Here we go again, another season of Formula 1 images starting in the best place on the calendar, Australia! You can relive the 2015 season opener after the break with our gallery of 89 images, all clickable to 2560px mega image sizing.
Category: Ferrari
Lewis Hamilton has made a perfect start to his world championship title defence with a seemingly easy win at Albert Park yesterday.
It was a funny week for Formula 1, with the Giedo van der Garde v Sauber saga dominating headlines, the return and then no show of Manor, Valtteri Bottas’ injury withdrawal and the failure of Kevin Magnussen and Daniil Kvyat to start after their cars died on the out lap before the race.
Only 13 cars started the grand prix and it seems a miracle that 11 of them finished. The expectations were that more cars would run into reliability problems.
In the end Hamilton defeated his teammate Nico Rosberg by 1.3 seconds. You sense Hamilton would have been able to hold off Rosberg if a serious challenge for lead was mounted. It wasn’t.
Sebastian Vettel claimed the final podium step in his Ferrari debut, a few seconds ahead of Felipe Massa.
The real winners, though, were Sauber who had their two preferred drivers finish strongly. Felipe Nasr marked his F1 debut with a fifth place and Marcus Ericsson came home eighth. Last year Sauber didn’t manage a single championship point, now they have 14 after just one race. Who knows what the courts will dictate for them in Malaysia and beyond, but after a terrible week that’s one team party that would have been a blast last night.
The Toro Rosso kids had a fun time with the grown ups too. Sadly for Max Verstappen he was forced to retire, but Carlos Sainz finished in a credible ninth place.
Jenson Button did finish the race in his McLaren. But he was stone motherless last, two laps off the pace, and the only finisher who didn’t score a championship point. It was valuable testing time for the struggling McLaren-Honda outfit.
It’s easy to tell how boring this race was when the highlight was the post-race podium interviews conducted by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, that Arnold Schwarzenegger!
I had a shiver of horror go down my spine when Arnie was announced for fear that this interview would end in high farce. Fair dues to the Hollywood icon because either he has a clue or is a genuinely good actor and thankfully he handled the role well.
So, who knew Arnie was a Formula 1 fan!
There will be more exciting times ahead in this 2015 F1 season, but save from the sunny weather and mostly clean racing this was as dull as it gets for a season opener.
Well done Lewis, well done Nico, well done Mercedes, you were just too damn good.
Meet Paul Bailey. He’s from the UK and owns a McLaren P1, a LaFerrari and a Porsche 918 Spyder. What a bastard!
In this video Bailey drives his P1 to pick up his new LaFerrari. Not content with taking delivery of one car for the day he shoots straight off to Porsche to collect his 918. Nice work if you can get it!
We’re treated to some of his thoughts on all three cars. This is not a balls out performance comparison that’s going to get him banned by over protective car makers (yet), but it’s still a worthwhile insight into the three best and most desirable hypercars of the moment.
[Source: The Supercar Driver]
This very cool looking creation is a concept Formula 1 car produced by Ferrari’s in-house design team. They did it for no other reason than to make an F1 car that looks good. So, what do you reckon, have they succeeded?
Let us know what you think below and Ferrari would like to hear from you too.
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Ferrari 488 GTB revealed
So, yeah, this new Ferrari 488 GTB is quite special don’t you think?
We got a wee bit excited in the trouser department when Ferrari first showed us the 458 Italia. That was almost six years ago and this replacement model is just as dramatic looking and just as evocative.
In a minor departure for Ferrari, but a sign of modern emission demands, the 488 GTB is turbocharged, there’s two of them in fact. They’re bolted to a 3.9 litre V8 which produces a very impressive 492kW at 8000rpm. Peak torque is an earth spinning 760Nm at 3000Nm.
Oh yeah, this thing is fast too. It knocks off 100km/h in three seconds flat. Two hundred clicks whiz by in 8.3 seconds and it has a top speed of around 330km/h. This entry level Fezza is firmly in hypercar territory.
It has a dry weight of 1370kg which is distributed 46.5:53.5 front to rear. It’s pretty much the same size as the 458; 39mm longer, 15mm wider and the same height.
There’s more images and words after the break. The 488 GTB will make its official debut at the Geneva Motor Show next month.
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VIDEO: Three days of fun
Chris Harris and mates at Portimao with his favourite cars from 2014. There’s no agenda, no forced result to pick a winning car. It’s simply a recipe for fun. Enjoy!
- Aston Martin V12 Vantage S
- BMW M3
- Ferrari 458 Speciale
- Ferrari F12
- Porsche 911 GT3
- Porsche 918 Spyder
- Renault Megane 275 Trophy R
[Thanks to Richard for the tip]
Ferrari will be launching its 2015 F1 car this Friday, but before that the team has revealed the car will be called the SF15-T.
Last year’s car was called the F14-T (Ferrari, 2014, turbo). In 2015 we get the S for Scuderia at the start.
Perhaps part of Sebastian Vettel’s contract with team will be to put his finger away after each win and start waving his F15T?
Fancy that, who knew you could buy a race winning Ferrari Formula 1 racecar for less than one million bucks?!
This 1990 Ferrari 641/2 sold for US$990,000 at the recent Gooding & Company auction in Scottsdale. Powered by a 3.5 litre normally aspirated V12 this car, chassis #120, was driven by Nigel Mansell for five races during the 1990 season, including his win at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
As an aside you can tell Gooding & Company is an American company with scant regard to the facts of F1, because:
Together in 1990, Mansell and Prost would go on to deliver Ferrari’s best season in years, with Ferrari securing the Manufacturer’ Championship and Prost the Drivers’ Championship.
Except they didn’t. Anyway, the pics are nice and bring back great memories!
Those of you paying attention last week will remember the lime green Lamborghini Miura we featured. It sold for $1,155,000.
Full results from the auction can be seen here.
Bruce Thomson is an all round good guy. We know this because he hits our inbox from time to time with some seriously cool automotive drawings. Over the last few days he’s been sharing with the world a few illustrations showing how he would like the F1 cars of 2015 to look.
So far he’s given us the Ferrari F15, McLaren MP4-30, the Mercedes AMG W06 and the Red Bull Racing RB11.
If you follow those links then you’ll be treated to much larger versions of these images where you can further appreciate the detail.
Even better, there’s the promise of a Lotus and Williams concept to follow. Keep up the great work Bruce!
UPDATE 11 January: Now with Williams FW37 and Lotus E23 concepts.
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Instant torque’s gonna get you
The Ferrari 458 Italia is a pretty quick car, right. In a straight out drag race there’s not many cars that can beat it. Surely a miserly four-door Tesla Model S can’t do it?
Well, off the line, yes, it can. And by some margin. This is thanks to the Tesla’s near-instant torque and all-wheel drive grip.
And the Tesla’s not just happy hosing Ferraris off the line either. See below for more.
[Thanks to John for the tip]
The obscenely named Ferrari FXX K made its debut at the Finali Mondiali show at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi recently. After the break there’s a few videos of the FXX Ker in action.
There’s only going to be 40 made and at €2.5 million a pop you’re going to have to love your track days!
Ferrari has released video of Sebastian Vettel completing a flying lap of the famed Fiorano test circuit, including full team radio. Without proper timing we can only estimate that Vettel’s lap time in the F2012 was around 1:03. That’s not too bad considering the conditions, although some way off Michael Schumacher 2004 lap record of 55.99 seconds.