This has always bugged me.I went to my second F1 race at Montreal this year,My first was Detroit back in the 80’s.My question is at both races the color of the Ferrari was very different live than on T.V.At the races the color was a Flourecent or international orange.Where as on T.V. its a normal Red Color.None of the other Cars have any distinct difference in the hue or tone as does the Ferrari.Now with the advent of the new T.V. plasma etc… has this changed?I still use an old CRT T.V.Also the sound is as different as night and day,Is this also any better with the new Home Theater systems?Thanks
I haven’t seen this years’ model (the 248) but I can tell you that at least from 1992- 2004 every Ferrari F1 model has been painted Rosso Red (the more astute readers will note that that’s a bit redundant, but that’s what the colour is called in English).
It’s exactly the colour you associate with Ferrari, a deep solid (not pearlescent or metallic) red.
Were you perhaps wearing sunglasses?
I remember when Jaguar re-entered F1 they spent a lot of time at the test track videoing the cars to establish which shade of green looked appropriate and accurate on TV.
The shade they picked looked crap in real life but had the classic British Racing Green hue on the screen.
Just one of those things I’m afraid.
M
I believe the colour is called ‘rosso corsa’ in italian, or ‘racing red’ in english. I’ve often heard commentators refer to it as scarlet though, which is probably most accurate anyway.
The last holdout of the old international colors, and bless them for it.
According to this page from Wikipedia, “The shade of the colour varies, though. Since 1996, the Ferrari F1 cars are painted in a brighter, nearly orange red, to adjust for color balance on television screens. The original Rosso Corsa appears almost dark brown in some television shots.”
In 1934, the new racing car from Mercedes was just over the 750kg weight limit, and engineers spent the night before the first race sanding off the white paint to reveal the bare metal color of the bodies. For the next two decades, they became famous for the success of their silver cars. When they came back to sports car racing in the 1980’s they wanted to revive that tradition; but by that time the bodywork was made of carbon fiber, and had to be painted silver.
I guess BACI came close to what I was looking for although the historical answers were great.Thank you all for answering.
One sure way to annoy a tifosi is to call their Ferrari’s “orange”. 
I remember watching a sports car race on Speed Channel a few years back, back in the days when the Ferrari 333SP was still in competition. The camera was tracking a lovely scarlet red car and Bob Varsha, the commentator, said exactly what I and many other fans watching were thinking…“That’s the color a Ferrari is supposed to be” (as opposed to their adjusted-for-TV-red F1 cars).
It’s not just F1 where this “adjusting colors for TV” happens. A number of NASCAR teams have tested paint schemes to determine how they’ll look on television before committing to them full-time.
Best example: Kyle Busch’s Kellogg’s car, which was tested last year. In promotional materials, etc. it’s depicted as being royal blue and canary yellow, but in reality it’s blue and highlighter yellow.