Ecclestone outlines dramatic F1 engine plans

[Shaddock]

Anyway, Max now seems to be hell bent on pushing as many manufacturers out of team ownership as possible. My take on things is that these engines are designed to carry as many teams as possible back into F1 as independently owned teams. If there was not a focus on independent teams, the FIA would not be talking about tendering for a 'stock' F1 engine for independents. That fact alone says a great deal about his thought processes. I would not be surprised to see Renault get the contract with Flav taking his team onwards in F1 as an independent.

I totally agree with you, this is about political power within the sport as much as saving money. Whilst the barriers to entry to the sport remain high –

To be competitive you will need a couple of wind tunnels operating 24/7 the odd supercomputer, 300-400 staff, and a powerful and reliable power-plant. In practical terms about 350 million startup, and 200-300 million a year thereafter, and a slice of good luck.

Only big companies can afford this kind of cash, and whilst that is not healthy for the sport in the long term, it gives the companies political clout with Max and Bernie. With no new entrants to F1, the existing teams can threaten to break away and demand more money from TV revenues. Max and Bernie can’t do without them at present otherwise F1 would collapse, so under the cost cutting agenda they can weaken their position by lowering the barriers to entry to the sport.

If Toyota pulls out for example, then a new team can replace them with a cheap standard engine/gearbox/ker package that can be bolted onto a chassis with the standard suspension and aero to go along with it. They will effectively be in a competitive situation straight away with little capital expenditure.

Whether this would still be F1 I don’t know, and whether it would still be exciting, again remains a mystery.

I also think that Cosworth would be the favourite to win the contract to provide standard engine IMO.

[Conceptual]

SO far, the engine freeze has given us a 2007 championship that was decided by one point in the last race, and second and third tied. In 2008, we are seeing a field of cars qualifying in its closest pole-to-caboose laptime gap, and the championship going down to the wire, with 3 different drivers from 3 different teams going into the last 2 races, and the Underdogs have won the last 3 races!!!

If what Bernie is after is the "spectacle" that gets people to watch, he has it right now in spades. There is decent overtaking, close racing, and tight championships. Mind the stewards, they are gonna be fixed soon.

Why, oh WHY would you want to make a dramatic change and potentially LOSE what you have and add uncertainty? It MAY make things better, but I don't see how it could really GET any better. The racing is CLOSE, why change fundamentals at this point and blow that?

I hope that they keep this engine for next year with the KERS. 2009 is looking to be even better than 07 and 08 with KERS, less downforce, slick tyres, movable aero and clean-wake cars. If I were the FIA, I would postpone any changes until AFTER they see if the 2009 regs are going to be that magic combination that really levels the field, and allows the driver vs. driver battles of the late 80s and early 90s to become the norm once again.

I am starting to believe a different acronym of the FIA, and that is "Fix It Again". Its as close to perfectly balanced as it can get for next year, how about you get some data from your last test before proposing NEW changes?

Radioshack Corporate operates like that. Morning memo changed 100 things from yesterday, and then the Noon memo would change those same things again. One of the reasons that I left their company, to be honest. They never allowed the changes to produce results before fixing them, and it seems as if the FIA suffer from the same disease. A Lack of Confidence in their People.

[EAKMotorsports]

Where is the Team Manufacture Spirit !!!!!! F1 getting worse every season regulation change.

Maybe is time to sir max mosley to get out of f1 world.

I think Max want to F1 turn a SLOT CAR RACE.

Time to race with soap car box...

[WhiteBlue]

Going for HERS and KERS is the right thing to do in terms of pushing for better energy efficiency in racing. I believe this standardized engine scheme is nothing like the big hammer to get the manufacturer teams to supply the customers with long life, low cost engines at manufacturing cost and a tiny profit.

The F2 deal is the leverage. It was done very close to budget and everybody said it can't be done. It could well be true that behind the scene Briatore gets Meccachrome into position to get the engine deal or someone else has got hold of Cosworth and is preparing to do the deal. Such alternatives are going to put the screws on the manufacturers to do what they always avoided. In the end they will comply because they will believe in the threat.

Nevertheless I think it is all a big smokscreen to distract from operation "Free Budget & Engines". This is what Max and Bernie wanted for years and I believe they have internally agreed to push this through. Auto manufacturers will be allowed to continue to pour money into F1 but they will be prohibited to use their big budgets as a competitive advantage in engines.

