Ferrari’s New Concept: An F1 Car Can Be Both Technological & Sexily Aggressive

on May 15, 2015 at 10:32 am

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“It’s a backhanded way of telling the sport’s organizers to go suck eggs” — Wired

For people who have come to auto shows, they usually expect to see the latest car concepts which are integrated with advanced technologies. But for people who come to a Formula 1 Race, all that they want to admire are the speed and the aggressive sounds from the F1 cars’ exhausts. And when it comes to design an F1 car, the engineers of the teams seem to just put effort into technology and aerodynamic design that can help to rock the performance from the top of the podium. “We have this new braking system, brake-by-wire, at the moment not the best thing to use. That makes it much more tricky. We’re trying to fine tune that. New dashboards on the steering wheel, we’re trying to fine tune those. Turbo, KERS, all these new things,” Mercedes driver and former F1 champ Lewis Hamilton told Sky Sports F1.

Why Formula 1 cars are so ugly this year?

A slew of new rules have been established to keep the drivers be safer on the tracks, but they also made the cars facing with, what I would say is, an aesthetic challenge. The aerodynamic tweaks to the front of the car to improve safety and minimize the chance a driver is injured in a crash. The nose is much lower than before, to keep cars from being launched into the air in a collision. Out back, the exhaust is directed upward, diverting hot air away from aerodynamic components and denying engineers of a trick they’ve used in the past to increase downforce. This could lead to decreased rear grip, and therefore, lower speeds through corners.

Whether it’s an F1 car or a sports car, the beauty of it should not be compromised and sacrificed in any way

Yet earlier this year, Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene said his team was trying to provoke its rivals into action when it released its concept design for a future Formula 1 car. “Our message was mainly ‘try to liberate the creativity and create a beautiful car’. We will not say we were first or second, or ours is better. We are happy to try to move the status quo,” said Arrivabene.

Ferrari, in fact, has been among the strongest voices protesting the sport’s direction, and they took initiative by giving an example of how an F1 car can be both beautiful and well performed. “Minimal changes give the car a look that is way different from what that have been familiar with so far. Our challenge was to create something that was — to put it short — better looking. We value your comments on that.”