Concept cars typically fall into one of two camps: a thinly veiled hint at a future model, or a blue-sky exercise to show off original thinking. The Ferrari Design Formula 1 Concept is neither.

It’s a backhanded way of telling the sport’s organizers to go suck eggs.

Ferrari, F1's most-loved team and the most recognizable automotive brand on Earth, rarely does concepts for its street cars. It certainly doesn’t do them for F1, where the secrecy surrounding new designs is so thick, it’d be stupid to broadcast your intentions. Yet earlier this week, Maranello released detailed renderings of the #ferrarif1concept on a mini-site, complete with a call for comments.

Here’s the key line: "Would it be possible to come up with an F1 car which not only is technologically advanced, but also captivating to the eye and aggressive-looking? And could this be made without having to overturn the current technical rules?" Ferrari says. "Minimal changes give the car a look that is way different from what have been familiar with so far. Our challenge was to create something that was—to put it short—better looking. We value your comments on that."

>Ferrari is essential to F1, which allows it to do things like build a website and publish renderings of a very realistic, very cool future car as a subtle but clear protest against the status quo.

Ferrari doesn’t actually want slack-jawed denizens of the Internet telling it how to build race cars. The comments section is megaphone for fans who want to see something new. It’s intended to tweak the nose of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), F1's autocratic, often impenetrable sanctioning body.

Formula 1 is profitable and popular, but it’s in crisis. The cars are dowdy, rule-dictated evolutions of generation-old ideas. The recent shift to quiet turbocharged engines robbed the series of some spectacle and produced no small amount of outrage among fans. There are recurring, typically pointless debates about rule-specific horsepower levels, aerodynamic restrictions, and tire life. Leading teams spend hundreds of millions in a single season to remain competitive, even as they complain about the outrageous expense. Teams at the back of the grid scramble to keep up and regularly drop out simply because they lack the funds to compete. Historic, evocative tracks are bumped off the calendar in favor of cookie-cutter circuits more suited for television. Crucially, the racing is occasionally amazing but usually flat-out boring.

Time will likely show the F1 Design Concept to be little more than a warning. But it gives you hope. Ferrari North America

Meanwhile, the FIA busies itself with the nuances of the sport, not its purpose or grand direction. The people controlling F1—which includes Bernie Ecclestone, the sports *capo di tutti capo *and obscenely wealthy kingmaker in a pastime full of obscenely wealthy kings—are vastly out of touch with what spectators want, let alone with what once made F1 great. (Short answer: Visible push-the-envelope tech and balls-out competition from the greatest drivers on earth.) They nitpick matters of aerodynamic nuance which are utterly invisible from the stands (or the couch), create rules that dictate phallic bodywork appendages, and even legislate helmet livery.

You can't help but wonder if they have better things to do. Like, say, return F1 to motorsports' constantly evolving, breathtaking pinnacle. I say this with love in my heart: I'm one of the people who actually likes the sport. You should hear the haters.

Ferrari has been among the loudest voices protesting the sport’s direction. It’s made maybe-hollow-maybe-not threats about leaving the series entirely. Before his departure from the company, Luca di Montezemolo, who had led its competition division, has been astoundingly forthright about everything wrong with the series.

Ferrari can get away with telling the emperor he's standing there naked because it carries enormous clout. It has been in F1 from the very beginning, and has a far longer tenure than anyone else. Its departure would, quite simply, gut the series. It isn't quite true that Ferrari is F1, but Ferrari is essential to F1. This allows the company to do things like build a website and publish renderings of a very realistic, very cool future F1 car as a subtle but clear protest against the status quo.

Time likely will show the F1 Design Concept to be little more than Ferrari showing its unhappiness with the current state of things. But it provides hope. Because it looks amazing. Because it reeks of the future and independent thinking. Because, for one reason or another, it prompts a knee-weakening feeling in your gut, and if you've been watching F1 for any length of time, that is all too rare. The concept says nothing specific, yet is quite clear: F1 can and should be ridiculous, outlandish, and above all, emotional as hell.