Ferrari only made that car as a threat to leave F1, don't think they were too serious. Newman Haas was using a Lola as were a few other teams. The Penske chassis wasn't up to snuff nor was the Eagle. It was basically Reynard and Lola for the win. They were good cars AND technical, but not close to F1 budgets

2004/2005 had near 1000hp, and they were quickest cars in F1 history in terms of downforce.

I say we should go back to that kind of power while cutting the amount of aero grip, then we'd have a bit more driver skill involved.

You might want to tell Al Unser Jr or Danny Sullivan that the Penske chassis wasn't up to snuff. All-American Racers built a frighteningly fast IMSA car, but their Champ Car entry was really a Frankenstein Reynard. Don't forget that it was at March where Adrian Newey learnt his trade. Bobby Rahal had huge amounts of success with his chassis, it was a decisive factor in him (very nearly) convincing Adrian to join his Jaguar F1 team.

Oh, and Tony Bettenhausen ran year-old Penskes in the early-to-mid-90s. The Captain didn't sell on new equipment, after his long-time Indy nemesis Pat Patrick won everything in 1989 essentially running full-works Penske stuff with Emerson Fittipaldi at the wheel.

I don't really see the fascination with more and more power. Maybe power/downforce ratio but not pure additional power. If Turbos were to be re introduced I think a reduction in engine capacity with an eye for around 800HP is ideal for the current regs. Under 200k the current engines have more than enough power to light up the tyres. The old turbos were probably more difficult to drive for the lag and spike of the power delivery than the power itself. Im sure these issues would be ironed out with modern anti lag variable vane multi turbos

Yeah, a 6 it ought to be. 'Have been' I suppose, it sounds like they've decided .

AFAIK it was Renault with their crazy 10-cylinder idea who ushered in the new, mental era of F1 spending. Honda switched their resources from F1 to building an Indy engine for Bobby Rahal, which suggests that the money needed to succeed in CART in 1993-94 was the same as for F1 in 1986-90. Penske was the only 'F1-sized' Indycar team though, with elephantine Philip Morris sponsorship to match. Newman-Haas were able to compete sustainedly at a similar level because of Carl Haas's Lola connections; I think the other teams were able to compete because the team owners ran the series, and ensured good chassis and engines made their way to well-turned customer teams. Remember that Roger Penske was a part-owner of Ilmor, and Haas for a long time was in charge of who got the Lolas. Arguably one of their mistakes was letting the series become too reliant on Reynard (who they did not control) and then folded after taking on too much.

I know it will never return to that but, with F1 being the pinnacle and all (supposedly), the cars still need to be somewhat powerful. Otherwise you just end up making it open to being mocked.

The bolded bits I highlighted - the 2nd one I agree with and I wish this was acknowledged and rectified. The 1st bold point- we don't want drivers killing themselves but, lets be honest here, its Formula 1 were talking here. It's meant to be dangerous and meant to be furiously fast with the best drivers on the planet involved. Lets not lose sight of what sport were talking about here, we're not playing croquet...

f1 isnt top in terms of power output now, nascar has more power (100hp more) nationwide has around the same i think (750ish)

theres lots of semi pro stuff in america that probably has more power (trophy trucks, local short track)

the real reason f1 is way out ahead is the huge budgets

That's my point though. F1 isn't where it should be already in terms of power output and they want to drop the level again?

Not something I'd be doing.

Well, in all fairness you can't compare it to Nascars, as they weigh more than twice of an F1 car, so no problem there when comparing the power to weight ratio.

But still, 670 is to close to GP2, Indycar etcetera etcetera. No need for 1500 BHP engines again, but at the very least, keep the 750 that we have now, plus some KERS on top of that.

FFS.

They say they want to save money and then they come up with a complete absurdity.

Why on earth do these clowns want to make engine companies have to design a brand new engine from scratch?

1.5L turbos are pathetic to listen to. We've already lost the V12 and V10 wails, don't let us lose the V8 scream too.

Well, that the pinnacle of motorsport only uses the same engines for 7 seasons sure is pathetic, yeah...

I will miss the sound of the naturally aspirated engines, but I'm glad to see a change as I'm not a fan of this engine freeze at all. But I'm afraid that the new ones will be quite restrained as well, be it by rev limiting, freezing or something else.

Bring the turbos back - but only with some performance boost relative to our current crop of engines.

H2H

Andrew Benson just put up a rather interesting article on the proposed engines here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/20...ns_for_the.html

A few new points here.

*Likely to be much more efficient 1.6- or 1.8-litres turbocharged

*Hybrid systems fully integrated into the engine, no "push to pass" style

*Refuelling may well be reintroduced.

*Volkswagen and Hyundai are apparently seeking to enter under these regulations.

Have to say reintroduction of refuelling and Hyundai are both completely new to me.

Can anyone explain to me why turbos would be a great addition and the benefits? Thanks

The turbos of the 1980s weren't as loud as NA engines, but they still has a nice boaring sound to them, they especially sounded great with onboard shots. In my opinion the current V8 engines sound weak.


