Translated material
Presentations without luxury
Racing teams presented new cars
Formula 1 teams greeted the new year with an exciting week of presentations of new technology. The crisis, of course, left its mark on this integral part of the off-season. Gone are the former luxurious balls organized by sponsors to commemorate the birth of the next creation of the Arrows or Jordan engineers. Even the powers that be in the Formula 1 world are trying to keep everything simple and businesslike and do without lavish show programs.The honor of opening the parade alley fell to the owner of the Ferrari team cup. The chassis was named "F60", reminiscent of the 60-year journey made by the team from Maranello in Formula. Fans still have to get used to the new look of the cars, since changes in the technical regulations radically affected the entire design of the car. But starting from scratch is always difficult, especially when a minimum of time and money is allocated for this, so the most pressing problem facing the chassis developers was the need to preserve as much useful information from past developments as possible. And comparing the Italian car with competitors’ samples demonstrated later, you come to the conclusion that Ferrari succeeded to a greater extent. In any case, the front of the car looks almost “old-fashioned” - the same “shark” nose and wide front “fin”.
What can really cause a shock when you first look at this year’s cars is the “thinner” stern, against which the side pontoons covering the air intakes look especially powerful. “Small and ugly” is how Ferrari President Luca de Montezemolo described the new car. But he immediately hastened to add: “To become a beauty, she needs to win.”
All these are the consequences of stricter requirements for aerodynamics, which have significantly reduced the area of the wings (especially the rear ones), as well as the ban on any additional aerodynamic elements that generously decorated any surfaces of the cars last season. The outlines of the cars have become smooth, almost classic, if we take as classic the contours of the best chassis of the late 80s and early 90s of the last century, when aerodynamics had not yet taken such bizarre forms. And yet, even in these conditions, Ferrari designers found a way to find a loophole in the regulations. The huge pillars of rear-view mirrors, placed far beyond the cockpit, are strongly reminiscent of the “shelves” that were placed on the sides of cars last year. So these designs will most likely still become the subject of close attention of experts from the FIA technical committee.
In general, each presentation, despite the simplicity of the scenarios, turned out to be unique in its own way. So, Toyota decided to make the event virtual, offering journalists, instead of a real car, many photographs and even three-dimensional videos with its image. This approach gave rise to additional suspicions that hung over the Japanese team after Honda suddenly left the Big Prizes. The Japanese are also leaving other championships in the world of motors en masse: Suzuki and Subaru in world rallying, Kawasaki in motorcycle racing. And yet, Toyota remained true to the promise not to leave F1, given last year, and this week demonstrated its car “live” at tests in the Portuguese Algarve. By the way, Renault also showed off its new product there without any fanfare, the main news from whose camp was the announcement of a change in one of the team's main sponsors - the former long-term partner of the French, Elf, gave way to another oil company - Total.
However, the biggest surprise awaited everyone at the presentation of the new McLaren. The car itself, by and large, faded into the background after Ron Dennis announced his resignation as team leader. Although Dennis warned about a possible resignation early last year, it was hard to believe that such a significant figure in the world of Big Prizes would leave the stage. And then those who said that this was just a necessary shake-up, capable of leading the team out of the crisis associated with the scandal surrounding espionage at Ferrari and the conflict between two stable pilots, which led to defeat in the championship, turned out to be right. But this time, it looked like Ron was really going to move on to a different area of activity. The date and successor have already been announced: from March 1, the reins of the team will pass to Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren's executive director. Dennis himself is going to develop the entire McLaren Group company, one of whose tasks in the near future will be the production of road cars. It seems that the rivalry between McLaren and Ferrari is becoming truly global.