2010 Chassis Designations

[Rollo]

Do I have these correct? Even remotely?

McLaren - MP4-25
Red Bull - RB6
Williams - FW32
Renault - R30
Force India - VJM03
Toro Rosso - STR5
Ferrari - F2009 - (since F60 was specifically out of order to celebrate the Scuderia's 60th anniversary)
Lotus - by rights it should be 120, but the organisation isn't even remotely connected to Team Lotus is it?
Mercedes - W246 which is the next "Wagennummer"
Campos - AC110? - Since Dallara are building the cars, their usual thing is to simply add the category and the year. This seems logical.
Manor - Dallara also were building Manor's cars in F3, so again I don't know.
US F1 - Is this even a real prospect? Personally I won't believe they exist unless they show up with a car. This is looking suspiciously as infamous as the Lola Mastercard debacle.

[V12]

Ferrari wouldn't be F2009, they'd be F2010 if they were going with that, but who knows. Ferrari just seem to designate it whatever they feel like, for example the 2006 248 (2.4 V8), they could even call it a 300 if they wanted (F300 has been done), in honour of the car's single-cylinder cc capacity (like the 125, 375, 500, 625, etc.)

I'd hope Lotus would be 120, although they seem to be picking and choosing which parts of the heritage they want to embrace and which they want to discard (e.g. "Lotus F1 Team" instead of "Team Lotus", moving to Malaysia etc.)

Campos, Manor and USF1 all completely up in the air. I gather Campos's cars will be officially known as Campos's rather than Dallaras (with Dallara more of a design consultancy/service rather than a pure customer relationship like they had with Scuderia Italia), so who knows what the designation will be.

If Sauber return, I'd hope it would be under the Sauber name (rather than that horrible Q one or some awkward hybrid like BMW had) and with the C-designation restored (C25?)

[Hawkmoon]

The Ferrari will probably be the F2010. Ferrari have used that designation for a while now only changing it to mark something significant. In 2006 it was the change to 2.4 litre V8s (248F1) and the F60 was a commemorative designation, as V12 said. I can think of anything significant for next year so F2010 is most likely. I wish they'd drop that system. I've never really liked it.

As for the Renault, I don't think it'll be R30 as the designation was year based rather than number based, wasn't it? The R29 was for 2009 rather than being the 29th Renault as there haven't been 29 Renault F1 cars. If this is the case then I reckon the car will be something like R20, R21 or maybe R10? Has there been an R10?

Why would the Mercedes be W120? I don't know much about them from back in the day.

[V12]

As far as Renault goes, in the Benetton days it would be B1xx, where xx was the last two digits of the year, so B194 for 1994, B199 for 1999 etc. Then for 2000 they went to B200 (the 1 probably originally stood for F1 in the same way that March's and Dallara's designations did, but this was abandoned in 2000 in favour of keeping the numerical sequence going, rather than going to B100.

Then in 2002 what would have been the Benetton B202 became the Renault R202, then for 2003 they dropped the 0 and it became Renault R23. Not because it was the 23rd Renault, but hey it was their car and they could call it whatever they wanted.

R30 would be my best guess too, on the basis of what the team did in 2000 (just keeping the number sequence going, rather than worrying about its significance)

[ioan]

The Ferrari will probably be the F2010. Ferrari have used that designation for a while now only changing it to mark something significant. In 2006 it was the change to 2.4 litre V8s (248F1) and the F60 was a commemorative designation, as V12 said.

Exactly.

[Dave B]

Ferrari have used that designation for a while now only changing it to mark something significant. In 2006 it was the change to 2.4 litre V8s (248F1) and the F60 was a commemorative designation, as V12 said. I can think of anything significant for next year so F2010 is most likely.

Lucky then that Ferrari never made a car in the UK, especially in the KERS era. The F-UK-KERS may have been a step to far :p

[Sonic]

Lucky then that Ferrari never made a car in the UK, especially in the KERS era. The F-UK-KERS may have been a step to far :p

;)