The Ferrari that was floored by its double innovation

Perhaps it's a cliche to say, but Ferrari is arguably motorsport's most evocative name. In its written or spoken form, the word creates - in the mind's eye of a racing fan - a synaesthesia-like response, where the brain immediately triggers the image of a scarlet blur tearing down the straight at Monza, enrapturing the greater swathes of red furnishing the grandstands.

It's a truly romantic image - unless you were in attendance during the 1992 edition of the Italian Grand Prix, of course. There, the legions of tifosi were forced to watch Jean Alesi peel off post-Curva Grande with mechanical issues on lap 13, before Ivan Capelli's electronics packed up and hurled the home hero off the road at the Parabolica moments later. It was strangely conclusive of the Scuderia's entire '92 season.

The previous season had been tumultuous for Ferrari. Expectations to win the title were high after Alain Prost had gone so close the year before, but the team was caught in a political crossfire, and Ferrari's decision to update 1990's 641 chassis for '91 was perhaps not the correct choice. Prost was unhappy with the resulting 642's handling issues, and Ferrari had already set to work on the incoming 643.

Having joined Alesi in defecting from Tyrrell at the end of 1990 (and a short-lived period at Ligier, where he was technical director for 24 hours before resigning), penning the 643 was one of aerodynamicist Jean-Claude Migeot's first tasks. The Frenchman had pioneered the raised nose design at Tyrrell to drive more airflow to the underside of the car, having first stumbled upon the idea at Renault on a "bad windtunnel".

Migeot couldn't put that design into practice at Ferrari straight away, and the 643 was designed with a considerable amount of carryover from the previous car, but the focus was on making the front end of the car softer to give Prost and Alesi more comfort when manning the steering wheel.

But 1991 had inexplicably become a write-off, particularly so when Prost was shuffled out of the door for suggesting that a truck would have more amenable handling than Ferrari's latest machinery. Perhaps he had a point; Migeot describes the 643 (below) as "not bad, but mechanically terrible", and the early end to the intermediate car's development meant that Migeot could put his next brainwave onto Ferrari's next car.

Were this the dullest game of Whose Line Is It Anyway, the "double floor" would surely be an entrant into the round of "things you can say about your house, but not your car". After the success of his raised nose idea, Migeot figured that there might also be a benefit to lifting the sidepods too. On his arrival at Ferrari, he was determined to get the design onto its windtunnel.

"After [Ferrari team manager] Cesare Fiorio convinced me to come back, I had already the next step in mind, which was the double floor," Migeot recalls. "And unfortunately, the windtunnel I did in, in Ferrari in '86 was was not as good or big as Southampton [Tyrrell's facility]. So we had to work in third-scale. But again, the step we got in the windtunnel was amazing."

Although today's Formula 1 cars don't strut around with double-floors, the effect that the shrink-wrapped sidepods provide is similar; by reducing the length of the path for the airflow to pass around the car, there's less chance that the air particles will - on a micro-level - lose energy due to friction. It also exposes more of the floor, giving aerodynamicists a much greater platform to develop the required pressure differences between the top and bottom to develop downforce.

"The set-up issues should have been solved by development - but the car had a very funny life!" Jean-Claude Migeot

That's an effect that Ferrari aimed to provide, and by reducing the overall effect of the sidepods on the rear body aerodynamics, Migeot hoped that the F92A would change the game. Naturally, the raised nose made its first appearance on a Ferrari chassis, but the double-floor design was the next cab off the rank.

"In the meantime," Migeot explains, "we had already developed these curly endplates, which were giving a very good sealing of the front wing between the front wing and the front wheel.

"So that's amplified the effect of the high nose and, by going to very small air intakes detached from the body, I was about to reduce a lot the diffusion [transit of air particles from a high concentration to a low concentration] of the flow in front of the of the sidepod. Normally, the flow is accelerating under the front wing and then slowing a little bit because of the volume in front of it - which are the sidepods.

"By raising the nose, slimming the external diffusion on the sidepod and having a floor which was a slotted floor - if you have a slot at the end of the flat bottom which feeds with dynamic flow - you get much higher diffusion at the back end and negative pressure under the floor so that was a huge gain in downforce.

"We had a double diffuser version but the slotted floor was naturally blown under the tray, because the diffusion in the end of the tray is very weak because it has this long floor in front of it."

But the original design was not without its issues, and Migeot adds that the planned detachment of the diffuser at high speed - which cuts downforce in a straight line, but crucially slashes the drag too - never managed to happen. Even at high speed, the diffuser was churning out excess downforce, which caused a number of aero set-up issues.

