Similar to the programs run by Red Bull and Renault, the Ferrari Driving Academy was established to foster young talent along the ladder to Formula One, starting way down in karting. The program is run by Luca Baldisserri, the strategist who replaced Ross Brawn during his sabbatical and who currently serves as the team’s track manager.
The first pupil selected for the program is Jules Bianchi. The young French driver, managed by former Ferrari CEO Jean Todt’s son Nicholas, is the scion of a successful racing family: his grandfather Mauro Biachi won the FIA GT Championship three times, and his great uncle won the 24 Hours of Le Mans and competed in nineteen grands prix. Jules himself won the French Formula Renault 2.0 title in 2007 and the F3 Euroseries in 2009, and following his test for Ferrari in December, has scored a podium finish in his debut in the GP2 Asia series. Not a bad start, so we’d better keep our eyes open for Bianchi and future Ferrari Driver Academy pupils making their way up the ladder. Press releases after the jump.
Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso lap Valencia in the 2010 Scuderia Ferrari F10 - Click above for high-res image gallery
We know, we know. The pace set on track tests doesn’t necessarily indicate how a given team, car or driver will perform in an actual race, let alone across a whole season. But it’s hard not to read too much into it when we’ve been waiting for a sign since the end of last season, when the winningest team in all of motorsports - which has been working on this car since the middle of a dismal last season - with its veteran driver recovered from injury, and with a two-time World Champion taking the helm for the first time, when all these elements come together and the team absolutely dominates.
Half of the F1 teams that’ll be competing for honors this season descended on Valencia for three days of official testing. And when all was said and done, Ferrari had dominated the time sheets on each of the three days. The first two days saw Felipe Massa run the new car, setting the fastest times on both days. Then Alonso took his turn on Day 3, beating Massa’s time and everyone else’s in the process - including returning seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher in the new Mercedes and reigning champion Jenson Button in the new McLaren.
For his part, Alonso was quick to quell speculation. Reliability, fuel loads, yadda yadda yadda. But when this is the first and only indication we have of how the season is shaping up, we can’t help but sit back and stroke our five o’clock shadows in contemplation. We invite you to do the same while viewing the mega gallery of on-track images below.
2010 BMW Sauber C29 - Click above for high-res image gallery
There’s no easy way to design and build a new F1 car, but the road to Valencia has been longer for the Sauber team than its competition. The team quite nearly missed the chance to race this year after BMW withdrew its support and a subsequent deal to sell the team fell through. But team founder and namesake Peter Sauber managed to get the funds together to buy his team back, and after narrowly acquiring a spot on the 2010 grid, this is the first fruit: the Sauber C29.
Technically, the team still bears the BMW Sauber moniker, but it’s not the Bavarian automaker’s engine under the cowling: it’s Ferrari’s. The name game is simply a formality. Having run Maranello’s engines for years in the pre-BMW era under the Petronas brand, both Ferrari and Sauber are used to the arrangement.
Petronas is also gone, migrating to the rival Mercedes GP team (and not, as might have been assumed, to the Malaysian-backed Lotus team). As you can see, the C29 - the third car to make its debut during the Valencia test session - was unveiled with no sponsor branding whatsoever. Rumor has it that both drivers - 38-year-old veteran McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa and 23-year-old rookie Kamui Kobayashi (who impressed in his debut for Toyota last season) - have brought sponsorship along with them, Kobayashi in particular linked to Panasonic, which sponsored Toyota’s cars until the Japanese automaker’s withdrawal last season.
With BMW or without, Sauber’s made the grid, but the team still has a long way to go. Have a look at the high-resolution images in the gallery below and the press release after the jump.
Big deal, you say? Another F1 car, you say? Well it’s a big deal in Faenza, where Scuderia Toro Rosso is based. That’s because, in accordance with new regulations, this is the first car designed and built entirely in house since Red Bull acquired the team in 2005.
The STR5, then, might as well be called the STR1, because its predecessors were all designed by its sister team Red Bull Racing. Now STR’s on its own, and this is the sword it will wield for the 2010 Formula One World Championship. Like other teams, Toro Rosso designed its car around the double diffuser which it adopted after a clarification to the rules mid-season last year. Also like its competitors, the STR5 abandons the KERS regenerative braking system, but takes on a bigger fuel tank in light of the new ban on mid-race refueling.
MotoGP racing star Valentino Rossi has ventured from two wheels to four a few timesin the past, and he’s always come away smiling when given the chance to strut his stuff on a Formula One track. This latest testing session, though, has left many highly impressed and others understandably worried.
