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2000 Ferrari F1-2000

Lost in the shadow of its record-breaking and record-setting successors would be the car that would bring Schumacher his third Formula One World Championship and Ferrari's first in twenty-one years. The car that would set the stage for the era of Ferrari would be the F1-2000.

While many would speculate at Michael Schumacher's decision to move to Ferrari when it was not considered with the same reverence and awe that the prancing horse had once evoked up and down the pitlane in Formula One, nobody denied his ability to pull a team together and help it become a contender. Nobody doubted that Schumacher had the drive and insatiable appetite needed to help bring Ferrari back from one of its darker periods. However, it was generally believed, given just how truly bad the team had been over the course of the previous few seasons, that it would take a few years before they would become contenders.

Then came Shumacher's first season with the team. He would go on to take a John Barnard designed 310 that certainly wouldn't win any contests for beauty and would earn three victories on the season. Though the team still was not on par with the dominant Williams-Renault, hardly anybody was expecting Schumacher to pull out a few victories.

Schumacher's ability to inspire and build a team around himself had been witnessed during his time with Benetton. And some of those same elements that led to the double World Championships would leave Benetton just to team up with Schumacher once again. One of those to defect to Ferrari from Benetton would be Ross Brawn. Brawn was well known for his abilities having been involved with the Jaguar Sports Car program back in the late '80s and early '90s and then with Benetton.

Another key defector from Benetton would come over to Ferrari a little later on in the 1996 season. The defector would be the designer Rory Byrne. Byrne would take over for Barnard and would immediately set to work designing a car capable of carrying a Ferrari driver to the World Drivers' Championship title.

Besides the many staff and mechanics, the other missing key to the equation would arrive at Ferrari about the same time as Michael, and that would be Jean Todt. Todt had successfully managed Peugeot's rally and sports car program. Brawn and Todt teaming up together at Ferrari was something interesting given the two men had been competitors in their sports car days.

The team had the driver; it had the staff. All that was needed was the car. Byrne would get to work right away designing a car that would be used in the upcoming 1997 championship season. Called the 310 'B'.

While one look at the car would make it clear that the car for the 1997 season was virtually all-new, it would be called the 310 'B' because of one simple thing. That one thing would be the fact the car would rest on the very same base as that of the 310. But that would be about the limit of the similarities between the 1996 and 1997 models.

Complete with a more powerful engine and much cleaner lines, Schumacher would challenge for the World Championship in just his second year of being with Ferrari. And although Jacques Villeneuve would go on to win the championship for Williams-Renault, for better or worse, Michael would not go down without putting up a fight. Of course, it would be for his driving into the side of Villeneuve at Jerez that Michael would be disqualified from the championship altogether. But for a person unhappy with 2nd place, losing out on the runner-up position in the championship would not be an entirely unhappy affair for the German.

After the 310B came the F300. Similar to the 310B in design, the 300 was still an all-new car given the new technical regulations for the 1998 season. Byrne's design would feature some aerodynamic approaches that would come to influence designs for years to come and would make Ferrari routinely superior to its rivals.

However, in 1998, Ferrari would find itself in a battle again, but with a new adversary. Instead of Williams-Renault, the chief competitor the team had to face throughout the season would be McLaren-Mercedes.

Schumacher would again be close to another World Championship but would lose out in the last race of the season when he made a mistake early on and then suffered a puncture about halfway through the race. This would hand the title over to Mike Hakkinen, his first World Championship.

By the time of the 1999 season those that had initially believed it would take a number of years before Ferrari would become contenders for the World Championship had become believers. The only question that really remained on their lips was, 'When?'

Byrne would try and answer that question in the last season before the new millennium. He had worked to design the F399. Well and truly an evolution of the F300, the 399 would feature a number of little innovations that were meant to carry the team to its first World Drivers' Championship in twenty years.

The season had started out rather well for Michael as he would take victories in the San Marino and Monaco Grand Prix, which were the 3rd and 4th rounds of the season. But then, over the course of the next three races, neither Michael nor Eddie Irvine would earn a victory. The legs to Michael's hopes for another World Championship would be literally taken out from under him at the next round of the season the British Grand Prix.

In that race, Schumacher would have a rear brake failure at Stowe would see him careening across the track at nearly 200 mph and slamming hard into a tire barrier breaking his leg. While the championship would be lost for Schumacher, Eddie Irvine was still very much in the mix. The battle for the championship would go down to the final race of the season, but it would be the cool, calm and collected Mika Hakkinen that would withstand the pressure from Schumacher and Irvine to score his second World Championship.

