The I4 layout had a maximum bore of 88mm, which therefore defined the stroke for the capacity. But, that is not to say that the engineers couldn't go for a smaller re with a longer stroke. Or a smaller capacity with the 88mm bore.

Thanks, I stand corrrcted.

True,but if you had the option of boosting a 1.5 liter or a 2.5 liter, you would likely go for the larger engine by choice.

I'd imagine the saying is about having two engines with similar power, but one having a larger displacement that the other.

Autoblog.com has an interesting piece that states that the 'F1 engine switch came after Audi bailed'.

I wonder if this has anything to do with Porsche's Le Mans planned programme.

This is ridiculous, the rules have nothing to do with road cars. It's just a peculiar spec that's weaker than what we have now.

580 hp? What do GP2 cars make? LMS prototypes? What happens to the power/weight ratio? 35% reduction in fuel+lower revs does not equal "impressive sound" unless the cars are going to run on KERS and just blow up the excess fuel in the exhaust.

Why don't we just have electric kart races?

My own car sitting out in the driveway has a 4 cylinder engine bigger than 1.6l. I get 29MPG+

While it would be neat if we had a return to 1,600 bhp out of a tiny engine - what is "neat" about these regulations? NOTHING.

As it is now I'm less entertained with small rear tires and less hp than we've had. Once the drivers cross the apex the show is over thanks to that. With the new regulations, weaker cars that can not physically be as loud as what we have now, and still no real relevance to road cars. How does this compare to a MotoGp bike? A Radical SR8? People that have tuned Hayabusas?

F1 should be in it's own realm, beyond reach.

I don't mind the smaller engine and turbo, what bothers me is the fuel flow limit. We should at least be able to get 700HP from the engine/turbo alone, with KERS bringing us closer to 900HP. That would be excellent IMO. 15,000 RPM should be fine, most road and racing cars are much lower.

I must say I am finding it increasingly difficult to form any kind of excitement over the new engine regulations.. A "low" revving, "under powered" V6 (as compared to current and past F1 engines) with all manufacturers aiming for a situation that no manufacturer has an engine advantage is just LAME.. Add it to the ever growing list of sanitised "features" of F1... They may as well all race the same engine simply re-badged for each team.. All the control and regulation is to prevent an engine development war - well what the **** happened to competition and the need to win at almost any cost??

<rant>
I am really starting to hate what the modern era is doing to F1 - where everything is simulated, monitored and managed to the n+1-th degree so that teams and sponsors / stakeholders can get "value for money" with as little unpredictability and "irregularity" as possible.. Add to that seemingly anything that can provide different performance levels (such as engines/drive trains), but requires investment is heavily regulated and/or ultimately standardised...

I still completely fail to see the logic in allowing the use of increasingly expensive wind tunnels and aerodynamic programmes that create the single largest performance differentiator and overtaking obstacle in current F1 cars.. The aerodynamics of today simply do not allow cars to easily follow / overtake - and all recent regulation changes have done little to resolve this issue - yet the collective wisdom always seems to be standardise more of the mechanical parts to allow more money to be spent on the completely road irrelevant and "anti-racing" aero programmes.. More and more I am starting to believe that the teams are not really that interested in racing or anything similar to racing.. Really we should just accept the teams and the FIA want a spec series - they simply don't know it yet or don't want to admit it publicly..

The IT industry has a phrase that really ****'s me off when used and is often used when referring to customers, and I can't help but think the phrase has bled into F1 "racing" too deeply.. "..We need to manage expectation.." - Everything in F1 is too managed and controlled now - right down to the teams timing the pitstops themselves because the FOM timers are not "accurate" enough.. Modern F1 has become too obsessed with management and control via electronics, computer control/simulation and other gadgetry and has thus only lost focus on its core - brutal, unbelievable, seat of the pants motor *RACING* powered by a pure, thirsty, gut wrenching, balls to the wall, high CC combustion engine.. Road relevance is too easy a cop out - and they are all using it in spade fulls..
</rant>

First, sixes sound great. Much better than eights in my opinion.

Second, I'll bet that the volume will still be more than adequate to cause pain without earplugs.

Third, every time the FIA puts in new rules to slow the cars down, technological progress just keeps making them faster.

I actually think that the lower pitch of the new cars might actually sound better.

Yea, but regarding your third point there is only so much you can do with a given amount of fuel. I don't see a problem with a fuel limit per se, but I see a problem when it was intended for 4 cylinders and lowers power output dramatically. I think before KERS, these engines should be capable of 700HP. Then with kers we could have around 900HP which would be great.