I hope refueling is not brought back.

That flywheel is from Williams so the F1 teams have had a crack at it but decided they didn't want to do it this year.

As to new engines is the world engine concept still on track? Will the 1.6 or 1.8 design for F1 become the standard block for WRC, WTC and GP2? I thought this was a great idea because it would make F1 about high performance turbos and energy recovery. F1 teams would become engine tuners using 'stock' racing engines for major suppliers and bolting on their own or 3rd party Turbos and KERS systems.

Fixed

I can't really comment technically on how turbos would fit in with F1, but I can comment on turbos in road cars. I have a VW Golf GTI, and I can say there is very little if no turbo lag in the modern turbo. From everything that used to be said as a disadvantage about older turbos, isn't true anymore. I think if turbos come into F1 then manufacturers like VW would jump at the chance to enter for the marketing value. I get 7 - 8.5L per 100km out of my GTI. A V8 is around 12L+ per 100km (at a guess). Lets face it, these engines are much more economical, and the days of V8 road cars are numbered.

Interesting article by Andrew Benson, I agree that I really hope refuelling is not brought back. Hope we have got rid of it for good but time will tell.

I don't think turbos would be as problematic as they were in the 80's. Turbo lag was already solved by 86/87, and I'm sure it's less of an issue with the lower boost they will be running. With KERS there will be plenty of power to put on a good show, although I hope they will let them use it constantly instead of as a silly push-to-pass button. But I fear they're opening the door for the environuts to pick on the sport more and more by caving into the political pressure. If they keep caving into the pressure, they could have F1 down to 200HP in another decade.

now these were the beast of racing 1000 bhp,

those cars where awsome.... cars are covered in sponsors too...

To be fair, Target is only one sponsor funded by assorted in-store placement deals as decalled on the car.

Obviously Target doesn't care too much about ROI as they are still there, crappy ratings or not.

Isamu misses the 3L V10 unlimited rev era sniff sniff

For those for miss the good old days V10 Dyno run


2L turbo diesel with Kers

Yea the kids of today make fun of older people, but us older people, I'm just 37 though, surely not a kid, well maybe in mind only lol, had it better in the past though. I envy the senior citizens actually for when they were young the world was much better! Wars aside of course. I too miss the raw F1 beasts that made one shudder even when standing next to an F1 car even when it's engine wasn't on! Just being near it made one shudder i'm sure. Nowadays you wana almost kick the modern cars haha

Just wondering. As turbos eliminate the need for an airbox in it's current form the engine covers would be much lower. Would the teams object because they would lose a large and prominent sponsor area on the car? There's also the shark-fin//F-duct to consider.

Airbox will still have and advantage. The turbo charger will still benefit from the ram-air effect. It will provide boost more readily.

Scotracer sorely misses them too. I am just glad I got to visit Grand Prixs at the peak of their reign in 2004. That Honda V10 at Silverstone in '04 was something to behold.

I would have thought that the ram-air effect would be negligible compared to the turbocharging. On the current cars power increase from having the airbox only just makes makes up for the huge amount of drag it creates. With the turbo it might not be worth it (which is probably why turbocharged single-seaters never seem to have airboxes).

The airbox doesn't have a ram air effect. It slows down the air and feeds the cylinders equally for better volumetric efficiency.

That being the case then with a turbocharged engine you'd not need the airbox at all. Therefore you'd have to rethink the shark fin/F-duct arrangement.

... article about 60% of carbon footprint being from factories and wind tunnels...

I guess the "green" F1 should have spec-aero. That would save a lot of money / energy.

That's because the gti runs a little baby turbo for drivability in an everyday environment. If you threw GT35 onto that gti, the car might not even hit full boost until 4th gear or higher because of the amount of exhaust that can drive the turbo. Yes, modern turbos are more efficient, but part of that also has to do with sizing.

If they really wanted smooth power delivery, they should allow turbo rotary engines. They move a huge amount of exhaust gas for how small they are. Mazda would certainly enter if it meant additional rotary development. Maybe.

Of course it does. Slowing down the air is not the point. If this was the main point the ports to the valve wouldn't be designed to accelerate the air to the valve seat. The main point is to increase pressure. Remember you can have slow, low pressure air that doesn't have any energy (not good).

The pressure ratio is what the compressor on a turbo charger sees.. So if you increase the pressure in the air box, it simply means you will get boost at less work input to the turbo.

Of course the air box doesn't have to be as huge as it is now It doesn't even have to look like a box. That is what throws you off.

check out an airbox on the audi R10.

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/audir10-5.html

Very Very Very envious.

If I had known earlier how much of a monster their 05 motor was I would have tried to get to a GP to hear it. FYI Honda won the horsepower race with that monster RA005E

I've just remembered why an airbox is superfluous on a turbo.

1. The ram-air effect is quite small, and it's only in conjunction with the evening out of pressure at the inlet that it creates enough of a power advantage to overcome the drag it creates on a normally aspirated car.