While it was obvious Ferrari had improved and were no longer something of a running joke up and down the pitlane, the team still had failed to reach its goal of a World Drivers' Championship despite the fact it had earned the Constructors Championship in '99. It appeared that McLaren-Mercedes has just enough to steal the coveted championship away just when it was within the team's reach. Therefore, Byrne, and the rest of the design staff, would set to work building a car that would put the championship out of reach for everyone except for themselves. The answer would be found with the creation of the F1-2000.

Heading into a new millennium, the car that was to be would receive a four digit identifier translating to the year in which it would race. And when it was unveiled before the start of the season there was very much that was similar to the car from the F399, but there would also be so many differences.

Center of gravity would be a major focus of Byrne's with the new car. There would be areas of the car specifically designed and arranged to lower the car's center toward the ground in an effort to increase handling and stability. Nothing would be left untouched. The calipers for the massive carbon-carbon composite disc brakes would be mounted on the bottom of the disc instead of along the side. And of course, a major component that was evolved to help with center of gravity was the engine.

The F399 had used the 048, 3-liter, V10 engine that produced around 790 hp. It was a good engine, but at only 80 degrees between the banks of the cylinders it was still a little too tall, and therefore, had a taller center of gravity that hindered the handling of the car every so slightly. But 'slightly' in Formula One can mean the difference between a championship and non at all. T

The new Tipo 049 would be redesigned to meet the needs of the team. The team would keep the V10 arrangement as it proved to have great power but was much less thirsty than a 12-cylinder engine. The designers would then take the V10 and lower it by making the angle between the banks of cylinders now 90 degrees. By having more of its mass lower to the ground, handling and stability in the car would be increased. Something else that would be increased would be the power. The horsepower in the 049 would be increased to 805 hp and could turn at over 17,000 rpm.

Besides power, handling would one of the most important aspects of any car challenging for the World Championship. And a big part of what makes up a grand prix car's handling is its suspension. In the case of the F1-2000, the team would utilize an independent front suspension with twin wishbones and a push-rod. Torsion bar springs and telescopic shock absorbers would be used, along with an anti-roll bar, to help increase stability and reduce rolling. The rear suspension would be a virtual copy of the front suspension.

Another important, and final, component that had been redesigned for the F1-2000 would be the transmission. In an effort to reduce any mass from acting like an arm and upsetting the balance and handling of the car, all major, heavy components, would be kept within the length of the wheelbase. This necessitated the designers coming up with a 7-speed electro-hydraulic that could be transverse mounted to the engine. As with all cars of the day, the 7-speed + reverse gearbox would be operated by paddles mounted to the backside of the steering wheel.

The driver would be busy in the cockpit doing more than just steering and operating the semi-automatic gearbox. The 1997 F310B would have a steering wheel arrayed with switches, dials and buttons that could control seemingly everything on the car. However, there would still be a small number of functions that would have buttons or switches mounted to the dash behind the steering wheel. This would change with the F1-2000. Everything from the pitlane limiter, radio, neutral, brake bias, mixture and other functions of the car could be achieved right from the steering wheel of the car.

Much work would go into components that were necessary to the success of the car. But the aerodynamics of the car's bodywork certainly could not be overlooked either. And this would be perhaps where most of the obvious changes from its predecessors would be most readily noticed.

Byrne would go to great lengths to design a car with improved lines that would make it even more aerodynamically efficient. Made of carbon-fiber and composite honeycomb, the monocoque body design would feature a number of beautiful contours and blended shapes that made for a certainly aesthetically pleasing design.

The nose of the F1-2000 would bear some similarities with its predecessors but there would be some obvious changes. For one thing, the nose would arc rather high in the air around the front wheels and then would sweep downward out toward the tip of the nose. This enabled larger amounts of airflow underneath the nose of the car, but the drooping of the nose toward the very tip enabled the mounting of the low front wing.

Because of the tall front nose and mounting planes for the wings, the single-keel underneath the nose around where the driver's feet would be was much more noticeable. The keel design would have to be quite large because of the arching nose and the overriding desire to keep the car's center of gravity as low as possible.

The large volume of air that passes underneath the nose of the car and underneath the front wing then comes to meet the tray and the splitter located underneath the driver's legs. This splitter deflects the air to either side of the car. Of course, the undertray of the car would help squeeze the air flowing underneath the car itself to help generate downforce via the low pressure caused by the speeding up of the air being squeezed passing under the car.

