Italian newspaper claims Scuderia set to copy other teams

La Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy’s top sport newspaper, claims that Ferrari will run with a shark-fin engine cover in Hungary this weekend. The Italian team, which is struggling to match McLaren in the middle part of the season, tested the fin at Jerez last week and were satisfied with the results.

The shark-fin is the most copied aero design in F1 this season; for the record, Red Bull pioneered it. Now everyone’s at it, although some teams, such as McLaren and Honda, have yet to use it in a proper grand prix. It sure is ugly, but damn effective - although it doesn’t like strong cross-winds, obviously.

It will be interesting to see: a) if Gazzetta is right, and b) if it improves Ferrari’s performance. More news as soon as we have it.

Toyota jumps on the shark-fin bandwagon

Look familiar? Yep, Toyota is the latest F1 team to test a shark-fin engine cover. McLaren also debuted a similar design at Hockenheim this week, and Toyota unveiled this effort yesterday.

Copycats. Red Bull started the craze for a Jaws-like aero part - then Renault, Toro Rosso and Force India copied Red Bull (or, as a designer might say, “took inspiration from the original”).

“The fact that others copy us proves that our idea was right,” Red Bull’s Mark Webber was quoted as saying, in Dutch magazine Formule 1 Race Report.

A couple more pics of Toyota’s shark-fin below:

All the news from the first day of testing at Hockenheim

The biggest news from yesterday’s test session in Germany was McLaren’s new shark-fin style engine cover (see photo). Red Bull, Renault and Force India already use a similar cover, and clearly the designers at McLaren are keen to see first-hand if the fashionable fin can improve the aerodynamics of its MP4-23 car.

A wet grand prix makes it more difficult to judge the true pace of a car, but it was obvious from Silverstone that McLaren has closed the gap on Ferrari since Magny Cours. Aggressive aero developments like this will have Ferrari worried, no question.

Ferrari will also be worried by the form and confidence of Lewis Hamilton, who set the pace at Hockenheim on Tuesday. The British driver outpaced Kimi Raikkonen by almost half a second, with Williams’ Nico Rosberg in third place.

Full timesheet below:

Technical notes from the Paul Ricard circuit

Honda’s biggest aero tweak for the current French F1 test session is this pair of developed elephant ears - or rabbit ears, if you prefer - on the car’s nose cone. The struggling team has fixed endplates to the ears, in a bid to improve downforce ahead of this month’s Monaco GP - the famous Monte Carlo street circuit is a high-downforce track, y’see.