And why the F2013 can beat the RB9
After a title once more slipped through our fingers, it's time to rebuild our confidence and prepare for war once more, in Alonso and Massa we have our warriors, in the F2013 we have our lethal weapon, and in Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Stefano Domenicali, Pat Fry, Nicolas Tombazis and Neil Martin, we have our General and his loyal Lieutenants.
We can do this, forza ragazzi!
What point on the performance curve are the 2013 single-seaters? We’ll soon see if history has a lesson for us all.
Let’s look at just one example: when we were kids, we all made paper aeroplanes. When you throw them, they start off slow and then gather speed, balance in flight, before eventually floating back to earth again.
It’s a bit like that with racing cars. They are born, go through a shakedown period, grow and develop. They stay competitive for a few years, then their performance gradually wanes and they make their exit from the scene.
Look back at the days of the 312 T, driven by Lauda and Scheckter, from the hand of Mauro Forghieri and you’ll see what I mean. When that car got past its early stages, it was so fast it was unbeatable and dominated the second half of the seventies.
The same thing happened during the Schumacher era with Rory Byrne’s single-seaters which went all the way from ’98-’99 to Räikkönen’s world title.
Beautiful curves that gradually petered downwards, as happened to the unbeatable McLarens after Senna, or the post Schumacher Benetton period, it happened to Williams after Newey, and again to McLaren after Hakkinen.
Cycles that remained succesful, with ups and downs, untill key employees left or after they drastically changed the rules of the game.
How many years do the Newey creations and/or Vettel dominate the scene? Probably since 2009, but how long can you stay on top, how long can their cycle last?
I'd like to think, they're running out of options, the margins to be found by Newey are getting smaller and we are breathing down his neck.
The F2012, which made its debut in late January, proved in the course of the just-finished season that it had potential but had not yet reached its peak, and is practically in her second year of life, but she has the DNA to do the same as the Forghieri and Byrne cars.
The big hope now is that it will develop as successfully as we are all expecting, not forgetting that our closest competitors may well find themselves at that point in the curve where it begins to slope downwards…
Avanti Fer, Avanti!!
Put together from articles in Derapate.it and Ferrari magazine.
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