The high-arching nose helps the driver to sit well down in the cockpit between the two radiator sidepods in either side. The air is either deflected out and around the sidepods to meet the oncoming air passing along the side of the car, or, it would be directed in toward the radiator inlets. Controlling this airflow are two rather large bargeboards.

The bargeboards would further come into play as the excess air tried to spill its way out the side of the car. The shape of the bargeboard would ensure that the large volume of air passing through the narrow gap would head to the radiators, but it then would help to bend and blend the air around the side of the car. While some of the airflow would spill out to the sides of the car, boundary layer adhesion would cause a large amount to flow around the outside of the car and through the 'coke bottle' design leading toward the rear of the car.

The coke-bottle design, and the large tray filling the gap between the sidepods and the rear wheel would help maintain separation of airflow between the air passing around the side of the car and that which was passing underneath it. This would keep the airflow smooth, which would be important as it would affect stability at the rear of the car. It would also come to affect the flow of the air into the brake cooling ducts positioned to the inside of the wheel just like the front wheels.

Sitting high atop the car would be the engine's airbox, which would also act as a roll-over hoop in case the car's wheels left the ground. Small vane-like devices would be attached around the area to help smooth the greatly disturbed airflow around the area of the cockpit. Exiting out of the top of the car's sidepods would be the V10's exhaust. Right beside the exhaust openings would be small flip-ups that would help lift the airflow over the rear wheels, and thereby, help reduce the great buffeting the large spinning wheels routinely caused.

The rear wing on the F1-2000 would be rather conventional in that it had a straight main-plane and two adjustable secondary planes. The main plane would also have another secondary plane that would be positioned ahead of the more normal two secondary planes and would provide the driver, and the team, with more options for downforce levels at each and every circuit. The wing itself would attach via a lower wing plane to the gearbox. This lower plane would connect the two endplates providing stiffness and strength under the incredible loads generated by the wing. And of course, exiting out of the back of the car, would be the all-important diffuser. With a shroud around the gearbox, and diffusers between the wheels and the gearbox, large volumes of air could be sucked out from underneath the car generating a lot of downforce.

Schumacher would use the downforce, the increased power and the lower center of gravity to take the fight to McLaren-Mercedes. On much more equal footing when it came to handling; the favor seemed to tip in favor of Ferrari. However, Schumacher would not walk away with the title. And by the late-middle part of the season, things were looking rather bleak for the team. But then they came home to Monza and the Italian Grand Prix. After dominating the whole of the race, Schumacher would cruise to victory in front of the enthusiastic Tifosi and would be absolutely formidable throughout the rest of the season. Still with one race left, the F1-2000 would help Schumacher clinch his third World Drivers' Championship and the first for Ferrari in twenty-one years.

And with that, the F1-2000 would usher in the era of Ferrari dominance unlike ever witnessed before.

Sources:
'History: Singleseaters: F1-2000', (http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/History/Singleseaters/Pages/F1-2000.aspx?decade=2000). Scuderia Ferrari. http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/History/Singleseaters/Pages/F1-2000.aspx?decade=2000. Retrieved 29 December 2011.

'History: Singleseaters: F399', (http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/History/Singleseaters/Pages/F399.aspx?decade=1990). Scuderia Ferrari. http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/History/Singleseaters/Pages/F399.aspx?decade=1990. Retrieved 29 December 2011.

'History: Singleseaters: F300', (http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/History/Singleseaters/Pages/F300.aspx?decade=1990). Scuderia Ferrari. http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/History/Singleseaters/Pages/F300.aspx?decade=1990. Retrieved 29 December 2011.

By Jeremy McMullen
Ferrari introduced the F1-2000 for the 2000 season. It had been designed by Rory Byrne and followed the in the developmental progress of the F300 and F399 of the previous seasons. The design brought improved aerodynamics with few changes to the gearbox or the engine. It was driven by Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello; Schumacher captured his third World Driver's Title and provided Ferrari with a Constructors Championship. In total, the cars were driven to ten pole positions and ten race victories. Barrichello place fourth in the championship.

The ten-cylinder engine, known as the 050, was capable of producing horsepower in the 850 region. The gearbox was a seven-speed semi-automatic sequential unit operated by paddles mounted behind the steering wheel. Excellent balance was achieved by mounting the gearbox transversely on the engine.


by Daniel Vaughan | Jan 2012

2000 Ferrari F1-2000 Vehicle Profiles

2000 Ferrari F1-2000 vehicle information
Monoposto

Designer: Rory Byrne
Chassis #: 204
2000 Ferrari F1-2000 vehicle information
Monoposto

Designer: Rory Byrne
Chassis #: 198

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