2003 Season Review

Over a gruelling eight months, Ferrari, along with its technical partners, has been fighting hard in the defence of its two Formula One World Championship titles. Every point scored was hard-earned as the title was not decided until the last race once again.

Even though the racing is a fast-fading memory, the teams cannot allow themselves much of a break now. Designs for the new cars are well underway and testing will soon begin again in earnest as the teams gear up for 2004.

In this brief rest from their frenetic racing lifestyle, teams and technical partners have a rare chance to look back at one of the hardest contested seasons for years. In 2003, Shell worked tirelessly to develop the oils and fuels for the Ferrari F2003-GA. The Shell engineers in Chester (UK) and Hamburg (Germany) designed five new fuels, two new engine oils and a new gearbox oil for the race cars in this season alone.

The importance of strong relations between the Shell and Ferrari engineers has been noted by everyone involved, particularly Michael Schumacher who, following his historic sixth Drivers’ World Championship victory, said: 'When you have a season like this one, the elements of the team become so important that you need to rely on each other.'

Working so closely with each other, Shell developed for Ferrari powerful yet economical fuels and protecting yet liberating oils – each product designed specifically for the F2003-GA. More importantly, throughout 2003 (and in 2001 and 2002), Ferrari did not experience a single engine failure all season in race trim thanks in part to the protection provided by Shell technology.

For the first race of the season at Melbourne, Ferrari qualified and raced with new fuel and oil that had been developed over the off-season. These were developed for the final phase of the F2002 that contested the first four races of the season before the introduction of the F2003-GA at Barcelona in May.

Shell had been developing fuel candidates for the new car for a full year before it made its competitive debut, and the combination of new Shell fuel and the new car made Michael Schumacher an unstoppable force at the Spanish Grand Prix. Shell and Ferrari were victorious again in Austria two weeks later, before a further evolution of fuel was provided by Shell at Monaco.

The European Grand Prix held at the Nürburgring saw a new Spirax gearbox oil from Shell being used by Ferrari for the first time. The oil liberated more horsepower from the gearbox whilst keeping the unit’s staggering reliability record intact.

Shell’s ongoing development yielded a further evolution of racing fuel for use at Magny-Cours, which managed to provide the F2003-GA with increased power output without compromising the fuel-efficiency of the engine.

Interestingly, the next step in fuel development introduced in Hungary was a sulphur-free fuel. The variation of the racing fuel came as the next step in a long line of developments designed to lead the way for road fuels of the future. In this case, Shell introduced the sulphur-free fuel to Ferrari six years ahead of its European implementation to forecourts.

By Monza, the F2003-GA had a new engine oil which ensured that Ferrari was able to count on a reliable, more powerful engine package for the rest of the season. In fact, this engine oil secured the team a massive 37 points in the last three races and of course helped defend both World Championships.

Perhaps Shell’s effort this year is best summed up by Ross Brawn, Ferrari’s Technical Director who, speaking to the Shell engineers after the season finished, said, ‘We have all needed to dig really deep to find every possible improvement to performance and reliability. I am glad to say, that thanks to all of you, our partnership passed the test with flying colours and we were able to bring the Championships back to Italy again.’

Download the Best of 2003 Season Screensaver | Download the Best of 2003 Season Wallpapers