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Michael Schumacher’s championship 2002 Ferrari F2002 set for auction

RM Sotheby's November auction in Abu Dhabi might still be months away, but Formula 1 just gave racing fans a huge reason to get excited for the event now. F1 and Sotheby's announced 10 early entries for the auction, and the most special of the bunch is the 2002 Ferrari F2002, Michael Schumacher's championship-winning race car. Schumacher dominated the field throughout the 2002 F1 season by finishing first or second in every race. That season, he won in Australia, Brazil, San Marino, Spain, Austria, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Japan. Schumacher didn't use this exact car, chassis No. 219, for every race, but it is the vehicle he was driving when he won at the French Grand Prix, where he secured his fifth drivers' championship title (his teammate Rubens Barrichello took second but had about half as many points as Schumacher). Ferrari, having won all but two races that season, also took the constructors' championship that year. After its time in competitive racing, 219 was used as a test car for the remainder of the 2002 season before eventually retiring the next season. Since then, it has been owned by various private collectors. The F2002 was an absolute force of a machine. It used a 299.66-cc 90-degree V10 that made 823 horsepower at 17,800 rpm that paired with a fused titanium seven-speed gearbox. The car's structure was a honeycomb and carbon-fiber composite monocoque. Steering was mechanical power-assisted rack-and-pinion. It also had carbon-ceramic composite brakes and a suspension setup with independent push-rods, twin wishbones, torsion bar springs and telescopic shock absorbers. So how valuable is a car with this much history? Well, a 2013 Gooding & Company auction at Pebble Beach offered F2002 chassis No. 220, and it sold for $2,255,000. We expect this car to easily surpass that number. However much it sells for, RM Sotheby's says "a percentage of proceeds" will go to the Keep Fighting Foundation, which is inspired by Schumacher. Mark the date on your calendar: November 30, 2019.

Why Italians are no longer buying supercars

Italy is the wound that continues to drain blood from the body financial of Italian supercar and sports car makers. The wound was opened by the country's various financial police who decided to get serious about superyacht-owning and supercar-driving tax cheats a few years ago, by noting their registrations and checking their incomes. When it was found that a rather high percentage of exotic toy owners had claimed a rather low annual income - certain business owners were found to be declaring less income than their employees - the owners began dumping their cars and prospective buyers declined to buy.
Car and Driver has a piece on how the initiative is hitting the home market the hardest. Lamborghini sold 1,302 cars worldwide in 2010, 1,602 cars in 2011 and 2,083 cars in 2012 - an excellent surge in just two years. In Italy, however, it's all about the ebb: in 2010, the year that Italian police began scouring harbors, Lamborghini sold 96 cars in Italy, the next year it sold 72, last year it sold just 60. The declines for Maserati and Ferrari are even more pronounced.
Head over to CD for the full story and the numbers. What might be most incredible isn't the cause and effect, but where the blame is being placed. A year ago the chairman of Italy's Federauto accused the government of "terrorizing potential clients," this year Luca di Montezemolo says what's happening has created "a hostile environment for ­luxury goods." Life at the top, it ain't easy.

Ferrari going with turbo V8s, hybrid V12s

More for less – that's what automakers are striving for: more output with less fuel. For some that means downsizing and employing turbochargers. For others, it means going hybrid. With its latest models, Ferrari has embraced both – or rather, either – but don't expect its twelve-cylinder engines to get a set of snails, or its V8s to get an electric assist. The latest intel paints a picture of Ferrari going two different routes. As it is, the company offers (much like it has for the past several decades) both V8 and V12 supercars, and it's bringing both types into the modern era, but in different ways. As demonstrated with the California T and 488 GTB, Maranello's eight-cylinder models will shrink in capacity but add turbochargers to increase their output while decreasing their fuel consumption. Meanwhile the engine in the LaFerrari showcases the direction in which its twelve-cylinder models will go: hybrid V12 powertrains. "There will be no turbos on our V12s," an unnamed source reportedly told Autocar. "Expect instead to see 48-volt systems on the next generation." With the eight-cylinder models already having adopted their turbochargers, that means we can expect the replacements for the FF all-wheel-drive shooting brake and F12 Berlinetta two-seater to go hybrid in their next iteration. We'd expect the former to arrive first, with the hybrid F12 to arrive sometime thereafter. The company first toyed with the prospect of a hybrid twelve with the 599 HY-KERS concept showcased at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. The first production application for the hybrid system was on LaFerrari, but of course the Scuderia developed a much smaller 1.6-liter V6 that's both turbocharged and electric-assisted for Formula One. Related Video: