Ferrari, the Rossa will be revealed on January 23rd at Fiorano

The 678 project has a birth date: the new Ferrari, the first child of a technical revolution that will dominate 2026, will be unveiled at Fiorano on 23 January. It already has a name but, for the moment, team principal Fred Vasseur prefers not to reveal it: “It will be part of the launch of the single-seater – he explained during the annual Christmas lunch in Maranello – I don’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone”.

first steps

—

Work will continue until the day of presentation, Ferrari assures us, for a project that will continue to grow over the course of the year and which in its first steps towards the start of the season will already undergo important changes and variations. The cars will take to the track for the first tests in Barcelona, ​​behind closed doors, from 26 to 30 January, where it will be important for the teams to clock up kilometers and collect data, but where we will not be presented with the final projects of the single-seaters: “In Barcelona it will not be about chasing performance for the teams but about validating the 360-degree technical choices on the car in terms of variability”. For this reason the teams will present themselves with a first, standard version of the cars, and then begin to reveal their cards in the subsequent tests in Bahrain, divided into two sessions: from 11 to 13 February and from 18 to 20 February.

developments

—

Under the watchful eyes of CEO Benedetto Vigna and vice president Piero Ferrari, Vasseur underlined the scope of the new technical project and how only at the dawn of the new championship will the interpretations of the regulations undertaken by each team be discovered. “It’s challenging but very stimulating” said Enrico Gualtieri, head of the Ferrari power unit. The stimuli for those who make engineering excellence their mission are enormous: “After years of freezing engines, this regulatory change is very exciting, as will be seeing the work done by our adversaries”. With particular attention to how the Federation will control any gray areas of the new directives, especially in the management of Aduo, the system that will allow manufacturers in difficulty with power units to get back into the fight during the championship.

change

—

The excitement of a technical challenge involves the entire work group, the technical director Loic Serra and the deputy team principal Jerome D’Ambrosio also assure, but at Ferrari, after the still burning burns of a 2025 which closed well below expectations, they want to maintain a prudent calm that will not end in Melbourne, where the first Grand Prix will indicate “only”, they assure in Ferrari, a starting point for the long championship ahead: “Even in 2022 we have witnessed a change of forces on the field during the year – explains Vasseur – and this regulatory change is even more important, the biggest I have ever experienced in Formula 1”. It will therefore be necessary not to get caught up in emotions, whether positive or negative, and to work for the long term in a year in which “the learning curve and the ability to react will be decisive”.