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Formula 1 racing is unimaginable without Ferrari. The motorsports maestro of Maranello is the only team that has raced in every season of the sport, and has won more championships than any of its evanescent rivals.

Just as important to that effort as legends like John Surtees, Niki Lauda, Michael Schumacher are the cars they raced past the checkered flag. And as this GIF, assembled by the team at Gearheads.org, reveals, the key to staying relevant in F1 is to never stop evolving.

Over the past seven decades, the cars have gotten leaner, lower, more powerful, and more attuned to the vagaries of aerodynamics—and the ever changing rules—with each season. The front-engined tubes on wheels of the 1950s and 1960s give way to the long, winged cars of the 1970s, the Marlboro sticker comes and goes, the clasic rosso corsa color changes just a bit, to allow for the contrast on TV sets.

Watch as the 275 F1 morphs into the super sleek 553 F2 in 1953, the dominating 156 F1 from 1961, the giant winged 312 F1-69 (which did nothing for Ferrari’s rankings in a disastrous 1969), the more familiar look of 1975’s 312 T, right up to this season’s radically redesigned SF70H.

So before Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel battles McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton at the famed Monaco Grand Prix, catch up on your history—and get ready for the next wave of change.



Wired