Ferrari F70 Render!

Nope. The 24 course in 2011 was different than the 24 course in 2012. Comparing 2011 24 times with 2012 24 times is therefore silly. Our 6:51 is apples to apples with the Enzo's and 599xx quoted "Ring" times of 7:25 and 6:58. This year the 458's were very slow and didn't enter the 24. Hopefully they'll show up next year and if we do our further modified car will be happy to accommodate them. The point remains. The Enzo is a street car. It was engineered in 2001. The new Enzo will be vastly superior but it still will be a road car. The odds of it ever racing anywhere are slim. The last Ferrari Supercar to race was the F40. Ferrari Supercars are no longer platforms for race cars. The 458 is the new Enzo won't be.

 

I agree with everything said....

I just like to correct some misunderstandings. in 2012 there were no 458 GTE raced around the ring at alll, they were not slower, they did not race....the only 458 that did race were the gt3 version, which are both slower, and less reliable then the Le Mans wining 458 GTE.. don't mix apples and oranges..

when it did race in 2011 it was amongst,If not the fastest car out there, and quite a few seconds faster then the p4/5....in 2012 it didn't race, but comparing it to the Porsche gt3 RSR 2012 is feasible. as the Ferrari is much quicker then the porsche, and the porsche was quicker than the p4/5 comp...

 

Bench race on but the fact remains no Ferrari's showed up to race and frankly I doubt they will next year.

 

Unfortunately, that seems to be a fact. Unless Af corse surprises us all, and entrees. but with the Le Mans and the FIA WEC, it seems risking a car or two at the Ring as a little bit to much of a risk, with little payoff as compared to Le Mans...

 

I have never looked at it this way, but you are right. It is indeed strange, to say the least, that a 'super' Ferrari is not meant to be raced, and it is a abomination that this particular car is called the 'Enzo'. Surely the old man would not be interested at all in a car that is exclusively built for the road.

 

And then there is of course the 550 GTS (Le Mans GT-winner in 2003) and the 575 GTC. Ferrari probably feels they have better platforms for competition ues in their GT-cruisers then in their supercars. In fact, the F40 is the only 'super' Ferrari to have been put into competition. I also have no idea in what class a super Ferrari could be entered. There is no longer something like the BPR series. Today, it is WEC and the big one is of course still Le Mans and that have Ferrari pretty well covered with the 458 (where as F40 and 333 SP were really out of their depth). I only want to see them win at Sebring, but with Risi out, chances are slim, allthough AF Corse came close to snatching that one up as well.

So with a market demanding a super Ferrari and in reality no categories in which it could be competitivly raced against a reasonable return on investment (Ferrari and / or related companies will never develop a competitioncar just for the fun of it) you end up with a supercar that will never gain any racing pedigree. Sad, but unavoidable me thinks.

 

Ditto.

 

Maybe he would've liked the MC12 better?

That would be assuming he liked the idea that Ferrari owned Maserati...

 

I doubt that The Old Man would have built a Super Car that was so wide that it wasn't race legal at Le Mans.

Different Times.

Different Company.

 

Absolutely...

 

This car had the original body of what is now Ferrari P4/5 no? I find it fascinating that they used an Enzo for a record attempt at Bonneville. I have commissioned a model of this particular car.

 

When the Enzo came out, I thought it was ugly. I looked for the "form follows function" in it, but didn't see it. I saw one in person and immediately thought it was one of the most beautiful cars I'd seen.

If you talk of "better design" I think you have to test it against the wind or on track. If you talk about aesthetics, you only have to look at it and form an opinion.

Track cars, by their very nature, all take cues and clues from prior cars. There is nothing wrong with that.

 

Racing a car really helps with it's development. We learned something every time we took P 4/5 C out which resulted in many changes and a faster better car. That process is continuing and we were out testing today. If we continue racing we'll be a lot faster than we were and the car will be better than it was. This is one thing that is lost when cars are developed without racing and Classic Ferrari's were made better and better because of what was learned from racing. It's a bit sad to me that the Enzo couldn't even finish one lap of "The Ring" without overheating it's shocks. In 1967 a bone stock 275 GTB finished 1 in class at The Ring. Those days are gone forever but IMO if Ferrari raced their Super Cars they would learn a lot that would make them better, faster and lighter. For example by analysing our race data and re engineering accordingly we think we can take 20 KG out of our KERS system and have a system that will give us faster lap times. Without 24 Hours of Data we couldn't possibly do that.

