆

Far too red for my liking.

F1=boring

Touring Car championship – now thats more interesting – at least there are some overtaking manouvers and …err.. the odd crash.

But best of all is Truck Racing – watching from near the apex of a major corner is great – 4 trucks going hell for leather into a space only 2 can fit! much better than the primadona filled bling silliness of F1.

oh and that ferrari looks vile.

The rear wing (particularly on the BBC photo) looks ridiculous. If it makes the racing more interesting though I am all for it.

BTCC looks to be a tad thin on entries so far. I’d prefer it if they went back to the early to mid 80’s. Alfa spoilt it (IMO) when they started spending megabucks and wings / splitters came in.

Hopefully F1 will be better and we will see more banzai overtakes and back ends sliding round corners

looks like some chavs have been at it with some halfords bits

they should have a draw for grid positions for every race. Otherwise it just appears to be (for the non-fan) a 70 odd lap procession with little overtaking and some dubious results.

Erm, when has an F1 car ever been designed to ‘look nice’? Surely it’s probably the strongest candidate for function over form?

Looks probably like most of the other cars on the grid will look like this season just in different colours.

I used to love F1 when it was Prost, Mansell, Senna, Piquet and they had 1 fuel load for the race so just pitted for tyres.
I think they are bringing back 1 fuel load, which I think is a good thing. Time will tell whether these changes make any difference, but F1 has been pretty boring for the last 15 yrs or so at least.

I’d much rather go and see touring cars or Superbikes.

“Alfa spoilt it (IMO) when they started spending megabucks and wings / splitters came in”

Maybe, but it was still pretty great in the early to mid90s with BMW, Volvo, Ford, etc. It became a bit boring when Audi started winning everything and the winner-ballast thing came in. It’s a real shame so few want to enter at the moment.

With F1 so dull and nerdy and Loeb almost unbeatable in rallying, where should we look for exciting high level car racing?

“where should we look for exciting high level car racing?”

British GT? Brit F3? the new F2 chamipionship & GP2

or stick with Club level racing
Classic and Sports Car Club – everything from Jags (like watching aircraft carriers do battle, very entertaining) to 60’s tin tops

750mc

Caterhams

Ma5da (MX5 racing)

any one of these will provide far better racing – alot available to view of MotorsTV if you have sky/cable

they have to have an “energy recovery system” fitted

It’s an option only. McClaren (for instance) are having both KERS and non KERS chassis built. It’s not clear whether the added boost on some circuits is worth the extra weight to lug about. Don’t get over excited about 2009, it’s not going to be a whole load different to last year for overtaking, drivers have gotten used to no traction control, and the cars still can’t run very close together, as the aero regs revisions were badly drawn up. Having said that, major regs changes always makes for an interesting first couple of races (as long as the Big Red have it right, if not, expect lots of Italian foot stomping, and quickly drawn up rule changes)…

Summerisle – we went to watch touring cars a while ago and while the BTCC races were fun, it seemed the “lower” down the classes you went and the less suited the cars were to track racing, the more exciting the racing was. single seaters were all a bit boring, touring cars were pretty good, vectras better still, and the bog standard fiestas were great – lots of two wheel action, dozens of broken door mirrors littering the first corner, every car leading at one point or another, loads of crashes and some even rolled. top stuff.

New Toyota revealed today – quite different to the Ferrari in some areas. I’m loving the smooth lines of this year’s cars – and the new rules seem to be generating some different design solutions which is going to be ‘interesting’. McLaren launch tomorrow so we’ll get to see what Hamilton’s gonna be cutting corners in this year 😉

Boring. 2009. Hamilton wallops all comers, still isnt popular in England (as no punters can identify with a successful coloured-lad (unless hes foreign then they can offer faint-praise).

Personally I don’t think a lot of the anti-Hamilton-ness derives from race, not in the UK anyway. It’s more to do with his media image and in some ways is similar to the way Schumacher was perceived in this country when he started showing his talent – with Schu his arrogant image apparently came about because of his relatively poor English, so he spoke in a simplistic Germanic way and it didn’t go down too well. As Schu’s English improved he became more relaxed and started to show a bit more humanity. Didn’t stop him cheating of course, but he was a quick cheat.

With Hamilton I think a lot of it is due to his dad’s poor management of him – had Hamilton taken on a new manager in 2007 they would probably have gone on a PR offensive to give him a different image than that which he ended up projecting. When he’s relaxed and off-guard Hamilton can be a genuinely affable, likeable guy but when he’s on-duty he comes accross as too much of a company man and that stifles his personality. Still frickin quick tho!

When Schummacher broke down in tears in a post-race conference I did warm alittle. A tiny glimpse of the pressure that he faced.

Hamilton is scarily quick when he focuses. I think when he does move to Ferrari he’ll become more complete with exposure to company approach/management-style

I like it. The design changes are for the better I think. It’s the steering wheel I’m concerned about, check the size of it

Ferrari testing

I refuse to bother watching traffic for "fun".:)