Seeing as Ferrari aren’t quite what they used to be, I thought I’d reminisce about the glory days.

Ok. The vast majority of people that read this post will cite this car as being a bad thing. The death of Formula 1 I remember reading somewhere during the season that it ran. But I disagree.

I re-introduce you to the Ferrari F2004.

Born in 2004  using elements of the Championship winning F2002 and F2003 cars, and designed by the engineering genius of Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne, this was the most domineering of all the Prancing Horses that left the Marinello stable of the 5 that won 5 straight championships.

Powered by the 3 litre Ferrari V10 and driven by the then 6 time World Champion, Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, the F2004 debuted at the Australian Grand Prix, and went on to score a 1-2.

The first of 8.

In fact, Schumacher went on to win 13 out of 18 of the races that season. Barrichello won 2 out of the 18.

The F2004 only finished out of the points on 4 occasions. 2 retirements (1 apiece for Michael and Rubens) and both of these were driver errors. The other 2 non-points finishes were due to poor qualifying performance.

The 2004 Chinese Grand Prix, Schumacher started from the pit and finished 12th. At the German Grand Prix, Barrichello started in 8th and went backwards, finishing in 12th.

The F2004 did make a cameo at the start of the 2005 season for 2 races, as the F2005 wasn’t quite ready. However, it didn’t give the same kind of results as the previous season.

No-one has ever produced dominance on the scale of the F2004 since, and I doubt they will again.

Oh, it’s also a gorgeous machine.