F150 launch (and first look at moveable rear wings)

The 2011 car launches got underway in Italy yesterday with the covers coming off the F150, Ferraris 2011 Formula 1 challenger. There will be many better and more detailed technical analysis' than I'm capable of providing, so with this in mind I thought I'd attempt to do a non-car nuts take on the new Ferrari F150, with the help of some high res pictures, simply click on them to see them bigger. (Pictures courtesy of ferrari.com)

At first impressions, the F150 looks similar to last years car. No real striking differences like there have been in years past. But at closer look there are a few things. The nose of the car is significantly higher than it has been previously. The effect of this is that the driver is much higher up in the car. Last year you could just see the top of Alonsos helmet over the sides of the cockpit, now his head is just below the airbox (as seen in pictures below). Hard to comment on the front wing itself as that'll change significant before Bahrain. In fact given the simplicity of the design, it may have been purely for the unveiling.

Another noticeable change is the size of the sidepods. They appear much bigger than last year, almost McLaren style. They also make the front half look narrow in contrast when the car is viewed from above. The other visible change is the size of the rear wing. The central flap looks huge in comparison to '10 cars, but this will probably be the standard with the introduction of moveable rear wings.

Speaking of moveable rear wings, here's our first glimpse (below) at them in action. Above is the wing in standard mode, and below is what I suppose we'll call "pass mode". It appears the top part of the wing lifts up to open up the gap between the bottom flap. For some reason I was envisioning a standard wing with a slot in the middle that would drop down when going into "pass mode" so it's quite different to what I imagined. Given this was just a shakedown there was obviously no pace/timing to see what a difference it made, so when we get to Valencia it will be interesting to see the other designs and just how much of a boost it gives the cars.

So there we are, we now know what a 2011 Formula 1 car looks like. On Monday the covers come off the new Lotus-Renault, the Lotus Renault (confusing isn't it?) and the Sauber. The day after we see the efforts from Mercedes, Toro Rosso, Williams and the eagerly anticipated Red Bull. Coupled with the excitement of the first round of testing, it is a very interesting week coming up in Formula 1.