Ferrari has unveiled its car for 2013 as the team bids to end a run of four years without a Formula 1 title.
The F138 name is a combination of the year and a tribute to the V8 engines in use for the final time this season.
Team principal Stefano Domenicali called the launch “a starting point for a year with only one goal: to add to our wonderful history.”
Fernando Alonso has been positive and showed motivation: “There will be three top teams, and our goal is to be one of them. We need to be prepared to give everything since the first race in Australia until the last minute in Brasil”.
As expected, there was plenty to suggest an evolution of last year’s car, with a pullrod front suspension once more – a feature McLaren have taken from their rivals.
However, it has been refined to the limit, in order to gain as much aerodynamic advantage as possible, especially at the rear.
Luca di Montezemolo said: “We need to see what didn’t work last year and get better in these points”.
Brazilian Felipe Massa is optimista as well: “I want to be competitive since the first race, the first minute, not since mid-year”.
Detailing changes incorporated into the F138, the team said: ‘The bodywork elements have been redesigned to allow for changes to the positioning and layout of the exhausts. The dynamic air intake, mounted above the cockpit has been redesigned, as have been the intakes to the side pods, which in turn have also been optimised in aerodynamic terms, while maintaining unchanged the overall cooling system. ‘The rear of the car is much narrower and more tapered on the lower part. The configuration of the front and rear wings derives directly from the last versions used on the F2012, partly because development of that car ran all the way to the final race of last season.’
Yet, as ever, what we’re seeing now on the launch-spec car is unlikely to be what we’ll see when the teams arrive for the season-opening Australian GP, with the Scuderia promising further ‘significant modifications’ to their new charger over the coming weeks.
The car is scheduled to debut next week at the first test of the winter at Jerez.
