Ferrari has never been a road going car company, it’s a racing team that sells cars to fund its racing team. Well, that may not be the case anymore, what with the realities of business, but as long as Enzo was alive it was the gospel. This might be the best looking and sounding car the Scuderia ever produced. It certainly wasn’t the most successful.
The Ferrari F92A competed in the 1992 Formula One season with Jean Alesi, Ivan Capelli, and Nicola Larini driving. Across 16 rounds, Ferrari team cars retired twenty times. Yeah, it just plain was not a good F1 car.
The problem was that Ferrari aero engineer Jean-Claude Migeot was playing with new “double floor” technology that wasn’t truly understood. You can see the body of the car lifted up a few inches off the true bottom of the car in the screen capture above. That created a bunch of downforce in the windtunnel, but in application it was too heavy, created way too much drag, and overtaxed the driver and engine alike. It wasn’t easily drivable, as top speed was abysmally low.
That said, it’s got an incredible 3.5-liter V12 engine, and it sounds like joy distilled. And it looks the absolute business. Best Ferrari, bar none.
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
