its not like the current engines are cheap...

To stop the sport stagnating?

Many experts will say that keeping the rules and specs constant (i.e. "stagnating") leads to closer racing. All teams are able to cope with the technicalities.
If you worry that maintaining a technical or sporting requirement is "stagnating" then in many ways I am all for stagnation!

Imagine the green 2013 engines racing at the not so green Singapore GP

They could erect an overhead grid and put a pole conducter on the cars (like a dodgems car) and power the lights using the excess KERS energy.

Greener......Green-er. That's all they want.

Now you can go back to your hole.

The engines haven't changed much in years, apart from get smaller in 06. That is stagnation, and racing occurs no matter how much you change the rules. Simply staying put in the hope that close racing will occur, which I'm not sure is that accurate with the big teams able to improve far more, is nonsense.

Well, you stay closer than you do with constant changes.
My original point was put forward by Ron Dennis and others quite recently. I don't think it's wishful thiniking.

They are though.

Old Sauber Red Bull Ferrari lease for V10 supply... $20m for example

New RBR Renault lease for V8 supply... $5m

This seems A LOT cheaper to me!

Of course there will not be $10,000 F1 engine. Yes you can put a supercharged 6L Chevy V8 in your Camaro for maybe $10,000 having 700 hp. But with N/A and 2.4 L, what would you build?

If you enable a number of new technologies one team will inevitably do a better job than the others. 1998 narrow track and grooved tyres - McLaren. 2009 high wings and slicks - Brawn.

The issue is that we're talking about introducing about 5 variables here and 5 lots of expense. And the team that comes up with a decent solution to one or some of those variables will cause an arms race down the pitlane. The spending could spiral.

Luckily, I think it'll get watered down anyway, as these things usually are. Which will leave us with 1.6 turbos and 1 kind of energy recovery system. And all for what? KERS didn't have any effect apart from teams eventually deciding not to bother because of the cost and weight.

I don't see why a manufacturer would bother coming in just because some of their road cars have turbos and F1 has a recovery system that is impractical to add to road cars (unless you're Mercedes and have a new S Class planned for 2013).

If Formula 1 is really focused on fuel-efficiency or sustainability, why not allowing any kind of engine configuration, setting a maximum amount of energy to be consumed per race, mandating non-fossil fuels, engine starters, catalyst converters or even exhaust silencers? Cosworth seems to advocate this.

Got my vote!

...since months if not years. Diversitiy! However I'm afraid that a rule like this would favour big teams/engine suppliers with huge resources and will to spend lots of money to check out all possibilities.

With a fuel consumption limit the engine manufactures will have to detune their engines, increasing the life span. Ironically, Cosworth seems to advocate this very solution. The big manufactures advocate the introduction of the global racing engine (GRE).

AMuS reports that there's some pressure from the manufacturers to delay the new engine formula to 2015.
The current V8 would still be used, but with the fuel flow control installed and the KERS prerogatives kept.

The decision about the 2013 engine formula is set to be made at December this year.

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-...bo-2786432.html

to be more a little more precise:

Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault estimate costs of 100,000,000 EUR for the development of an entirely new 1.6L turbo engine. That's why they want to keep the current spec engines (with reduced fuel consumption + KERS) until 2015 to split the money they have to spend for the new engine over a longer period of time. FIA/Todt however insists on a new engine formula for 2013.

Yeah, but I've wanted to people to open the link and do their own translations.

Gordon Kirby has a great interview with Ulrich Baretzky of Audi Sport:

http://www.gordonkirby.com/categories/colu...t_is_no257.html

Baretzky seems to feel that the cost issues can and should be overcome, and that 1.6 litre turbos with KERS are the only really logical way forward. His comments on all-electric cars and how the technology will evolve are also interesting. I think he's quite right though. It is important to showcase innovation and efficiency gains in an honest and appreciable way. It is important not to let things be lost in green-washing, or in the other direction as well.

http://www.autosport.com/features/article.php/id/3114 Have you guys read that? It blew a lot of me enthusiasm for the new engines away.

