First picture: New Ferrari SF21 makes its debut on track

2021 F1 season

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Ferrari’s new car for the 2021 F1 season has run for the first time in a filming day at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Charles Leclerc drove the car, powered by Ferrari’s upgraded power unit designated 065/6, at the track where pre-season testing will begin tomorrow. He was joined at the track for a filming day by his new team mate Carlos Sainz Jnr.

Ferrari revealed the car, featuring a striking two-tone livery and bright green sponsor logo on its engine cover, yesterday. The team has paid close attention to improving both its power unit, which was the weakest in the field last year, and its integration within the SF21 chassis, which is largely the same as last year’s SF1000.

“We adopted a systematic approach, with all departments – design, simulation, development, track – working together to find every opportunity for improvement,” said the team’s head of power unit Enrico Gualtieri. “Along with our colleagues on the chassis side, we worked a lot on the layout of the power unit, to make the overall design of the car as efficient as possible.

“With the internal combustion engine, we focused on increasing its level of thermal efficiency, in conjunction with our partner Shell and this has produced an improvement in lap time that we estimate at over one tenth of a second.

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“We are also carrying out further development on the hybrid system and the electronics, in order to revise and optimise all components. All this in a season in which power unit test bench time has been reduced still further.”

The rear of the car features much tighter packaging in a big to improve its aerodynamic performance. Its gearbox and rear suspension are new.

“We also looked at the cooling system, increasing the effectiveness of the central radiator and designed the body with more ‘downwashing’,” head of chassis Enrico Cardile explained.

“Aerodynamics was one of the areas affected by the regulation changes aimed at reducing the ability to generate vertical load, in order not to put too great a strain on the tyres. That’s why, as we began developing the car’s aerodynamics, we set ourselves two goals: recovering more aerodynamic downforce than was lost through the regulations and reducing drag.”

Due to regulations restriction how much teams can change their new cars for 2021, the front of the SF21 is much the same as last year’s. However the car sports a new front wing and “a new concept nose”, said Cardile.

Ferrari will join the 10 F1 teams for the first of three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain tomorrow.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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27 comments on “First picture: New Ferrari SF21 makes its debut on track”

  1. It’s like when someone with no color sense designs their own livery for an online racing game, only Ferrari made it real.
    The burgundy and the weird number shapes don’t match the red and the regular sponsors at all in my opinion, not to mention that green clashing with it, and the matte finish doesn’t help either.

    1. I like it, its like they made all the new bits at the rear as a component painted it the wrong shade of red and then welded it on the back. It tells a story of how the 21 car is different than the 20 car

      1. …that’s why you like it?

    2. Indeed. The screaming green suits one purpose only and its marketing. People will start wandering what the ugly green logo is, google it and increase brand awareness.

      1. there’s a part of me that can’t help but admire the whole mission winnow marketing thing for the genius that it is. Here we are still talking about it, still helping the brand. I don’t buy into any of the BS they claim the company to be beyond it being a marketing gimmick, but still they found a way to get around all the international laws and get people talking about their brand so hats off to their marketing team.

      2. Yep, when I was a teenager, the Ferrari/Mclaren association definitely lent that brand something cool. I think if I was a teenager getting into smoking now, the cheekiness of this might well appeal.

    3. Tommy Scragend
      11th March 2021, 17:05

      I don’t get why people keep calling the number weird. It’s prominent and it’s clear and easy to read. That’s what numbers should be like, unlike teams who do them in silly fonts, only in outline, and put them so far up the nose that they point to the sky and can’t be seen from straight on.

      There’s lots of things wrong with this Ferrari livery, but I don’t think the number is one of them.

      1. I get that it’s supposed to be a throwback to old style liveries and racing numbers, and they want it to have a hand-painted feel, and I don’t have a problem with that idea, it could look great. But the execution of this looks very amateurish for me, and it just feels completely out of place both above the modern Shell logo on the nose, and next to the Ray-Ban’s large font on the engine cover. As you point it out it’s certainly positive that they are easy to read, although I never look for the number on a car to identify the driver, I spot them by the T-cam and the helmet, even with the halo.

    4. I agree, it looks terrible. I have a design I made in secondary school (20 years ago) of a drinks bottle design, shaded in with colouring pencils – it has the same lack of taste and poor design sense that I see right here lol.

      1. I luv chicken
        11th March 2021, 19:51

        @john-h, you should then apply to Ferrari, for their livery design dept. You
        say you suck, and this car sucks. A perfect match.

  2. I’d be more onboard with the green, if the rest of the Mission Winnow logos were ALSO green; instead it looks like a rendering error.

    1. From how they even used it already on their own website (the tobacco producer that is) it seems the green is largely there to be used as a green screen solution @inininin

      Maybe planning to put stuff on there in images they use in their marketing?

      1. I thought that maybe they also plan this to be a solution for the races and the countries where the cars/logos are not allowed to be displayed on TV – having this green screen stuff on there means that theoretically they could have them on the cars everywhere and just have either the world feed, or the local broadcaster fill them in with red in places where they still run afoul of tobacco PR bans?

        1. Hiland (@flyingferrarim)
          11th March 2021, 16:07

          @bascb that doesn’t make sense. If tobacco advertising is banned in a country, it’s not just related to TV viewership . It’s all encompassing and that includes advertising on cars, billboards, etc… physically within that country.

          1. Sure, @flyingferrarim.
            But 1. when there are only TV watchers and no physical fans there, then you are not advertising in a closed event.

            And 2. this allows blending it out easily for any territories/countries where tobacco ads are not allowed and showing it in those parts of the world where tobacco advertising (or at least this somewhat under the counter tobacco advertising like PM uses with Ferrai) CAN be shown.

          2. Hiland (@flyingferrarim)
            11th March 2021, 16:49

            @bascb Ferrari has never been allowed to use Winnow advertisements because of the relation to PM. Changing the color of logo doesn’t change that. And blending it out is not an easy task on “live tv” with fast objects moving (never mind the fact that it probably wouldn’t look good). There maybe no “fans” at the race, but people do work there and therefor are subject to said advertisements.

          3. The trick of the greenscreen seems to be that PM can easily use it to blend in somethign else. The Ferrari launch also used this already @flyingferrarim. I am sure they will try to use this to.
            With all the improvements and experiments we’ve recently seen with blending in images and even moving images during the live broadcast, can we really be so sure that the lure of some extra pocket change from a big spender like PM will not motivate F1 to have a go at this one? It could solve the issue of having to cure imagery for markets like France, for example.

            Look up at the defenition of a closed event and an event with spectators. Having a race and having marshals and other teams there does not make them spectators.

  3. The burgundy on the back contrasting with the red in the middle makes it look like a bad sunburn haha.

    1. @wsrgo More like the past is catching up with them. (like the Alesi-Berger doldrums)

  4. It’s clearly the ray-ban shade :)

  5. The back end looks like its been dipped in BBQ sauce.

    1. @theydidtheirbest It looks like there’s a shadow on the back end of the car. Hopefully it’s not the shadow of disappointment from 2020 carrying across to this car.

  6. Alvester Garnett
    11th March 2021, 18:55

    It’s still looks boxy on the nose section. It seems even boxier than last year.

  7. So the goals are to increase power, increase downforce, and reduce drag… revolutionary insight.

  8. Pedro Andrade
    11th March 2021, 19:16

    This is the worst Ferrari livery I can remember. The transition between the two reds is not very well done, the green is jarring, and the sponsors themselves make the overall look confusing.

  9. In action looks great to me :)

  10. Montréalais (@)
    12th March 2021, 3:52

    I apologize to everyone: my 2-year old drew the livery and I left it lying on the coffee table. It got put into the post in the wrong envelope and sent to the wrong people. It’s all my fault!
    By the way, the neon green was a mistake on Little Johnnie’s part. He told me he wanted to use the red crayon, but the cat ate it.

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