According to Auto Motor und Sport LINK in German the FOTA is split on the issue of engines. Ferrari, McMerc, BMW, Toyota and Honda are opposed to standard engines. The privat teams are in favour and Renault as well. This really supports the idea that Meccachrome is behind the external supplier scheme.

I believe Bernie and Max have decided to rehash the TV money distribution from constructors points to basically a flat rate. This will ensure that all twelve possible teams will have sufficient budgets and engines. It should make racing more interesting and provide more teams and drivers that different countries can sympathise with. Bernie has paid very close attention to the Schumacher effect in Germany and the Alonso effect in Spain. Hamilton should do the same for Britain and there could be Poland, Germany again and Japan if he gets championships for Kubica, Vettel or Nakjima.

Hence Bernie gets more TV viewers and more money. Max puts his foot into Ron and Merc for opposing him and retires after winning the last round.

How is that for conspiracy theory?

[woohoo]

Apparently the manufacturer teams have threatened to quit:
http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headlines/n ... 1708.shtml

And I fear you may be onto something WhiteBlue.

Personally im all for a split. If the major teams decide to split, Max+Bernie can do what they want.

Can anyone imagine, Ferrari wanting to run with engines form someone else ???

[Scotracer]

I've resorted to watching old races of which I've forgotten the result (sad but very true). This evening it is the 1997 French Grand Prix!

[Ciro Pabón]

Mmmmm.... wait a minute. Let me bring my calculator and check how green they are.

Well, have you bought anything by advertising?
F1 is a big moving ad banner for quite a while. However I agree in a sence that chasing "greener" technology should not be an excuse for producing slow and over-featured cars.
In case of fuel efficiency - actual termodynamic efficiency of F1 car is much higher than of a standart road car.

Well, timbo, you're right as usual. However, both regular engines and F1 engines suck at "greenery". I bet that some of the more brilliant minds in mechanical engineering along with a pile of money could do some good to transportation.

I'm not asking for converting F1 into a pure research thingie "to fight world poverty", it's about racing, but I'm sure that "oldies" like, I don't know Chapman, would be more practical that Mosley, chasing the "green" thing. I see most of his discourses and pretexts on that issue as just that: lame excuses to gain some leverage in negotiations.

Frankly, I wonder when we will see radically different engines. This requires the thermodinamic approach you seem to suggest, like the highly respected prize they give at Le Mans for thermodynamic efficiency.

That would be a radical approach: equalize the energy content for the cars and allow them to use anything they want for engines. That would open the engines for innovation, instead of relying solely on "prohibitions", very similar to the ones we suffered (and suffer) on drugs and alcohol. That's not the way to "do it".

After all, paraphrasing, "in this forum, we obey the laws of thermodynamics, and that's final!"

Happy birthday, donskar. Sorry I'm late. The older, the wiser, my man. =D>

That's a good idea, scot. I swear I watched this morning a part of 1980 Long Beach. What a race, and how those cars moved.

[ISLAMATRON]

Sir, in this you are well off the truth. I usually leave it to Ciro to figure out the numbers as I usually look at magnitudes and force multipliers.

Lighting an F1 race will set the ecology and economy back by 3.6 MW times 24 h. The energy is so small you cannot even begin to compare that to the energy consumed by the global fleet of motor cars. we are talking about half a billion cars in the foreseeable future. each of them having an everage use of 50kW applied lets say again 4h in the period of 2 weeks between races.

What FOM and FIA want to achieve is a significant reduction in consumption of the global fleet as a result of the accelerated research the manufacturing teams will be doing. if they manage to contribute an improvement of 1% of everage efficiency in say 2013 I leave it to you to figure what a difference 500.000.000 cars will make. It will be way more than the drop of oil for the night race.

And they will achieve this with an engine freeze and standard engines? BS

They have their agenda, that's right, but it's not green under the cover.

No they wont do it with engine freeze or standard engines, they will do it with kERS & moveable aero, but the small teams wont survive or compete if they cant afford an engine program & a KERS program & a gearbox program & a moveable aero program. Engines & gearboxes have been done to death, it is time for limited money to be spent on the new technology... what electronics companies do you see out there pouring money into VCR R&D? None, bcuz it is an obselete technology, same to be said about DVD's, they pour money into the next technology, not the past one. F1 is just trying to move on to the new technologies while not spending too much on the old technologies, becuz if you haven't noticed the economy isnt doing too well.

