Ferrari 640
racing car
The Ferrari 640 (also known as the Ferrari F1-89) was the Formula One racing car with which the Ferrari team competed in the 1989 Formula One World Championship. It was driven by Britain's Nigel Mansell, in his first season with the team, and Austria's Gerhard Berger, winning three races between them. A prototype version known as the 639 shares some features of the early version of the 640. This prototype was tested in 1988 prior to the introduction of the early version of the 640 in 1989. Both the early and late versions of the 640 were entered with the competition title F1-89. The 639 did not receive a competition title due to its status as a prototype model.
This was the first Ferrari Formula One car powered by a V12 engine since the 312 F1-69 in 1969.
Design
The car was designed by John Barnard, and it was the first Ferrari he was responsible for designing. It sported a sharp nose, with a narrow monocoque and bulging side-pods designed to house the radiators with maximum aerodynamic efficiency. It originally had two small air intakes on either side of the driver, but from the fourth race of the season in Mexico a more conventional large air intake above and behind the driver was introduced, which Ferrari kept on the car for the remainder of the season.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ferrari 640” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.