2. Turbo-pressure is regulated after the turbocharger. Therefore, the preferable way to go is to save on the drag and simply fit a slightly bigger compressor. Obviously the turbo requires an air intake, so you may see a small scoop like on the Audi you've shown.

That Audi's "airbox" is more like the turbo inlets from F1's turbo days than it is like F1's current airboxes. It's an interesting question, though, both technically and because of the current rules about minimum airbox/billboard size. My guess is that without those rules, the new turbos would go back to the inlets/scoops with no overhead airboxes. F-ducts notwithstanding, I imagine the airbox's wake affects the efficiency of the rear wing.

The point of green F1 is not to reduce the footprint of the F1 community, but to use F1 and its engineers as an R&D lab to develop technology that, if put into widespread use, would have orders of magnitude greater impact on global footprint. There's been good discussion of this in the thread about Frank Williams wanting KERS back.

Any mock-ups of what the possible turbo cars may look like?

VWs are the Macs of the car world. The "image" choice, better designed, more reliable and more expensive than Toyota (Microsoft PCs), but they are really not that different from - both are made in 100000s and full of cheap Chinese components!

the airscoops on the audi (and pug for that matter) arent alot smaller than on f1 cars.... but the inlets are in that position for packaging reasons, the air needs to go through the intake, then the turbo, then (optionaly) a intercooler. the turbo also needs tobe fed the exhaust gasses...

you might get poor flow rate with a long tube tho...

the engines are going to half the size of the current ones, so theres lots of packaging options

the roll hoop air intake is probably the best solution if you dont have packaging issues to worry about

if the teams do drop the airbox as it is now, they would probably still run a "blade" sharkfin to the rear if they wanted...

What do you guys make of this
and this???

Interesting report:

Emissions source: Emissions (tCO2-e)
F1 Cars – Fuel in races and testing: 626
Other Vehicles: 5,434
Operational Fuel Use: 5,700
Business Travel: 13,363
Freight: 17,122
Electricity: 64,652
Expenditure on parts and raw materials: 108,691
Total 215,588

Composites and electricity are the main villains and emissions by cargo freight is very close to those of business travels.

Okay it's frankly ridiculous that they see the need to turn F1 in to Eco-Marathon then.

Redstorm misses them too The scream of the Honda down the front stretch at Indy could rattle out fillings! The Merc then sounded down a cylinder by comparison.

If they went back to turbos I don't see them dropping the roll hoop airbox. The rollover protection will still have to meet the minimum height requirement anyway, and I don't see how they would gain more by dropping the box and then having the carbon fiber brace sticking out in the open creating turbulence to the rear.

DC pointed out that having the rev limit mean changing gears far to often to keep in the power band. What would the proposed regulations do about this, would it be better/worse?

Given they'd have completely different engines, it won't be an issue. Modern turbo engines torque curve is basically this:

____________________________________

A straight line

Richard Black (BBC) about those news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_env...nt/10456984.stm

He projects a fuel limit for the 2013 formula.

All of this is superfluous.

"Going green" means one thing: electric. That's the future, I've said it before and I'm saying it again. One of the first times I said it I can be quoted as saying "one day fans will be pulling up to the racetrack having gotten there driving electric cars". Which is the case now.

Racing cars with IC engines *of any sort* is an anachronism, and should be regarded as such. It's a waste of time to try to equate it 1:1 with road cars at this point, obviously - road cars are now more technologically advanced in the area of efficiency in fuel and things like TC/LC, etc.

In American football they still throw around pigskin balls, despite there being better alternatives. In golf they still swing at balls instead of firing them from air propelled cannons. Marathons - the most idyllic example of an anachronistic pursuit in the 21st century, when obviously there's more efficient/better ways of getting from point A to point B.


I think Formula 1 has to face the reality that *it's an anachronism*. What makes the sport appealing is the NOISE, the brute power, and the extraordinary exceeding of typical bounds.


1,000 hp, Swiss-watches at 140db loud V10's accelerating HARD is what I like to see.

You can have the same thing now - minus the sound, running all electric, and it would be green and make relevant sense to the current auto market.

Anything else is a oil-industry illusion.

At the very least, there should be an emphasis on energy *storage* systems - batteries - rather than recovery systems. We've already got that going: it's battery size/weight that would benefit *the whole planet* the most from having F1 scale dollars thrown at it.

It *would* be baffling as to why that's not the case, except for the nature of the relationships involved to the oil industry. Which is why I fear F1 is going to continue to become the wishy-washy
half "green" weirdo half-assed "solution" it's becoming now. Weaker IC engines, some oddball hybrid aspect, stranger/more artificial methods to "improve" the "racing".

I want 1,000 hp electric cars that run off of laptop sized batteries, that do 3gs LINEAR acceleration. That would be cool, maybe even worth have basically silent cars.

Otherwise - I want loud V10s, manual shifting, proper CARS. We're headed towards a mediocre non-solution.