But all those things will work even better on a bigger engine. To a limit, I know, but every displacement limiting rule will fall very short of such limit.

i completely agree. but the engines will probably be frozen straight after they are introduced in 2014.

Such a freeze has already been hinted at by Cosworth - who have said openly the reason for all the regulations surrounding the new engines is that they have been designed to try and ensure parity in performance.. Such parity generally tends to lead to freezes in development.. A freeze will only mean the new engine formula will hold little appeal to encourage new manufacturers to join once there is a supply of reliable "frozen" engines - and we land up exactly where we are today..

I the config was free and only displacement and fuel flow defined the formula the I4 would always win. This is one reason they would not allow it.

You know that is not a done deal, even you suggested that e 3 cylinder approach could be the winner. Or another config, since you are just looking at the thermal efficience of the engine, and there is much more to it in racing.

I have no doubt someone would try I3 and I5s too.

And this is why the teams do not want the engine to make a difference. They want the chassis to determine the championship.

Well, like tyres in a tyre war, it's a variable which is largely out of their control. The likes of Red Bull certainly want none of it. McLaren now only having a customer supply of Merc engines most certainly don't want it.

As expected, Craig Pollock hasn't enjoyed the change from I4 to V6.



http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/263338/...-craig-pollock/

That's not correct, because that would imply a single engine provider. Anything other than that might result in the engines deciding the championship. Even with tied up regulations. And the hope engines deciding championships is what would bring new manufacturers into the sport. No one is there just to add to the numbers - apart from Cosworth, maybe, which actually makes a living from selling those engines.

You obviously do not read what the teams publish. So there is no point to continue the discussion. Relative engine parity is the aim of FOTA. This is why they write a very narrow engine spec. Martin Whitmarsh and Adam Parr have been very open about it. Even Ross Brawn has not mentioned engines when he said that things too much depend of aerodynamics, he mentioned active suspension and not engines as an alternative to too much aero. Go figure!

I think I skip the PR crap and the political nonsense. It woukd be naive to believe everything one reads and more often than not there are other reasons for the decisions and those are not as noble as we are expected to believe.

With a fuel flow limit, maximum bore limit, fuel pressure limit, rev limit, capacity limit, CoG limit (I'm guessing) and the others, you're going to be hard pressed to find one of these new engines being anything close to 10% apart. The current V8s are around maximum of 20BHP (2.6%) apart and we still have bitching but ultimately the engines wont be a deciding factor.

I do like the idea of the chassis' becoming important again as it really pains me, even as an Aerospace Engineer, to see the chassis becoming a slave to the aero requirements (such as the removal of springs from the rear suspension and ridiculous wheel-bases).

It is simply an exercise of the team's rule making power. Nothing goes into the rule book unless it is proposed by the F1commission. The commission is dominated by the teams as long as they agree on one issue. And they do agree that neither tyres nor engines should be decisive. Hence we will not see a team stealing a march on the others by using engine or tyre superiority.

I'm afraid the teams will continue to see aerodynamics as the dominant factor and they will be conservative with regards to the aerodynamic configuration we have now. Several decisions have demonstrated that. First the tunnel and ground effect aerodynamics which were planned for 2013 were cancelled. Next we see the teams agreeing to a V6 instead of a I4 engine. It is not in their interest as power out put will be reduced compared to the I4 due to the FiA sticking to the same fuel flow limit. But the aero dynamical configuration will be largely conserved with the proportions of a V-engine instead of an I-engine. The central part of a car will remain flat and wide instead of high and slim and the floor will remain stepped without tunnels. This helps to keep the aero function of the floor and the wings largely to today's proportions. There will be only gradual changes. Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren and Merc can expect that things will remain similar at the top beyond the engine change. That is what they are primarily concerned with.

The teams have even stopped the proposal of having all wheel kinetic energy recovery systems. That technology would be very useful but it has the potential to change the picking order. So they decided to rather delay or drop it. Same goes for heat and exhaust gas recovery. There will be a very tight spec to insure it will not have a big impact on performance. I could add further examples but I think that it is not necessary. As a final hint I simply let Bernie speak. He says that Red Bull and young Vettel may dominate in the way Ferrari and Schumacher did ten years ago. That is very possible given that Red Bull have it all their way. Newey is the best designer for the current configuration, if it is kept this will help the current top teams and particularly Red Bull to retain their dominance. The times for Red Bull to ask for drastic tech rule changes are over. The changes had the necessary effect to bring dominance to Red Bull. Fro now on they will sing from the same sheet in terms of technical rules as McLaren. They simply have the same agenda.

I can't see how the I4 would have made the shape of the car significantly different.

With the tunnels and side impact protection the width of the car remains the same. The width of the V6 engine should be well within the width of the safety cell around the driver, as the V8 is now.

I see Dieter Rencken, in his latest article, also thinks the V6s unsuitable for the chassis with tunnels, forgetting that the tunnels have been cancelled and that in the first GE era most of the cars ran 90° V8s.

Oh, and the World Series by Renault runs a Dallara chassis with tunnels and a production based 3.5l (60°) V6. The dimensiosn of these cars are largely based on limits defined in the F1 regs. Next year they will be running 90 V8s.

It makes me wonder though, if teams want comparable engines with more or less equal power output...why would that entice new manufacturers to come into F1? What would be the gain for Porsche, Honda, Audi, BMW to spend millions on design of an F1 engine if it does not contribute whatsoever to the winning of their backed team?

And perhaps a bit off topic but what about manufacturers that were mulling entering with an entire new team? With the current restrictions, Newey's all conquering design team id think twice to enter F1.

It is always desirable to have a car flat and wide rather than high and slim, certainly from a CoG perspective. Neither does the use of a V6T preclude a move to stepped tunnels. Remember that the 'TAG by Porsche' engines were designed to fit in with an overall ground effect configuration.

http://fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/pressrele...1-power-qa.aspx
On the FIA Website:

Combustion engine specifications:

1600cc, V6
15000 rpm max
Direct fuel injection up to 500bar
Single turbocharger
Controlled fuel flow

Energy recovery and storage systems specifications:

Kinetic, 120kW on the rear wheels
Exhaust energy recovery linked to the turbocharger

Edit: Im a day late :/

I can't support the new rules if they freeze the engines straight after introducing them, otherwise what is the point of incurring all of the R&D cost? They have to at least allow 3 years of freedom, otherwise there's no point incurring the cost.

I could care less about manufacturers "getting into F1" when F1 means frozen rules and a weak engine.

Sorry, 500 hp will definitely not be as impressive as 750, and if one doesn't care about that as I've said before - I don't get a "car nut" that isn't excited by the sound. A V6 racing engine may sound neat, but it's not going to compare to the V10 era - but it *will* be compared to LMPs, sprint cars, NASCAR, and basically all of the many series that are now COMPARABLE to the new F1 engine.

F1 should be in a class of it's own. These engine regs are ridiculous.

Couldn't agree more

And while we 're at it, even 750bhp (with KERS factored in) F1 cars will be underpowered. IMO they should aim for 950bhp (KERS included), to make the cars challenging to drive at least ... right now every 19 year old with 2 years of racing experience can go in and dominate an F1 car. That's just wrong ...

Which 19 year old with 2 years of racing experience are you thinking about? And why do you think some 200bhp more would change anything in that respect?

Jaime? But yeah, I was exaggerating to make a point. Don't you think F1 is underpowered, relative to the amount of grip the cars generate? A couple of hundred extra bhp would create a challenge, at least in the traction zones out of low/medium speed corners. Which in turn might create some genuine overtaking opportunities as opposed to needing to fabricate them.

It is foolish to think that the governing body will allow much more than 800 hp drive trains. If the cars have too much downforce the teams are the right place to complain. They insist on rules that give the cars too much downforce and will always try to pile on more. They have influenced the rules in such a way that the chassis with the most downforce wins and they change the aero configs willy nilly to start this game over and over. At the same time they cut the influence of engines, electronics, tyres, recovery systems and suspension. F1 needs to go to lower drag and downforce to be more exciting. I think it is a terrible waste to design tyres which last only 50 km just to spice up the show. From 2014 the engines will become very drivable. There will be even more need to create chassis rules that lead to exciting driving. 750-800 hp is plenty enough power if the chassis rules are sensible.

I don't think a couple of extra bhp would change much to be honest. They'd just adjust the mapping so the engines would be about as drivable as they are now - and it's not like they could floor the throttle in those corners with todays 750bhp. Yes, the engines of yesteryear provided a lot of entertainment because of their noise, power - and ridiculous driveability. But you can't turn back time and "challenging" engines like the turbo monsters will not return, ever.

Also, regarding Jaime: The guy has been racing since he was 8, like everyone else in F1 (bar Petrov, i guess) - so he had more than 10 years of motorsport experience when he entered F1. I know you were exaggerating, but you can't just compare his age to that of drivers of the past who started racing in their late teens or even later than that.

Nobody ever talks about improving exit speeds. If the cars had more frictional grip, exiting a corner would *look* cooler, and present more of a challenge IF - if there's enough HP to overcome it.

