I´m guessing Ferrari will produce one B E A utiful car and come out the gates with guns blazin.
I'm thinking this to, but time will tell. Of course, being a fan of Ferrari I'd like to see this as well
And Alonso really does deserve a car worthy of fighting for the Championship, after the roller coaster ride he has had over the past 5 years.
Ferrari's problem is that they don't really innovate. They take a look at the grid at the end of the season, and pick out the best designs. They then merge them all together for next year's car. Using this logic, their 2012 design might have McLaren's U-shaped sidepods tapering into Red Bull's coke bottle rear end. Individually, they are good ideas - but they don't necessarily work well together. But it's almost as if Ferrari are afraid to commit to anything radical because if it doesn't work, they'll be even further behind the competition. They've simply too conservative in their car design.
I think after 3 years of playing follow the leader, continually that 1 or 2 steps behind in development, Ferrari realize they must finally wake up and take a more radical approach if they plan on being able to fight for a Championship. With Ferrari starting with a much more optimized wind tunnel next year and with some new technical people in place to, they will likely start off the season in much better form. Ferrari is probably digging deep in this area to, as I've heard Ferrari have been consulting with Rory Byrne on the design of next years car.
Ferrari aims to hit the ground running in 2012
Source: autosport
Ferrari's chief designer Nikolas Tombazis says the Italian squad is aiming to hit the ground running in the 2012 season, but he admits the team is not taking anything for granted.
"Our objective is to arrive in Australia absolutely competitive already," Tombazis told Autosprint magazine.
"We don't want to say 'we are still behind, but we will do...'.
"It's clear however that out rivals are neither naive nor idiots. Our objective is to win, we aren't sparing anything. But we don't take anything for granted."
The Maranello squad has been hurt by uncompetitive starts to the season in the past two years, and this season has been much less successful than expected, having taken just one win.
Ferrari is planning a more aggressive approach for its car for next year, but Tombazis says the new machine will not be another Red Bull-like car, despite the team's dominance during the past two seasons.
"You can't ignore your competitors: if Red Bull wins, you can't say 'I'll just mind my own business'," he added.
"But it's not just Red Bull having interesting solutions: there are also slower cars with solutions worthy of consideration. You can't hide behind excuses. I think, however, that next year's car will have many different solutions, all ours.
"And it would not be fair to say it's a Red Bull, absolutely. It will be a Ferrari, it will be different in various areas, with new solutions in other areas, maybe taken from other cars. It will be a mix."
Tombazis also said that Ferrari has understood why some of the developments introduced in the latter part of the season have not worked, even if it ran out of time to work on them.
"We have understood what didn't work, but we haven't been able to fix it completely because, in September, solving the problem would have needed more time with effects only on the final three races, taking away too much time from next year's car.
"This is why, from that point on, we've struggled to stay close to our rivals."
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In all honesty, I think this years Ferrari is actually quite good, it's just that they haven't been able to ultilize the potential of the EBD concept (which has been found to be an extremely powerful tool) to the extent that Red Bull or Mclaren have. Of course they've also struggled massively in terms of getting the car to perform consistantly on all the tires, so it should interesting to see if they can get a strong hold on this vital aspect for next year, as Red Bull and Vettel seemed to be on top of this from the get go.
With next years move to periscope exhaust which will most likely tone down any type of downforce producing affect from the exhaust, I really do think Ferrari has a strong shot at being a contender (I'm not sure if Silverstone was maybe a glimpse of this), as long as Newey doesn't continue his trend and pull another 3 rabbits out of his hat for next years RB8
On the other hand, it should be interesting to see what happens to Mclaren next year. I think the philoshpy they've had over the past few years (running an extremely stiff car in order to maintain the ride height for diffuser efficiency) has left them a bit comprimised in terms of the mechanical compliance of the car, but fortunately for them the powerful affect of the EBD has really been able to mask this problem up IMO, especially as they continue to develop and maximize it's potential. I will say Mclaren will have a bit of a one up though when it comes to the low nose and how they manage the airflow going into next year.
With that said, I'm really looking forward to the unveiling of next years cars to see what the teams have come up with. You would have to imagine that Ferrari and Mclaren will likely be turning up the wick a bit after being desimated this year. But then again, it's hard to stop a one man army like Newey.
Why don't they make a generic design that all teams must use?
I am not a fan of F1, because almost every championship seems to be decided by whoever has the fastest car instead of who is the best driver.
Take for example the V8supercars, last weekend the entire field of around 30 cars were separated by 1 second in qualifying and this is a regular occurrence. 1 second!
F1 is awesome, but the racing is.... Boring. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. NASCAR is a lot more interesting to watch. One race can have so many different leaders and there is constantly passing going on. Even with DRS the racing in F1 is pretty boring. The fastest cars qualify at the front and win. Never passing anyone just driving around by themselves.
If all the cars were similar so that no car had a huge advantage due to some special design then the racing would be a lot more interesting. Just my opinion
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Personally, I've felt that the racing this year has been quite entertaining. Also, for me one of the most exciting and intriuging parts of the sport is the technical design and development race between the teams. This is one of the things that makes F1 - F1 (hell, we wouldn't have this interesting thread if it weren't for this aspect of the sport). It's not meant, nor should it be a a spec series with the ultimate goal to provide the best racing possible while finding the best driver possible.
) exactly what has been said going into previous seasons.
