If Vettel can win his fifth championship or Leclerc can take his first, that would give Scuderia its first F1 championship since 2007.
Courtesy: Askmen India
REGGIO EMILIA, Italy—February 11th– As it is its practice, the Scuderia Ferrari team was the first squad to launch this year’s Formula 1 challenger.
But instead of doing it online as they’ve done in the past, the new SF 1000 was launched on February 11th at the impressive Teatro Municipale Valli in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Last year, Ferrari had one of its most challenging seasons. The car didn’t come close to competing with the Mercedes champion. That situation came to a head when Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc collided in the next to last race of the season in Brazil.
This year, the car–with its new name–will register Ferrari’s 1000th race at the French Grand Prix in late June. It might have happened one race earlier–at the Chinese Grand Prix. But that race, which had been scheduled for April 19th, has been canceled because of the Coronavirus.
Ferrari will have both drivers back again in 2020, with Vettel having one more season left on his current contract. The German was very relaxed about the newly designed car. He can’t wait to give it a go in Spain in one week’s time. He’ll also take it for a spin at the team’s test track in Maranello.
Vettel (left) and Leclerc are ready for 2020 (photo, Daily Express)
“The back part of the car…everything sits a lot tighter,” Vettel remarked. “We found some clever solutions to be able to achieve that. I can’t wait to drive it. That’s more exciting than looking at it. One more week to wait! It’s also a little bit redder than last year, so I think it looks great.”
Leclerc, on the other hand, was neither as relaxed nor as focused as his teammate. But Team Manager Mattia Binotto had plenty to say about the new car, which is more of a radical design than in previous years.
“The regulations have remained stable, so it is difficult to transform the car completely,” Binotto said, referencing the rule change planned for 2021. “The starting point of the car was last year’s SF90. But certainly, we have been extreme on all the concepts as much as we could. We developed the car and tried to look for the maximum aero-performance, trying to maximize the downforce level. So, the entire car, the monocoque, the power unit, the gearbox have been packaged in a way to have a very narrow and slim body shape. I think that is quite visible.”
“We improved a lot the downforce,” Binotto continued, “not only wing but also the turning vanes, in a high complexity area. Certainly, we have increased a lot of downforce, and by doing that, we increased drag.
Mattia Binotto: We will be faster in corners, but slower on straights. Where is the right balance? Difficult to know. But certainly, we increased by quite a lot the downforce.
The team hopes that this car can be good right out of the box, which is needed to challenge Mercedes, which under Lewis Hamilton, has dominated F1 the Hybrid Turbo era. But if Vettel can win his fifth championship or Leclerc can take his first, that would be the first championship for the Scuderia since 2007 when Kimi Raikkonen (now with Alfa Romeo/Orlen) took the title.
