Ferrari F1-2000, The End Of The Title Drought
Scuderia Ferrari was immersed in a deep crisis in the 1990s. They had not won a single title since 1979, and the Italian cars developed in the 1980s were not successful at all.
This trend would continue well into the 1990s with the arrival of one Michael Schumacher from the Benetton team.
The German had just won his first two titles in 1994 and 1995; and he left the team that saw him form for Maranello, to import a multitude of engineers from his previous team with him with the intention of improving the Scuderia .
After a 1996 transition, it was soon observed how the prancing horse’s cars performed better and better, but still did not win titles.
They were close to becoming champions in 1998 and 1999, but the good hand of the Finn Mika Häkkinen and Adrian Newey with the McLaren of those years deprived him of this feat.
After this setback, the beginning of the new millennium should be the end of the drought of titles, the return to the dreamed of success; luckily for history it was like that thanks to the F1-2000, Ferrari’s car for the 2000 season, which is why it has become a classic to remember.
Introduced improvements
The first improvement in the team was the arrival of Rubens Barrichello to the detriment of Eddie Irvine. The rest of the names remained linked to their respective roles as before: Luca Badoer as tester, Schumacher as pilot and Jean Todt-Ross Brawn in the team management.
As for the F1-2000, it was the Scuderia’s 47th car in Formula 1, built on the F399 from the previous year.
Aerodynamically, South African designer Rory Byrne kept the nose high the low would come in 2001 – and the wing shapes hardly changed.
Major were the changes to the profile, with new appendages along the pontoon, and slight tweaks to the flat bottom, diffuser and rear wing. A new creature had been born.
Results
The season could not have started better for the Italians and for the ‘ kaiser ‘, as they subscribed to victory in the first three races, with Barrichello present on a podium. Surprisingly, a streak of withdrawals in the middle of the year complicated things, and a fight between the German and the Finn from McLaren would be repeated for another year.
During Schumacher’s low hours, his Brazilian partner scored a sporadic win at the German Grand Prix; After the first victory of Barrichello’s professional career, there were two consecutive McLaren victories for which the ‘ kaiser ‘ had an answer: winning the last four races, nothing more and nothing less.
With a reward of 10 points for victory, the German entered the penultimate round of the year – the Japanese Grand Prix – with the job almost finished and no worries. If he won the race, Häkkinen’s result would not matter, and he would be the first champion with Ferrari after 21 years. Said and done.
Man and machine merged to function like a Swiss watch, flawlessly, in order to obtain their long-awaited reward. In addition, Barrichello finished fourth in the season, which is why the team also took the constructors’ title.
