Category: Motor Racing

Scuderia Ferrari unveiled their 2016 challenger, the SF16-H, with an online launch and hopes that this racing car can fight the Silver Arrows for the Formula 1 championship.

A retro livery sports the new Ferrari, last seen on the 1993 car. The white stripes appear on the engine cover and front wing.

In terms of the aerodynamics, the SF16-H features a shorter nose compared to last year’s car, while the engine cover appears to be tighter and slimmer.

Meaning the team has worked heavily on engine cooling over the winter period in a bid to make it more aerodynamically efficient.

When questioned about the car’s prospects, team principal Maurizio Arrivabene said: “Normally I am not setting the objectives, my boss sets the objective for the team.

“I think this year, we need to push a bit more. We would like to fight until the end for the championship.

“I know that is not going to be easy, because our competitors are not sleeping, but we are committed to do our best.”

After scoring three victories with Sebastian Vettel last season, Ferrari will be looking to push Mercedes even further this season.

The team made considerable gains with its power unit in 2015 that allowed it to step out of the shadows of its winless campaign in 2014.

But come the conclusion to the season, Vettel still finished 103 points behind Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ standings, with Mercedes 275 points clear of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship.

That underlined the gap Ferrari still has to bridge to Mercedes this year if it is to consider itself a realistic title contender.

Assessing Ferrari’s challenge for the year ahead, technical director James Allison said: “Back in 2013, Ferrari was not at the right level, the championship, except for maybe doing pitstops.

“We’ve worked very hard on all of those areas. Last year was a decent step forward and we hope this car will be another good step forward to make us properly competitive.

“We have improved across the board. All our hopes are in this car, and we can’t wait to see it on the track.”

I look forward to seeing the SF16-H on track too. The retro livery seems cool, similar to the style of the 1970s but the huge Scuderia Ferrari logo seems to ruining the scheme.

Although I do like Kimi Raikkonen’s new red helmet. Fingers crossed The Iceman can join Sebastian Vettel’s success by winning some races this season.

This is the new FW38 that will compete in this year’s Formula 1 world championship. The team believes it will be “a challenge” as it retains its position as the best of the rest behind Mercedes and Ferrari.

The iconic blue, red and white stripes of the Martini Racing colours once again appear on the car.

It seems to be an evolution on last year’s car, but hopefully the Mercedes-powered FW38 will have better performance.

Despite finishing third in the constructors’ championship in 2014 and 2015, Sir Frank Williams knows it will be a tall order to repeat this performance.

“Williams has started to cement our position back amongst the front-running teams after finishing third in the championship in the past two seasons,” he said.

“This has been a great achievement given the resources of those around us.

“Staying where we are will be a challenge in itself, but we are determined to keep improving because only winning will ever be good enough.

“We have a very stable team going into 2016, with Felipe and Valtteri teaming up for a third successive season.

“They work well together and both have the ideal blend of speed and consistency.

“Our technical team has also remained very consistent which will be to our advantage and we have some of the best engineering minds on the grid at our disposal.

“We have a busy couple of weeks of testing coming up to learn more about our package and to refine the car ahead of the first race.

“We will have to wait until Melbourne to find out exactly where we stand in the pecking order, but I’m confident that our hard work over the winter will stand us in good stead.”

Red Bull Racing have unveiled their colour scheme for the upcoming Formula 1 season at an event in London.

The new livery retains the team’s traditional colours of blue, yellow and red, but with a matt finish.

Gone is the title sponsor Infiniti, with TAG-Heuer branding the outfit’s Renault engines.

Daniel Ricciardo has described the revised bold look as “pretty funky” and will shakedown the RB12 during pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Team boss Christian Horner has commented that this new, reworked colour scheme is to be more exciting compared to the previous seasons.

“We decided that with a clean sheet of paper to go with something a bit more innovative, aggressive, that will stand out in the crowd and stand out in a few more drivers’ mirrors,” said Horner.

“It looks right and things that tend to look right, go right.”

Red Bull’s new chassis was not on display at the livery launch. The Milton Keynes-based outfit will reveal the RB12 in the pitlane come the first day of testing.

UPDATE: This is the definitive 2016-spec Formula 1 racing car from Red Bull. The RB12 powered by Renault and yet branded as TAG-Heuer, thanks to a new partnership deal with the Swiss watch manufacturer.

The bold paint job – with the matt finish texture – does make the RB12 look slick and stylish.

Red Bull Racing’s head of aerodynamics Dan Fallows said “the numbers from the CFD and wind tunnel are pretty encouraging” for the team’s new car.

“Certainly I’ve been incredibly surprised that we’ve been able to get so much out of this set of regulations, which has been fairly stable. It’s a function of everybody understanding the car we had last year but also I think identifying the problems that we had and really focussing on those. I think we’ve made some fairly big steps forward.”

Hopefully the step in aerodynamics will aid the performance of the car and team. Best of luck to the upcoming season.