"That should have been solved by development," Migeot says, "but the car had a very funny life!"

In addition to Prost's enforced hiatus for 1992 after Ferrari laid him off - with full pay - there were other political machinations at play. Luca di Montezemolo was made president of Ferrari and wanted to put his own stamp on the team - bringing in Niki Lauda and Claudio Lombardi as his eyes and ears. Helpfully for Migeot, Montezemolo saw the radical design of the F92A and immediately took to it.

"When Mr. Montezemolo came at the end of '91," Migeot recalls, "he immediately fell in love with this revolutionary car, which he thought would make his return brilliant. So, he falls in love also with Migeot! Unfortunately when the season started we had several problems with the car, where the big one was the engine..."

Alesi also suggests that the engine was particularly problematic. Ferrari had developed a new V12 engine for 1992, sticking to its tried and tested formula, but fundamental issues in the design meant that it was underpowered and unreliable.

"The engine suffered from blow-by," Alesi explained, "that is to say there was a leakage of oil from the piston rings in the combustion chamber.

"This caused 40-50bhp to be lost. But in Ferrari tradition, it could not be said that it was the fault of the V12. Instead the fault was attributed to the car - which is a shame because the concept was interesting."

In the Kyalami season opener, Nigel Mansell routed the entirety of the field in the Williams FW14B active car, with Alesi 1.7s behind in qualifying trim. Capelli, having been drafted into the team as Prost's replacement after impressing at Leyton House, was a further second behind his team-mate. Both drivers retired after the Ferrari V12 hand grenades pulled their pins.

But the most damning indictment of Ferrari's new engine came in the second round in Mexico. With an altitude of 2250m, the air is particularly thin; a turbo engine can overcome the lower density and compress the air, but the turbo era had long since departed by 1992. A naturally-aspirated car has to work with the air as it comes - and any poor build quality where horsepower bolts from the stable as willingly as it did on Ferrari's '92 engine means that the straights can cause a lot of trouble.

"So the car basically went worse and worse along the season. And the political side is Mr Lauda was working only to have John Barnard coming back. So I had to face a repetition of 1988, and it ended up by me being sacked" Jean-Claude Migeot

Alesi qualified 10th, and Capelli 20th, as the duo were outclassed by the two Dallara cars powered by the previous year's Ferrari V12. Once more, both retired - Capelli clashed with March's Karl Wendlinger on the opening lap to head for an early bath, as Alesi's engine cried enough before half-distance.

Ferrari's fortunes were marginally improved by a few results in the early season; a double-points finish in Brazil preceded a podium for Alesi at Barcelona - and Capelli could well have scored again had he not spun off in the final few laps. But the Italian driver's confidence was well and truly waning; saddled with the pressure of driving for Ferrari, the team gravitated to Alesi and left Capelli with little support.

Migeot's double floor, too, was starting to lose its support from those in charge. Alesi's two podiums - a second coming in Canada - were the only highlights and, although the technical team had been slowly chomping away at some of the F92A's suspension issues, Migeot was lobbying for Dr. Harvey Postlethwaite - who had been Ferrari's technical director in the late 1980s - to rejoin and steer the good ship Maranello.

"Straight away after South Africa, Mr Lauda was the advisor of the president, and basically started a witch-hunt about the car - because it was obvious that if the car was slow it was because of the double floor," remembers Migeot (above, right). "All of the first part of the season was spent to prove that we had nothing quicker than this solution.

"We tested at a number of tracks with the channel between the two floors blocked and it was much slower, and all the silliness to try to go back to conventional car was not a success either. So then Harvey came back. I asked at the end of '91 because in '91, I was doing the race team, the aero, the development - too much - and I asked Lombardi to call Harvey, called back Harvey, he came as technical director if I remember.

"Harvey was sort of convinced, sort of not convinced by the double floor - but he put a bet on the transversal gearbox, which was another step backwards for the concept, which required a very narrow gearbox. The longitudinal was much better.

"So the car basically went worse and worse along the season. And I think Montezuma [Montezemolo] was no more in love at all. And the political side is Mr Lauda was working only to have John Barnard coming back. So I had to face a repetition of 1988, and it ended up by me being sacked."

Ferrari's 1992 dalliance with double-floordom had not been a success, be that down to the concept, the engine or the subsequent meddling at boardroom level. But the key principles remain prevalent in modern F1; famously, the Toro Rosso team attempted to install a significant undercut to its sidepods from 2011-12, but the increasingly small sidepods in today's cars have almost opened up a similar amount of working space.

In the right conditions, perhaps the double floor Ferrari could have worked - but perhaps a third floor would have been excessive...