Evo mali tekst o Projektu 668 ilitiga SF70 iz 2017. od već spomenutog Alberta Antoninija bivšeg Ferrarijevog šefa PR-a koji je otišao prošle godine skupa sa MA.
Spominje kako su u Maranellu bili nervozni kada su čuli prije početka sezone da Mercedes ima ogroman međuosovinski razmak dok je SF70 bio jako kratak, kako nije imao super moderan ovjes kao Mercedes ili RBR ili mat boju itd.
Isto tako spominje i nesretni Singapur i kako je Kimi sasvim slučajno startao u prvoj umjesto u planiranoj drugoj brzini i kako je dobio onakav start i kako je sve ostalo povijest. Uglavnom kaže da je to bio bolid "s dušom" nakon očajne 2016 i potpuno krivim bolidom...
Spomenuo je i onaj motor koji je trebao debitirati u drugom dijelu sezone koji je koštao Sassija glave nakon što je motor bio nepouzdan.
Formula One grows old soon. After a year you are just a project to improve, after two a 'historic' one, good for a street demonstration or for a customer's garage. This, today, is the fate of the SF70H, the Ferrari of the seventy-year anniversary of the company's foundation, known in the factory as a 668 project.
Now rightly someone will say: ale, we lost it completely. What does 668 have to do with it? Tell us about the 670, aka SF90, and its problems. And instead, if you have the patience to read to the end, you will understand the reasons.
First of all I love that car, how you love a person who first takes you to heaven and then crumbles your heart. (And here I hope that whoever I say will not read these lines, if not crumble the skullcap). We came from the Great Depression of 2016, a year without victories, often without even going near it. We came from a machine, the SF16H, which suffered terribly from yaw instability (for non-engineers like me: when you steered, changed behavior), which broke everything, especially the gearbox and gear (for non-engineers: gears) and for this took the place of James Allison, now happily married in Mercedes.
2017 presented an opportunity and a nightmare: the opportunity to turn the page, with the more radical change of regulations from the advent of hybrids, wide tires and more efficient aerodynamics; and the nightmare that someone, this page, turned it before and better. Sergio Marchionne, who rested in peace, had his own method: if you learned to walk on water, he asked you to run. Thus, when the engineers presented him with a performance increase of three and a half seconds per lap, he demanded eight. At the end of winter development, an honorable compromise was reached, I would say over five seconds.
I remember the first radio commentary by Sebastian Vettel, the day of the launch, in a leaded and leaded Fiorano. " There's so much load, we'll have fun ." I also remember having listened to headphones in Barcelona, thanks to Kimi Raikkonen's thanks to the team: " You gave me a machine to fight for the world championship ". With that single-seater, Sebastian won the first race, in Melbourne, with a great merit of the wall at that time and of the tire strategy. He came second in China, a little penalized by the weather, and still first in Bahrain.
The six-six-eight was not perfect. He was born with a relatively wheelbase and I remember that there was a bit of unease in Maranello when it was discovered that instead Mercedes was building a bus. Then the coldness prevailed of not changing anything, of trusting what was conceived and realized, also because it was quite late by now. In short, having a short car means being able to count on greater downforce but paying in terms of resistance. He could never have won at Monza and in fact did not win, with the famous turning of the President's balls. But on some tracks there was none for anyone, and to this day, after a season and a seventh, it remains the last Ferrari capable of producing not one but two doublets in the championship.
Then the problems began. Those on the track, with the Singapore mess. It started to rain before we left, we were all a little nervous. The pilots should have started in second, as is done with the slimy asphalt. Kimi forgot it, he put the first gear and - mysteries of physics applied to Formula One - snapped like a rocket, while on the right Seb tried to keep his head and in the center Verstappen tried to conquer it. Moral, there were three of them in a bend where you don't pass in two. The rest is history.
But the 668 was good regardless, and not only on slow circuits. In Malaysia Vettel, penalized, started from the bottom and climbed up to touch the podium. In Japan, frozen by the radio announcement of the candle problem before the start, we saw him fight in the first corners with the engine going at five cylinders. The reliability problems on the track are not the whole story: that car should have, at the end of the season, mounted a supermotor that remained on paper (it still remains) and this, everyone knows, cost the place to poor Lorenzo Sassi, now happily married in Mercedes too.
It was a car with a soul. He didn't have the Mercedes long wheelbase, the Mercedes hydraulic suspension, he didn't have the opaque Red Bull livery and he still didn't have that arghebio (for those coming from outside Imola: ugliness) to protect the passenger compartment. I know, security first and foremost, but Halo just isn't beautiful. Bella instead was the 668, so low and flattened and with that long dorsal fin. Simone Resta had also worked there as chief designer, now more or less happily married in Alfa Romeo. And at this point, perhaps, someone will have understood the reason for this piece. The quality of people is not discussed, on the quantity one can begin to reckon ...
https://www.formulapassion.it/manifesto ... 31757.html
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