Heavily based on the previous season's F2003-GA, the F2004 continued the run of success the team had enjoyed since the 1999 Formula One season, winning the team's 6th straight Constructors' Championship and 5th straight Drivers' Championship for Michael Schumacher, his 7th and final world drivers' title in 2004. The fiftieth Formula One car built by Ferrari, it is one of the most dominant cars in the history of Formula One. The F2004 also brought a close to Ferrari's and Schumacher's five-year domination of the sport, leaving the door open for Renault and Fernando Alonso.
Design
The car was based on the same design principles pioneered in the F2002 but taken a step further. The periscope exhausts were smaller and mounted closer to the car's centre line, the rear wing was enlarged and the rear suspension redesigned to reduce tyre wear, a major problem in the F2003-GA, of which the F2004 was based and revised.[1][2][3] The engine was designed to last a full weekend in accordance with the FIA's technical regulations for the season. As a result, the gearbox also had to be redesigned to be more resilient. The rear end aerodynamics were improved and the car featured a shorter wheelbase.[4]Launch control and fully-automatic gearboxes were also banned for 2004,[5][6][7] meaning the driver had to start using the paddle-shifters, and find the effective bite point and release the clutch manually again.[8] These electronic driver aids had been used by the team for the previous three seasons, starting from the 2001 Spanish Grand Prix. The F2004 debuted with a 1–2 at the 2004 Australian Grand Prix.[9][10][11]
Performance
The F2004 was first unveiled on 26 January 2004. On 30 January, the team led by Jean Todt could not believe the results of its test at Fiorano, where Schumacher drove 115 laps and set a record time of 56 seconds.[12] Todt reportedly told Brawn to tell him what was going on because the car was so fast, to which Brawn replied that Todt did not have to worry because it was fully compliant with the regulations.[13][14][15] The car was as successful as the equally dominant F2002, winning 15 out of 18 races and scoring 12 pole positions including many lap records. Schumacher won 13 races (including 7 in a row), setting a single-season record (Sebastian Vettel equaled this number with the Red Bull RB9 in 2013), which lasted until 2022 when Max Verstappen won 15 races with the Red Bull RB18, and gained a record breaking seventh World Championship (since equaled by Lewis Hamilton in 2020), while Ferrari was a clear winner in the Constructors' Championship. The F2004 was also extremely reliable, retiring from just two races and both of these were via collisions.[16] Schumacher notably won the 2004 French Grand Prix by beating Alonso's Renault R24B after an innovative four stop pit strategy.[17][18]
After the 2004 season, the car was developed further as a testbed for 2005. A revised version, the F2004M, was used in the first two races. Despite a podium finish in the 2005 Australian Grand Prix, the car was retired to make way for its successor, the F2005, at the 2005 Bahrain Grand Prix. Although Byrne expressed his belief that the F2005 would surpass the F2004 and be the "best ever Ferrari Formula One car", praising Costa, who succeeded him as overseer of design and development, it proved to be a disappointing season, with only a win at the controversial 2005 United States Grand Prix. This was in large part because the FIA, in an attempt to end Ferrari's dominance and provide more competition after the dominant season with the F2004,[13] mandated a rule change banning pit stops and requiring Formula One tyres to last a full race.[19][20] In all, the F2004 scored 272 championship points in its career (also including the 10 points achieved in the first two races of 2005). Its championship in 2004 marked the end of Ferrari's Constructors' Championship winning streak that began in 1999; this would not be repeated until Mercedes' run in the 2010s and 2020s,[21][22][23] when Mercedes equalled and later broke this and other records first set by the F2004.[22][24] The F2004 was used as the basis for the 2008 "Powered by Ferrari" A1 Grand Prix car.[25]
Livery
The livery was similar to the previous season with numerous retained sponsors including Vodafone and Olympus Corporation.[26][27][28] Ferrari used the Marlboro logos, except at the Canadian, French, British, and United States Grands Prix due to anti-tobacco legislation.[11]
The F2004 proved to be one of the most dominant and outright fastest cars in Formula One history. In 2014, at the dawn of the turbo-hybrid era, motorsports journalist and Autosport columnist Dieter Rencken cited the F2004 as "the fastest car in F1 history".[29] The F2004 set many new lap records on different type of tracks, including Albert Park, Nürburgring, Gilles Villeneuve, Magny-Cours, Hungaroring, Monza, and Shanghai, and kept the fastest race laps of Albert Park, Monza, and Shanghai even through the 2019 and 2020 seasons.[13]
As of 2025, the fastest race laps set by the F2004 at the old Albert Park version, Magny-Cours, and Shanghai remain the lap records, and Monza's fastest qualifying and race laps were only beaten by the Mercedes W11 in 2020 and by the McLaren MCL39 in 2025, showing the competitiveness of the F2004 against modern cars some twenty years younger. Schumacher's son Mick drove the car at the 2019 German Grand Prix, honouring 15 years since his father's final world championship.[30] He also drove the car around the track before the start of the 2020 Tuscan Grand Prix to celebrate Ferrari's 1000th Grand Prix.[31]
↑ Acerbi, Leonardo (2006). Ferrari: A Complete Guide to All Models. MotorBooks International. p.361. ISBN978-0-7603-2550-6. Retrieved 2 August 2013– via Google Books. The Ferrari F2004 looked like a logical evolution of the previous season's F2003-GA, at least as far as its exterior lines were concerned. But a more careful examination of it confirmed the new car was the result of detailed refinement, partially ...
↑ "Ferrari F2004". F1technical.net. 2012. Retrieved 11 September 2025.
↑ "Test Formula One 2004 sur PS2"[Formula One 2004 review on PS2]. Jeuxvideo.com (in French). 20 July 2004. Archived from the original on 18 February 2019. Retrieved 11 September 2025.
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Michael Schumacher 
Rubens Barrichello 
