Ferrari F70 Render!

In an ongoing program designed to reduce weight, Ferrari will be introducing creative new uses of carbon fiber. Not only will wheel rims be constructed entirely of carbon fiber shedding precious pounds but Ferrari is considering a special medical program of replacing various limbs and organs of lucky well-heeled owners with carbon fiber replacements.

Testing at the famous Fiorano test lap has already revealed several tenths quicker lap times with drivers who have a carbon fiber leg and hip!

Just kidding.

 

Why are magazines claiming this car will be AWD. Wouldn't Enzo literally get up out of his grave and come after Luca if this car were to be AWD? I thought that 2 rules for Ferrari were to NEVER have 4 doors and to NEVER use awd on a mid engine or gt car.

The FF is totally different & aimed after a different crowd.

 

I never thought I would see an "Automatic" Ferrari either, but such is life.

You either embrace the advancement of technology or get left behind. The F70 is supposed to be Ferrari's swansong, a car that showcases all of the knowledge gained from all their years of racing, just as the Enzo, F50, F40, and 288 GTO before it were.

If F1 allowed all wheel drive, the teams would add them to the cars in a heartbeat.

Does it make for a better driving experience? Everyone has their own personal taste and opinion about what makes a better sports car. You either like it or you don't. You can't please everyone.

If a person wants a rear-wheel drive sports car with a manual transmission (just using that as an example) there are plenty of other options out there.

 

4WD has been tested in F1 and has failed miserably! RWD cars are much quicker in the dry and most races are under dry conditions.

Also, Ferrari's sports cars are RWD! Do not count the FF in; that is just an abomination. A Ferrari for the rich and famous that want to go to their chalet and are tired of their Rangies.

 

All wheel drive hasn't been done in F1 for over 40 years!

The last F1 car with all wheel drive that I am aware of was the Lotus 56B that was done back in 1971.

Williams made the experimental FW07D back in 1981, but that was a six-wheeled car with only the rear 4 wheels being driven, not a true all wheel drive layout.

When you are trying to put down serious amounts of horsepower, having all wheel drive will almost always be an advantage, even in the dry. Only when you start getting to high speeds (well above 100 MPH) does the advantage of having all wheel drive traction start to fade away.

Now which layout makes for a better sports car is again a matter of taste. I myself prefer the rear drive layout. But having more traction will almost always be an advantage, especially on a street-driven car.

 

Swansong?, so you are predicting that Ferrari are about to go out of business then!:

(From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_song )

Swan song

"Swan song" is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) is completely silent during its lifetime until the moment just before death, when it sings one beautiful song. The belief, now known to be incorrect, had become proverbial in Ancient Greece by the 3rd century BC, and was reiterated many times in later Western poetry and art.




4WD in F1 has been covered nicely in a previous post, the information of which I fully concur with!

I will add that 4WD was brought into the BTCC series a few years (/decades!) back. Due to it's domination in all track conditions it was promptly banned shortly afterwards.

Trust Me on this, if the F1 engineers were allowed to develop 4WD cars to race, nobody would even try to enter a RWD car again because they'd be annihilated in races!

 

I guess I didn't fully realize what the saying meant. But Ferrari will put it's highest and most up-to-date technology into this car, and it likely won't make another road car like it for another 10 years. So maybe in that limited scope it could be considered a swan song? LOL

Thank you!

 

For many years Ferrari fans express how they are disgusted about 4WD technology and now suddenly four-wheel drive F70 will become great idea?

 

In a car with (relatively) modest HP, I wouldn't want all-wheel-drive.

If I'm trying to get 800+ HP to hook up on the street with street tires, hell yeah I want AWD.

I used to have a 2008 Corvette that was making 517 HP at the wheels which is almost 600 at the flywheel. I could spin the rear tires on the highway in 3rd gear (almost 90 MPH). It was fun, but having AWD would have made the car much faster overall, not to mention safer.

Remember, traction on a racetrack with "real" race rubber (and I don't mean the Hoosier slicks you can buy from Tire Rack), is much different than what's available on the street with street tires.

 

So you agree that Audi and Lambo go in the good direction with AWD? Why so many people here for years criticized Lamborghini for build AWD cars?

 

The FF uses intermittent front wheel drive (Patented as 'Insertable', like movable keys in the shafts to the driven wheels).

The FF system is an engineering feature of the car, having been fine-trimmed in it's construction to weigh in at 12 kilo's less than a full-time sys.

I.e. adding lightness to a degrees of a key positioned 'extra weight' removed through design and thorough testing, of 12 kilo's, circa 1\2 % of the total vehichel mass/linear weight.

 

After seeing the R&T pics, I must admit to total surrender and commitment !!!

Totally DICE !!!!.

a 20-50 car charity formula racing series could lift 'image' of such extreme wealth sporting/engineering equipment.

ciao.

Sòren.

 

There is no right or wrong when it comes to AWD vs RWD. Most of the time it simply comes down to a matter or personal taste.

