F1 Season Begins Now – Virtually
 

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Ferrari became the first team to introduce its new car today - after Mercedes introduced its new colors on the old Brawn car earlier in the week - and the teams seem already to be jockeying for position. Ferrari has already stated that the new car has set a record: The connections to the www.ferrari.com Web site.
“More than three million users were connected to watch the presentation, which let the Web site freeze for a couple of seconds in several moments,” the team said in a statement.
Hmm, not being in Italy for this, I was one of those million connections. And I did wonder about that “couple of seconds” that just kept on repeating themselves. But I didn’t care. That was a great way to see the launch, and to hear Luca di Montezemolo talk with a simultaneous interpreter.
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I particularly liked his line about how he was sure that Michael Schumacher would have stayed with Ferrari had the team been allowed to race three cars. It actually gets me wondering: If Ferrari does not believe in Michael enough to have wanted to give him one of the two cars, then why does the team appear to be so sad about him going elsewhere?
Could be they’re just scared. Let’s hope, in any case, that the new Ferrari will set records on the track rather than on the Internet, and that it will not have repeated engine stalls of a couple of seconds here and there.
It will be interesting now to see how McLaren handles its Internet car launch tomorrow. Any bets that it will have some kind of Internet bragging stats to outdo those of Ferrari? And perhaps a line about how the servers were strong enough to cope with the two million connections?
In any case, it all makes it look as if the idea of the common car launch for all teams is a pipe dream.
Oh yes, the Ferrari car….I cannot yet see a massive difference to last year’s - although I have not seen the two side-by-side and I do believe I can see the difference in the size that the larger fuel tank is forcing. But the stability in the regulations elsewhere means there will not in fact be a revolutionary difference.
Next week is when the real fun begins and we see how the cars look against each other on the track, in the long-awaited first test sessions.