Ferrari SF1000 launch, 2020

Ferrari name their 2021 Formula 1 car ‘SF21’ and reveal launch plans

2020 F1 season

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Ferrari has chosen the name for the car they will compete with in the 2021 F1 season.

Team principal Mattia Binotto confirmed the successor to this year’s SF1000 will be known as the SF21.

Next year’s car will be closely based on Ferrari’s 2020 chassis due to new rules limiting how far teams can change their designs. These regulations were introduced after plans to overhaul the technical rules in 2021 were postponed by a year as a cost-cutting measure due to the pandemic.

Binotto said the team had chosen “a very simple name” for the car “because we believe that next year is a transition to 2022, so let’s keep ‘SF21’ the name.

“It will be certainly partially a frozen car, the same chassis from 2020. That’s the way it is.”

The car will be driven by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr, the team’s new hiring from McLaren, who made his first official appearance as a Ferrari driver before the media today.

“It’s the youngest line-up of Scuderia Ferrari since 1968,” said Binotto of the team’s drivers. “But I know as well that we’ve got two drivers [who are] very young but very talented, and also with already some experience. Carlos is not in the first year [with] an F1 team at the moment.”

Ferrari is planning separate launch events for its team and its car. The SF21 will not appear until pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.

“We will organise differently the unveiling of the car next year,” said Binotto. “We will organise at first an event where we will present the team, our drivers, to our fans, to our partners, to yourself, journalists.”

“So while I think very early we may present our team and the drivers we may organise a second event, that could be directly at Barcelona, winter testing, where we may unveil the car and that will be done in a different way,” he added.

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14 comments on “Ferrari name their 2021 Formula 1 car ‘SF21’ and reveal launch plans”

  1. Happy birthday SF21 from H67

  2. Always first to the press even if they don’t win anything out of it.
    Look at RB, almost always last, no time wasted.
    I can only wonder what teams going to pull out on the chassis side. if any team is late-ish to Catalunya then they are up to no good. Generally aero, front and rear wings are the last bits to get made, now with the same chassis teams should have all aero bits ready for winter testing. Crash testing merc style noses seem to be a challenge, that said last winter, Renault and RB managed (RP does not count)

    1. Look at RB, almost always last, no time wasted

      Unless for parties though :)

  3. Most 2021 cars will be similar to 2020 cars so any big changes in performance both good and bad should follow the 2021 chassis. Little bits of changes. But the biggest changes will come from the results of new drivers in existing teams. Will Carlos be better in the Ferrari than Seb was? Only overall team improvements will make that become a regular event within the team. I think Seb will suddenly be in the hunt every race. Nothing appears to impact Mercedes. Expect another title for Lewis and the team. But the most interesting change is Perez at RedBull and the potential for TWO challengers now out of that camp. Teams seem to be better for their driver changes. Much stronger One-twos in 2021. Assuming next year will also repeat the need for events being cancelled or altered in some fashion as to race dates and event locations. Seems that Covid is worse world wide today. How is it possible to expect a normal season? About 75 days away? Very unlikely the return to a normal Formula One weekend so soon. Problems tonight will vaccine numbers already have begun to impact our regular daily lives.
    Fans will come back in mass but only after improvements begin. Might impact us still for 6-8 months if the vaccines works. So retuning to F1 in March as it normally functions is sadly not going to happen as hoped. Continued operations by isolation will have to happen and limited numbers of risk seeking fans will attend. I wish I could just wake up from this awful M.F. nightmare. I just want to get jacked up again as the new season and I’m eagerly waiting to lay my eyes onto new machines.
    Go Sergio.

  4. Aren’t they all b-spec cars anyway?

  5. They should keep the same name, so that they can continue to lament only one car, rather than having two successive dogs!

    1. Ouch, I’m feeling that burn!

  6. Its weird people still going on about Sainz being young. He’s 26 with 6 years in F1. I’m pretty sure he’ll be in the older half of the grid next year!

    Meanwhile if a driver in F2 is over 23, they’re told that they’re too old.

    1. he has 5 years in f1, and half of the grid is over his age(which is why he is considered young), and in f2 a 23 year old driver its considered old because they try and support the young talent to move on into f1, so if they have been around for three years doing nothing they are obviously not going to have a chance in f1 anymore.

  7. Mark in Florida
    20th December 2020, 14:44

    I feel bad for Leclerc and Sainz next year. These two drivers have talent but no car worthy of showing it. SF 21 ? Scuderia Failure 21 is what I think they’ll have to drive. With the current freeze on development Ferrari won’t be able to do enough to make this car significantly better. Hopefully their 22 car will do everything their drivers need to succeed.

  8. Why does Ferrari feel they have to invent a whole new numbering system every year.?
    It may not be every year, but it certainly feels like it. Other teams seem to pick a designation and just increment by one every year. Simple, easy to comprehend but definitely not Italian in nature.
    Recall the F150 and the dust-up with Ford over that. Hilarious.

    1. @rekibsn with the exception of the 2006 F248, every other car was, fairly logically, named after the year it was produced (F1-2000, F-2001 and so on). However, from 2009 Ferrari has changed the designation almost every single year:

      2009: F60
      2010: F10
      2011: F150th Italia (after renaming it from the F150)
      2012: F2012
      2013: F138
      2014: F14 T
      2015: SF15-T
      2016: SF16-H
      2017: SF70H
      2018: SF71H
      2019: SF90
      2020: SF1000
      2021: SF21

      The only cars during that period where there was just an increment in the chassis numbering system was from the 2017 SF70H to the 2018 SF71H (albeit noting that the changes from 2014 through to 2016 were comparatively small).

      Of course, to add to the confusion, the public chassis designation that is given to the car itself is different to the internal project code that Ferrari uses for their cars – it’s why the official name of the 2020 car was the SF1000, but the car also carried the designation “Project 671”.

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