Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Ferrari launches 2016 car - the SF16-H

©ScuderiaFerrari

Ferrari has launched its 2016 car - named the SF16-H - which it hopes will challenge Mercedes this season.

The new car features a short nose design - unlike last year's car which won three races - and also sports a white engine cover in a nod to previous Ferrari liveries.

GALLERY: Ferrari SF16-H

Launching the car online, team principal Maurizio Arrivabene said the team has to raise its targets for 2016 and will be aiming to fight for the championship until the very end of the season.

Technical director James Allison believes the team has shown clear progress in moving towards being able to compete with Mercedes at the head of the field.

"It's very difficult to make predictions," Allison said. "We know Mercedes was very strong last year, very strong the year before, but we also know that we have extremely talented people here at Maranello.

"We've put nearly 1000 man years of work in to this car and we've done our absolute best to try to make this one step up, to make this one a bold step forward, to give it the competitiveness that it will need to be a proper winning car. I hope we've done enough, but we'll only really know for sure once we've done racing it.

"But I can tell you with absolute confidence that the love and care and effort and skill that has gone in to this car is beyond question."

VIDEO: Mercedes W07 on track at Silverstone

GALLERY: First pictures of the FW38

Check out Red Bull Racing's 2016 livery

Key dates for the 2016 F1 season

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.