Various reports have put Yamaha’s star rider into the Ducati paddock come 2011 or so, but after registering times around the Mugello circuit in an F2008 racer that were just two-tenths of a second behind Kimi Raikkonen’s outright lap record of 1:21.67 (set in the same car, for what it’s worth), Yamaha team manager Davide Brivio said, “The greatest danger is Ferrari.
With nearly all the seats accounted for and the first group test at Valencia (scheduled for February 1) fast approaching, the time has come once again, boys and girls, for the unveiling of the 2010 F1 cars.
A couple of months ago, it looked like all the teams would get together under the auspices of the Formula One Teams Association to unveil their cars in one massive exposition concurrent with the Valencia test session, but that won’t come to fruition. Several teams are expected to debut there still, while others are doing their own thing once again. And Ferrari is first among them.
Unveiled at the team’s headquarters in Maranello, the new F10 is the chariot with which Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will be contending for the championship against other top-rated challengers from Mercedes GP, McLaren and Red Bull, to say nothing of the other ten teams on the grid. The latest Prancing Horse - whose Santander-dominated red and white livery we saw a few days ago - is the product of several months of development, as the Scuderia stopped development of last year’s car half-way through the season after realizing it was way off pace and concentrated on this year’s car instead.
You can have a look at the initial batch of photos in the gallery below, but don’t expect to see much of the rear end of the car. Ferrari kept its diffuser design - of the double design that caused controversy last year but won’t be banned until next - hidden from prying eyes for the time being. Stay tuned for the more as the teams roll out their latest.
Ferrari’s 2010 Formula One car won’t be officially revealed by the team until January 28, but a quick preview of the new car’s livery was provided by Fernando Alonso during a test at Circuit Paul Ricard. Spanish bank Santander, which followed Alonso from McLaren to Renault to Ferrari, is making the most of its time with the most famous marque in motorsports.
The Santander logo has replaced the bar code graphic that adorned the airbox and rear wing last year, the Shell logos on the front wings, and the Ferrari shields on the bodywork behind the front wheels. Combined with the new Ferrari overalls, no one will be able to forget who’s bringing the cash to the scuderia.
Madonna di Campiglio, 15 January 2010 The 20th edition of Wroom is coming to an end with the traditional race on the ice track on Madonna di Campiglios lake on the occasion of the extraordinary event organised by Philip Morris International. The Ferrari and Ducati drivers, who arrived here last Monday in the Trentino region to present the 2010 motorsport season, went onto the frozen lake for the challenge. The result of the first race, held with Fiat Panda, saw Felipe Massa ahead of the …
There are hearts breaking all over Italy, and the biggest one of all is that which beats in the chest of Ferrari head Luca de Montezemolo. Michael Schumacher is still under contract to The Prancing Horse as a global ambassador and consultant for their road cars. However, given the opportunity to return to a Formula One cockpit and prove a thing or ten, he appears keen on racing no matter the color of the car.
Neither Schumacher nor the Mercedes F1 team is revealing anything public about the German’s chances of driving, but it’s been in the press for a few weeks now. Last week, Schumacher phoned Montezemolo and told him there was a “very, very, very strong possibility” he’d end up as a driver for Mercedes. Speculation is that the final say is only waiting on Schumacher’s neck to be declared fully healed after his motorcycle accident earlier this year.
If the 41-year-old Schumy does race again with Mercedes, it will be with the company that put him on the road to becoming one of the greatest racing drivers ever. And it will come at the expense of a muy doloroso de Montezemolo, who is so torn up about Michael switching camps that he has taken to calling the former Ferrari driver “the real Michael Schumacher,” and the potential Mercedes pilot, “the new Michael Schumacher.”
From his brief tenure at McLaren, we know that Fernando Alonso has a bit of trouble getting along with his teammates. Especially when he doesn’t get the clear preferential treatment as the team’s #1 driver. After all, as has often been said, a driver’s teammate is his chief rival. So after Ferrari confirmed that Alonso and Felipe Massa would be put on equal footing, we smelled some trouble a-brewin’. But we didn’t expect it to start at least until the beginning of next season. Turns out, that was a bit premature, as some cracks in the relationship between the two teammates-to-be have already started to show.
Speaking with a group of journalists in his native Brazil where the F1 circus is preparing for this weekend’s grand prix, Felipe Massa said with “absolute certainty” that Alonso knew about the plan to have wingman Nelson Piquet crash to hand him the controversial victory. That’s a pretty hefty charge levied by his future teammate, and Ferrari naturally scrambled to issue a clarification (which you can read after the jump) but you can’t take back what’s already been said.
Massa was suitably - and vocally - upset when the Crashgate story broke, because without Alonso’s ill-earned victory, Massa would have won the championship last year, instead of losing to Lewis Hamilton by one point at the last corner of the last lap of the last race of the season. Better luck next year, gents.