Numbers: 500 hp I can relate to. I used to drive a car to high school everyday with nearly that, and so did a number of friends. 0-100 - V10's of 2000 lineage did it in under 1.5 seconds, I'm pretty sure they're not doing that these days; a Veyron takes twice as fast, but I don't know anybody that owns a Veyron? But I know a lot of people with Hayabusas, which are about in the same territory. S2000 will start hitting the limiter at 8,400 rpm, but there are some street bikes that go up to 15,000.

It's a bit silly, but important to the gestalt of F1: all of those numbers should be "out of reach". I can't fathom 1,000 hp, 0-100 in 1 second, or an engine doing 19,000 rpm. "Back in the old days" the V10 era - when the cars were obviously, visually hard to handle coming out of slow corners that was neat! The game is already over past the apex of a turn now - that isn't how it should be!

Visually, at a race, I can recall seeing the cars brake hard - and it looking insane, almost fake. I want them to accelerate with the same ferocity; it only makes the exits trickier, doesn't alter the danger - but would add to the show. I want to see the front wheels lift. <g>

But instead, my favorite car racing is being watered down. No, I'm not all that interested in watching hyper-expensive GP2 cars in 2014. Oh, I know, GP2 will be neutered to prevent embarrassment. I suppose LeMans prototypes won't be racing on any tracks where performance could be compared, so that will be "safe". Meanwhile, more people I know will be driving electric cars and I'll probably be driving something that gets around 40 mpg (hopefully) - and F1 will have nothing to do with it. WTF?

Bernie threatens to sue the FIA if the plans go through: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business...nd-2306362.html

Interesting. The race promoters would prefer to run a Indycar race with empty grandstands instead of a F1 race with full grandstands, both running a similar V6 engine.

Oh wait, it's complete tripe.

I can't understand some people's obsession with 18k rpm engines. Early 90s 3.5L engines did not rev even close that, 13-14k perhaps, and they were the best sounding engines F1 ever had. (Obviously the late 3L V10s sounded great as well, but too whiny to my taste.) If having a specific sound is that important, why not just accept that F1 is not the pinnacle of automotive technology and has not been since 1994 when a great deal of "road relevant" high-tech stuff was banned, and go back to 3.5L engines with heavy restrictions on development, materials etc. to keep costs down. To emphasize my point: the 18k 2.4L V8s are not the epitome of F1 sound anyway, so I don't understand the need for constant comparisons.

I don't like the sound of the present V8s at all.

One of the great features of the Festival of Speed is that you can really make a comparison. I don't mind the 2.4 V8's, they have a curious harmonic at high revs that sounds rather like a stampeding elephant but the 3.5 litre cars sound far, far nicer as they accelerate through the mid-range of the engine.

I was surprised how good the IRL Honda engine sounds, too.

If 17 of the race promoters say they'll quit over the new engines, then you know F1 is broken from the very core.

Don't like the current V8s either, sound completely gutless compared to the V10s they replaced. They also sound quite imbalanced and torqueless.

An even smaller capacity V6 revving 2-4k lower is only going to sound even worse IMO but still glad it's not the straight 4.

Was interesting to hear Adrian Newey's comments in the BBC Forum regarding his preference for the V6 over the straight 4. He said a straight 4 would require a space frame to house it in the chassis as the block would no longer be big enough to be a structural part of the chassis. The engine block has been used as a structural component in F1 since '67 IIRC when the Ford Cossie DFV V8 was plonked in the Lotus 49 by Chapman, a revolution that has stood the test of time. Would be pretty retrograde for engineers to go back to a space frame in F1 for the first time since the 60s.

Or indicates that they have an 'incentive' to say it?

Teams, FIA and Bernie will eventually lobby for different regulations again over time. F1/GP racing has always had peaks in troughs in the capacity of the engines. Look back to post war pre 1961 when they where 2.5l then dropped to 1.5l, eventually back to 3.0l and 1.5l charged engines after 1966-88. That stopped eventually and in came 3.5l . The cycle started again and we are back to 1.5l.

It will be interesting to see what the new engines achieve but also to contemplate what the future will hold after they are changed again...

IMO would rather see the aerodynamics decrease and the tyres + engines increase.

http://www.attwilliams.com/news/view/1859

So much for Renault throwing a tantrtum about the L4 demise.

The whole thing was a big show for the press.

I don't like the current V8s sound either. But I tell you that a V6 Turbo sounds absolutely different. Its a low tone, ultra-bass sound. I find it really cool.

Like Indycars? Aren't they 3L though? Im happy to be proven wrong!