I'd still rather limit the fuel tanks, let the manufacturers build whatever engines they feel like as long as the engine used in the race is the same used in qualifying.

There you go. The manufacturers get their money worth and actually have a fair and square shot at beating the competition and proving they are better. The chance is open for so called new and green technologies (KERS, turbo, whatever) to be implemented and F1 gets to save some face and promote an eco friendly image.

Is that so hard?

Nope, would you mind sharing what it says?

They are in between an all knew 4 cylinder turbo KERS engine and an upgraded version of the current V8s because of political reasons, it seems.

Gosh, they have a blank sheet of a paper and a real chance at making something new and better and it might go just down the toilet.

+1

I'm not a subscriber and I'm interested to hear what it has to say.

As a pure petrolhead, there are very few solutions to this problem that actually make me salvate - the V10s were the epitome of F1 engines in my opinion. 1000BHP (the technical head of Toyota's engine team said they produced that at the end of 2005) from a 3.0 for crying out loud!

EDIT: My post was too slow. Upgraded V8? YES PLEASE! Please allow some development on them! We could be at 800BHP even with the 18,000rpm limit! Or make them unlimited again

Ferrari per usual is the problem...

They were getting 1000+ BHP in the 80's with 1.5L 4 cylinder turbos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_M12

Of course they won't be going anywhere near that with the 21st century spec turbos cos they'll be limited to much less

Never going to happen. The whole reason the V10's were scaled back to eight cylinders was the excessive amounts of power was beginning to border on the unsafe.

It may not appeal to some people, but if we don't switch to some form of hybrid engines come 2013, F1 is going to regret it. Moving on the engine technology is what will appeal more to manufacturers, and some form of relevance to the car industry is needed.

Well yes but that doesn't excite me nearly as much.

It's more like a downgraded V8.
But with KERS.

No, big teams can sell the tech to lesser teams. Think KERS.

Spending millions on redeveloping F1 cars for energy regeneration has direct output to road cars. 850hp 17,000rpm V8s have no practical application outside of F1.

That's only because they had refueling during the V10 era. A fuel limit would have taken care of that, which is why I think that its possible to have manufacturers fully dedicated to engine development and still keep things safe.

F1 gets this. Current F1 engines are basically spec anyway, they are all reliable, they all make about the same power. Energy regeneration justifies R&D budgets to boards of directors. When the world's biggest car company says it can no longer justify F1, major red flags.

The ideas in Montreal were:

4 cylinder turbo stock block (similar to 80s BMW)
12,000 rpm (for longevity)
600hp

Half the fuel, half the weight, and energy recovery to gain another 150 hp. The only problem is the engine sound.


It's ridiculous that F1 calls itself the high tech pinnacle of sport, when the cars are at best, 8% efficient and tons of energy is thrown away in heat. BMW already has heat-to-electric technology testing in road cars. Something's inverted when road cars are showing higher tech than F1.

As for KERS, Mercedes claims to have spent $ 100M on KERS, while Williams says they never exceeded $3M.

People said that about narrow F1 chassis specs.

Not true. The high downforce F1 cars of the 80s had closer racing than today's cars. You saw all kinds of close-wheel action and drafting.

This was one of the worst things the FIA ever did in my opinion, and as a live spectator it (along with the ever decreasing rev limits) ruined a large part of the experience for me. I have to agree with Cheapracer (I think), who said somewhere that he prefers the sound of the safety car to that of the F1 cars; I feel exactly the same way. A far cheaper and better alternative would have been to rev limit/throttle/fuel limit etc. the 2005 gen V10s.

The cars of the 80s had more power. There was no logical reason as to why V10s were outlawed.


The current F1 engines are far from spec.


High downforce? No way. And to be honest the racing wasn't always THAT good.

As for the current narrow track cars... that's merely a cosmetic difference. F1 engines are known for being WTF loud. Take away that and you take away a huge part of the spectacle.

