LONDON: Formula 1 giants Scuderia Ferrari will be aiming to go one step further from their best performance in the turbo-hybrid era in the 2018 season in which they finished second, with the ‘SF90’ car it launched at its test track in Italy’s Fiorano on Friday.
Ferrari will also be having a new team principal this season in Mattia Binotto, who will be managing its new driver line-up of Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc. Leclerc is set to become the youngest driver to race for Ferrari since Ricardo Rodriguez, off the back of a stellar rookie season with Sauber, which saw him earn the nod to replace stalwart Kimi Raikkonen for 2019.
“Starting in 2018, we got really good achievements,” Binotto said at the launch.
“This car is a development of last year’s car, it’s not a revolution. We’ve tried to push the bar, try to be some extreme as we could. Some changes like the front wing for the regulations. If you look at the details, we’ve tried to push hard, be innovative. If you look at the bodywork at the back, it’s very slim. It’s thanks to the entire job we’ve done. A lot of effort has been done. We like it.”
“We’re all excited,” added Vettel.
“You start to see the car, little bits of it at the end of last year and then you see it come together but today is the first time you see it. I’m very excited – it’s incredible to see when everything gets together. Now I’m excited, I can’t wait to get in.”
The team will head for its winter testing session in Barcelona, Spain starting Monday which is a month before the championship season begins in Melbourne.
