Austrian designer Gustav Brunner, formerly of ATS and RAM, created the all-new F1/87 with input from the team's newly appointed Technical Director John Barnard. Barnard had joined Ferrari after six successful years at McLaren, where he had been responsible for the McLaren MP4/2 and the turbocharged TAG-Porsche engine that won three consecutive drivers championships and two constructors titles. He later acknowledged that had he been involved from the beginning of the design process he would have produced a different car, but with Brunner's design already advanced when he arrived, making substantial changes would have been prohibitively expensive and slow.
The F1/87 was sleeker than the bulky F1/86 and introduced a six-speed gearbox. Its power unit was an entirely new Ferrari V6 engine, the Tipo 033, with a 90-degree cylinder angle replacing the 120-degree configuration that had been in use since 1981. The Tipo 033 produced approximately 950 bhp in qualifying configuration and 880 bhp in race trim, operating under the FIA's mandatory 4.0 bar pop-off valves that limited all turbocharged engines that season.
The F1/87 showed early promise but was hampered by persistent understeer in the opening rounds. From the German Grand Prix onwards, a newly designed rear wing transformed the car's handling and brought it close to the level of the dominant Williams-Honda. Berger began qualifying inside the top three at virtually every subsequent round.
Berger delivered two victories for the team — in Japan and Australia — and took three pole positions. The season finale underlined the car's potential: Berger won the Japanese Grand Prix convincingly, then followed it with victory in Adelaide, with Alboreto completing a Ferrari one-two after Ayrton Senna's Lotus-Honda was disqualified for oversized brake ducts. The back-to-back wins were Ferrari's first consecutive victories since Gilles Villeneuve had won at Monaco and Jarama in 1981.
Reliability remained a concern throughout the middle of the year. Berger was challenging Mansell for the lead at the Hungarian Grand Prix when a retirement ended his race. In Portugal he was leading before spinning and gifting the win to Alain Prost, a result Berger attributed to excessive concern about the McLaren behind him. The Mexican Grand Prix also slipped away from him while leading.
For 1988, the regulations reduced the fuel allowance from 195 to 150 litres and cut maximum turbo boost to 2.5 bar. Ferrari updated the F1/87 into the F1/87/88C with revised bodywork, new front and rear wings, and a lower engine cover. The Tipo 033 engine became the Tipo 033A, though Ferrari chose to update rather than redesign it — a decision that would prove costly.
Unlike Honda, which built an entirely new V6 for the tighter fuel limit, the updated Ferrari engine consumed fuel at a higher rate than its rival. The problem was most sharply exposed at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, where Berger — on pole position — led in company with Senna before being forced to progressively reduce his pace to conserve fuel. He ultimately ran dry exiting the Woodcote Chicane on the final lap, dropping from sixth to ninth in the space of 400 metres, passed by Arrows, Williams, and Benetton machinery. Alboreto had already retired with the same issue three laps earlier.
Barnard had recommended early in the season that the team reduce engine revs and remap the Tipo 033A to improve fuel consumption, but his advice was not acted upon. His relationship with the team was already strained by his insistence on working from a dedicated design office in Guildford, England, rather than from Maranello — a condition Enzo Ferrari had accepted but which created friction with the factory staff. It was not until before the German Grand Prix that the changes Barnard had advocated were implemented, producing better fuel economy without power loss, though the Ferrari still consumed more than the Honda.
The 1988 season concluded with a surprise Ferrari one-two at Monza, where the McLarens' fuel consumption and reliability worked against them on a circuit where the Ferrari's straight-line power was most beneficial. Berger and Alboreto finished third and fifth respectively in the drivers championship. Ferrari were constructors runners-up to McLaren.
The F1/87 and its derivative restored Ferrari's credibility as a front-running constructor after the difficult 1986 campaign and gave Gerhard Berger a car capable of winning. Behind the scenes, the team was already developing Barnard's radical 3.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 semi-automatic Ferrari 640 that would debut in 1989, using the F1/87/88C and a test mule to develop its new gearbox. The F1/87 era was therefore simultaneously a competitive resurgence and an engineering bridge between the turbo epoch and the next generation of Ferrari Formula One machinery.