Hardly surprising given that Mercedes-HPE had the best KERS system on the grid for most (or all, depending on who you believe) of 2009, whilst Williams had a system that massed 10s of kgs more, a much higher CoG and couldn't even endure a full race distance on the dyno.

The benefit of hindsight

Even then, we can't know whether the heavily restricted V10's would of been a better option.

And were eventually banned as they became too powerful and costly. Not to mention the less aerodynamically developed cars meant less g-forces on cornering speeds.

For those thinking about the loudness of the new formula, this are examples of how they may sound if (big IF) they ever put some turbines on the cars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIFaxA3dj3Y...player_embedded
http://www.stradsplace.com/VIDEOS/Mini-Turbine.wmv




Edit: Links above from http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewtopic...046934063bf587a

I think investing in a completely different engine formula was more costly than simply continuing development on an existing one. The amount of power was not the issue at all, especially considering how safe the cars were compared the the 80s cars which had more power.

Um. Did we see cars of the turbo era corner faster than the cars of 2004/2005? Of course not.

I wish I had a dollar for every time some motorsport know-it-all called Formula One engines "basically spec". No, not even close.

It will all end up with just one limit,a energi limit.
Take away engine limits,rev limits etc and just have a fuel-limit.
If f.ex 160 l fuel-limit is making it to fast for FIA just move the fuel-limit down to 140 l.
Let them drive 1000 hp KERS,6000cc v24 and 4-bar turbo if they can run the qual and race with the fixed amount of fuel onboard.

That's never gonna happen.

At issue is green relevance and keeping costs contained, those are the two things driving the discussion. Ferrari is rat-holing the discussions because it doesn't want to either do green or do small displacement turbos. to me that is the saddest part of it all, one team, is holding the entire sport hostage.

It's not just Ferrari. It's anyone who has to find the $ to do the new engine systems.
Also, I can't say strongly enough that road cars have far more "technology" on them than race cars. That is not the point. To just "have technology" is crazy. What you need is the technology necessary to win based on the formula to which you are running. All this "F1 should always be the pinnacle of technology" is only true in that narrow scope.

It isn't needed, and imo is not desired...During some of its best periods F1 was the domain of, mainly, specialists and enthusiast - with little or no pretensions of relevance.
Why can we not accept that the road car industry has increasingly divergent ends (away from performance) and that it is OK for F1's raison d'etre to not be the expression of current marketing trends...Of course in the short term $$$ will not currently allow this, but I believe one day F1 will reach this conclusion...

Disappointing article from Dieter today compared to the last couple on the engine saga. I disagree on his sentiments on Volkswagen scaring the competition but he's more than likely right about the freeze being extended and F1 doing it's best to screw the pooch yet again.

Just look at the state MotoGP is thanks to calls for the sport to be more road and manafacturer relevent - it's a mess. Development costs have gone through the roof, the grid is desperately tiny, but most of all the racing is usually very dull and that's all thanks to manafacturers using the sport as a R&D test bench for their road bikes. We now have Dorna and the FIM involved in a power struggle with the manafacturers because of this.

Twenty years ago GP Motorcycling was at its finest in a time when the technical regs had very little to do with actual road bikes and that is the same with F1. As with bikes road cars should be road cars and racing cars should be racing cars.

The V10s sounded great. Excess hp was a silly argument, plenty of ways to control that - excess hp doesn't make one go through a turn faster, and top end speed could have been limited for safety. Which would have made controlling said excess hp very interesting.


Fraking frak.

How do we not know? Wasn't it demonstrated pretty clearly by Torro Rosso?

(It's "would have," by the way.)

To be serious though, turbos really do decrease the loudness and muffle some of the sharpness of the exhaust note. This is extremely apparent when you listen to a straight piped engine in NA and turbo forms. The NA screams to high rpm and the turbo just never seems to reach that frenetic pace. It better shoot huge fireballs to make up for it. That is one of the virtues of turbo.

edit: 12,000 RPM rev limit? Ugh, just no. I'd rather listen to sport bikes tear down the street.