Say you’ve got around £200,000 to spend on a car, and you fancy a Ferrari. Who wouldn’t? The good news is, you have choices: you could grab a delivery-mileage example of the elegant Roma, a front-engined, 612bhp grand tourer. Or, you could drop potentially similar cash on this.
It’s a 1:3 scale, radio-controlled model of the Ferrari F2002, which was Ferrari’s Formula 1 car from 2002 (see what they did there?). Keen F1 historians will note that this was one of the most dominant years of Michael Schumacher’s tenure at Ferrari, in which the German won 11 Grands Prix and finished on the podium in every single race – the only time such a feat has been achieved.
It’s the passion project of Stéphane Andrist, a Swiss businessman who co-founded Medicatech, a company specialising in the manufacture of extremely precise medical equipment.
Andrist, also a huge Formula 1 fan, apparently decided to combine his skill in precision machining with his passion for motorsport, and set to work creating this in 2000 (we have to assume it took on the form of the F2002 later in life unless Andrist has also cracked time travel). It took over 1000 hours of work across three years to create, which goes some way to explaining its estimated price.
Ferrari F2002 R/C replica – front
The specs are pretty impressive for an RC car, too. It’s 1786mm long, 728mm wide, and weighs in at 32kg. Nestled beneath its shrunken engine cover are two 53.5cc four-cylinder, four-stroke petrol engines, which will apparently propel it to a maximum of 50mph.
Elsewhere, it really is like a tiny racing car: it has ventilated disc brakes and all-round independent double-wishbone suspension with hydro-mechanical shocks. It rides on go-kart tyres, with period-appropriate grooves – 10 inches at the front, and 11 at the rear.
Ferrari F2002 R/C replica – wing detail
But possibly the real reason it’s estimated to go for full-size Ferrari cash? In late 2003, Michael Schumacher himself got wind of the project and dropped into Medicatech’s workshop for a snoop around. As a token of appreciation, he signed the rear wing.
If you fancy chucking in a bid, it’s going up for auction at Graham Budd’s Formula 1 Memorabilia sale in Northamptonshire this Thursday, 4 July, where it’s estimated to go for between £150k and £200k. You can also chuck in a pre-bid online – at a minimum of £90k. If you do end up buying it, try not to thwack it into a skirting board.
