Sports

FERRARI UNVEILS THE NEW SF15-T

AT LEAST TWO WINS, SAYS TEAM PRINCIPAL


SF15-T (Source: Scuderia Ferrari F1)
USPA NEWS - Ferrari has unveiled the new SF15-T car they hope will start them on the long road back to success in Formula 1. After facing their worst season in 2014, the team has undergone major management changes among senior staff.
New team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has set the target of winning "at least two races" in 2015 after none last year.
Four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel joins Kimi Raikkonen in the team as a replacement for Fernando Alonso.
"There is a lot of change going on, new people in new positions," said Vettel, ex driver for Red Bull.
"It takes time to settle in, but I am confident we are going in the right direction." He added: "It will be difficult to be right there from the beginning, but the main target is to catch up more and more as the season progresses."
Vettel has already described driving for Ferrari as a lifelong dream. "Starting the season will be something special," he said. "Everything red and it is a special colour. "It means so much, with so much history. I am really looking forward to it." Last year, Ferrari failed to win many races and managed only two podium finishes with Alonso. The new car is clearly an evolution of its predecessor and carries a strong resemblance to it in many areas, although it has more tightly packaged bodywork at the rear in search of better aerodynamics. The most obvious change is to the nose section, where the previous 'vacuum cleaner' design has been replaced by a smoother, longer nose reminiscent of that on the new McLaren. Ferrari have retained their unconventional pull-rod front suspension system, which has the suspension arm running from the top of the upright to the bottom of the chassis rather than the other way around. "Last year, we had an unacceptably large gap in our performance and we have tried to ensure the weaknesses on the 2014 car were put right," said technical director James Allison. Ferrari's car struggled in engine performance and Allison said a lot of attention had been paid in improving the power-unit, in terms of raw power, driveability and effectiveness of the energy recovery systems. Ferrari hopes to benefit from a change in regulations allowing limited in-season engine development to help them close the gap on Mercedes. Allison added: "A definite weakness of last year's car was that the amount of electrical energy we were able to recover from the turbo was not really good enough for producing competitive power levels during the race. Allison added: "A definite weakness of last year's car was that the amount of electrical energy we were able to recover from the turbo was not really good enough for producing competitive power levels during the race. "It was one of the reasons Ferrari's qualifying performance was relatively stronger than race performance last year. "We have tried to change the architecture of the engine to make it a better compromise between qualifying and racing performance."
Liability for this article lies with the author, who also holds the copyright. Editorial content from USPA may be quoted on other websites as long as the quote comprises no more than 5% of the entire text, is marked as such and the source is named (via hyperlink).