HOWEVER

As we continue to reach higher and higher levels of power in street driven cars, you eventually reach a limit to how much traction you can get from 2 wheels. You have 2 choices to increase traction:

1) Put a stickier tire like a drag-radial on the car to increase grip. This has many drawbacks such as decreased tire life, can't use it in the wet, not the ideal tire for taking corners, etc...

2) Move from two-wheel-drive to all-wheel-drive. You can essentially double (more or less) your traction without any of the negatives mentioned above. The drawbacks are that you have increased weight and complexity of an AWD system.

Modern AWD systems are quite good, as evidenced by what Nissan, Lamborghini, Porsche and others have been able to accomplish. Unless you're doing donuts or trying to purposely slide the tail out while driving, I doubt you would even notice that you were driving an AWD car. And honestly, how often do we slide our cars around on the street?

Bugatti realized from the beginning that if they were going to have any hope of making a 1000 (and ultimately 1200) HP car even remotely driveable for the average person on the street, they were going to have to use AWD.

Here in the Dallas area, there are many modified 1000+ HP RWD cars running around on the street. But they are pretty much useless below 80-100 MPH. When they race, they do rolling starts usually around 80 MPH, otherwise they will spend most of the time just spinning their wheels without any traction.

Guys with AWD twin-turbo Lambos and GTR's on the other hand, usually can drive their cars just like they did before. Get in, floor the throttle, and hang on. The AWD systems give them enough traction to drive the same way they did when the cars were stock, even through they now have double the power.


Again, there is no right or wrong answer, but putting down high amounts of power through 2 wheels on the street can be a tricky thing. 850+ HP is a whole different animal compared to 500 and even 600 HP.

I'm not knocking either setup or what people prefer. It's just a matter of physics.

EDIT:

There is a 3rd option for handling high HP that many automakers already use, and that is to program the car's ECU to not allow full throttle in the first couple of gears and/or use traction/launch control to limit wheel spin. Many modern cars with electronic throttles do not directly translate what your foot does to what the throttle plate does. This way they can reduce low-end torque to limit the possibility of wheel spin.

 

It is difficult to be critical of a heavy 4WD heavy Lamborghini Aventador that will go from zero to sixty miles per hour in 2.9 seconds...

Ferrari hired a French rallye guy to sort out the 4WD FF for them. Maybe the French guy likes Italian cooking. So he figured out a way to get some more work at Ferrari Engineering and more Italian cooking with another 4WD project...
CH

 

If this HP war continues, sooner or later all sports cars will be AWD. In 20 years there will be +1500hp around there, and I doubt that tyre technology will be able to keep the pace.

There is a better, although not so marketable, solution to this problem: less weight. The Caparo T1 has better power to weight ratio than a Veyron, but of course, I suppose that not everybody could live with a Caparo. And the max. speed figure does not provide any braggin´ rights to the buyer.

 

As has been said before, I would think any mention of a 4WD system on the F70 would be reference to the front wheels receiving power from the much anticipated KERS-type system.

 

KERS would supply at most, 200HP. I would think that the gearing that is required to have 200HP keeping up with 800 HP at the rear wheels would be so heavy and so complex that it would not overcome the KERS boost.

The way to use KERS to enhance speed or torque is to apply it to the driven wheels. (I am no engineer, so this may be off base, but it is intuitive.)

 

Audi is doing that in Le Mans and Porsche is following the same route with their 918, so I suppose that it has some benefits.

Although the Porsche is going to be quite heavy.

 

It will be interesting to follow this thread when Ferrari announces that the new car car will be RWD.

 

I'm going to guess the lightweight version will be RWD and the luxury version AWD.

 

Why?

No one is saying that the F70 will be a 4WD car, the reality is that it is very unlikely to be 4WD, we're simply discussing the possibility of future Ferrari cars having a 4WD capability.

For many years, Enzo Ferrari himself couldn't see the need for disc brakes or engines that sat behind the driver, but eventually he had no choice but to use them -it's called progress!

If Ferrari finds itself falling behind in the performance stakes and it's because every other car is using 4WD - What do you think is going to happen?
(I'll give you a clue: it's called progress! )




Next up: We have to overcome the resistance to Ferrari fitting turbo engines!
(Sooner or later it's going to happen!)

 

That would certainly be interesting.

 

I will give you one mate; Enzo was a bit of a traditionalist and resisted change. On the other hand he had unparallel success. Other than that, RWD seems to dominate a (dry) race track as well as the dragstrip. So why bother with the heavy 4WD option? Do not count our muddy island in. If we were to measure a car here, a WRC would be the ideal candidate.

 

The only reason RWD "dominates" is because just about every race series puts limits on HP. There are no major road race series that I know of that allow unlimited horsepower. If there was a series with unlimited 1000+ HP cars, I think you would see teams switching to AWD. But at the current power levels, it is not necessary.

 

So these 1500 BHP, 550 kilo 1986 F1 cars (quali trim) were not powerful enough for you mate? Next stop are those darn fast jets.