 

The track time is essential. One of my clients was an F-1 driver, and I went with him to Silverstone in 1999 during testing. It was as if I had stepped into NASA. Three laps, come in, plug a few laptops to the car. Back out for 10 laps. Come in, check brake and tire temperature and look at some little stress gauges on the aero package. Back out for 5 laps. And on and on. At the end of the session with all the tweaks in place, it was 25 laps with the culmination of the days' work.

I know Ferrari has not taken the super cars to track (other than their own track). But is this any different than the other supercars? Would the shocks or brakes or some other system in the the Veyron, Pagani, Aventador or One77 hold up to a full lap around the Ring?

 

Pagani does a lot of testing at The Ring and Pirelli uses them to develop tires. They would hold up very well but the others less so. Audi which owns Lambo, Porsche, MB, Aston, and VW all race and develop at The Ring but an Aventador's brakes wouldn't last very long there.

Using The Ring to Develop road cars is a lot different than using Ferrari's track and IMO that's why Porsche's are so strong. A road legal Porcshe would last a lot longer at The Ring than a road legal Ferrari.

 

"The track time is essential. One of my clients was an F-1 driver, and I went with him to Silverstone in 1999 during testing. It was as if I had stepped into NASA. Three laps, come in, plug a few laptops to the car. Back out for 10 laps. Come in, check brake and tire temperature and look at some little stress gauges on the aero package. Back out for 5 laps. And on and on. At the end of the session with all the tweaks in place, it was 25 laps with the culmination of the days' work."


Things have come a long way. This is how we test our little club/"pro" formula cars, strain gauges and all. Number of laps isn't important, it's quality. A driver who knows what he's doing doesn't need many laps to give feedback, and much of the feedback comes from the data.

Technology really has trickled down. Amazing stuff.

 

I´ve never liked the Enzo and it looks like the new car will be quite similar (at least the windscreen and side windows of the mule look quite similar) so I´m not holding my breath regarding looks. I just hope they don´t follow the retro-crap trend, really boring.

But if they manage to build it very light as they promised and the hybrid stuff delivers, it will be a very interesting car.

And forget about the race tracks. Rules are rules, and the rules right now say that only "cheap" cars can race. No carbon fiber or big engines. Back in the day, they could have made a race version of the Enzo, but they made a Maserati instead. Ferraris were selling well but Maseratis weren´t, so business is business I suppose.

 

Carbon Fiber McLaren Sports Cars are allowed to race and LMP1's are Carbon fiber. Big engines are allowed but because of poor fuel consumption they're not competitive. We investigated building P 4/5 C on 333 SP but the V 12 wasn't fuel efficient enough. The Carbon Fiber Tub would have been accepted by the race organizers.

 

Yep, I forgot that they now allow to race the McLaren; although quite watered down. An Enzo-like car would have to race incredibly watered down! Maybe so watered down that a "cheap" McLaren or a Ferrari 458 wouldn´t be too far, so it could end being a marketing disaster.

LMPs? I thought we were talking about road cars. I suppose someone could make it road legal like they did with the old Toyota GT-One et alter, although it would be a less than optimal road car probably.

 

No my point about LMP 1's was simply that CF Tubs are allowed not that you could make a road legal one anymore.

The New Enzo will never race anywhere.

 

I feel the same way you do. I remember going to Ferrari's website when they launched the Enzo. OMG I thought it was hideous. But I've seen several Enzo's in person. It's so outrageous, and alien looking. Its beautiful in its own right, you can't stop looking at it because it looks different from every angle. Me personally I think its going to age well because nothing else looks like it.

 

The black Enzo is the best I have seen.

 

Have you considered a run without restrictions or ballast (if only for a little PR)?

It would be very interesting to see the difference. Of course, I'm not writing the checks here..

 

It's going to age very well. When I was coming up with my own F70 rendering I took a good look at the Enzo again and was amazed at the varied forms within that one design.

I had just been used to seeing it so often (in person and in pics) that my eyes started glossing over the details. It's going to be a hard act to follow.

 

If Ferrari breaks our record we'll respond.