[modbaraban]

No they wont do it with engine freeze or standard engines, they will do it with kERS & moveable aero, but the small teams wont survive or compete if they cant afford an engine program & a KERS program & a gearbox program & a moveable aero program. Engines & gearboxes have been done to death, it is time for limited money to be spent on the new technology... what electronics companies do you see out there pouring money into VCR R&D? None, bcuz it is an obselete technology, same to be said about DVD's, they pour money into the next technology, not the past one. F1 is just trying to move on to the new technologies while not spending too much on the old technologies, becuz if you haven't noticed the economy isnt doing too well.

Well car isn't the newest invention eather... becuz if you haven't noticed F1 is all about buildnig the fastest car to beat others. With those methods they'll soon end up with completely standard cars and the key area of development would be driver training and 'pharmacy'

Have you ever thought why teams are so thourough about getting every 0.01 per lap of those gearboxes and fiddling around with fins and winglets? That's because all the major innovative stuff was banned long ago. There's no room left for thinking out of the box... that hole in the F2008 nosecone was a shoker discussed all over the F1 web. WOW!!! But it wouldn't get much attention 20 years ago. It's just another hole...
You can either let them invest in road relevant technology, or just cut costs by tightening the regs further and introduce new technology through mandatory the adaption of 10-year old Prius technology to F1 standards so that it would look kinda green-ish, like those idiotic painted tyre grooves. It's one or another. There's no 3rd way.

[WhiteBlue]

No they wont do it with engine freeze or standard engines, they will do it with kERS & moveable aero, but the small teams wont survive or compete if they cant afford an engine program & a KERS program & a gearbox program & a moveable aero program. Engines & gearboxes have been done to death, it is time for limited money to be spent on the new technology... what electronics companies do you see out there pouring money into VCR R&D? None, bcuz it is an obselete technology, same to be said about DVD's, they pour money into the next technology, not the past one. F1 is just trying to move on to the new technologies while not spending too much on the old technologies, becuz if you haven't noticed the economy isnt doing too well.

Well car isn't the newest invention eather... becuz if you haven't noticed F1 is all about buildnig the fastest car to beat others. With those methods they'll soon end up with completely standard cars and the key area of development would be driver training and 'pharmacy'

Have you ever thought why teams are so thourough about getting every 0.01 per lap of those gearboxes and fiddling around with fins and winglets? That's because all the major innovative stuff was banned long ago. There's no room left for thinking out of the box... that hole in the F2008 nosecone was a shoker discussed all over the F1 web. WOW!!! But it wouldn't get much attention 20 years ago. It's just another hole...
You can either let them invest in road relevant technology, or just cut costs by tightening the regs further and introduce new technology through mandatory the adaption of 10-year old Prius technology to F1 standards so that it would look kinda green-ish, like those idiotic painted tyre grooves. It's one or another. There's no 3rd way.

hey modbaraban,

the fastest car may not be the one with the highest power and the highest downforce but the one with the lowest weight penalty due to lowest consumption. did you ever consider that?

[Conceptual]

I still would like to see the 0-100 times of an F1 car with the Hydristor installed.

There is your spec gearbox!

[WhiteBlue]

I don't think the hydristor will stand up to the claims of its inventor.
Regarding the finance of F1 I recommend http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_ ... fes_page=3

[modbaraban]

hey modbaraban,

the fastest car may not be the one with the highest power and the highest downforce but the one with the lowest weight penalty due to lowest consumption. did you ever consider that?

Yes I did. And to reduce consumtion of a spec car you need a... what? Perhaps a driver that uses throttle better.

[timbo]

That would be a radical approach: equalize the energy content for the cars and allow them to use anything they want for engines. That would open the engines for innovation, instead of relying solely on "prohibitions", very similar to the ones we suffered (and suffer) on drugs and alcohol. That's not the way to "do it".

Eh, I like idea of "energy content limit" per race and I like the idea of budget cap. That would be interesting from technical side to give an engineer limited resources and unlimited possibilities. Quite a real world situation...
Sweet dreams...

Right now I'm thinking more about political side of current situation. I can't help but think that Bernie amd Max are afraid of FOTA, maybe they fear that it would drew power from them. On the other hand people who liked 70s should not oppose standart engine, maybe that's the logic of FIA, but there's a difference between a standart de-facto and de-juro. Or maybe with that move FIA is saying to Renault, Honda and others who wanted equal engine performance - get what you wanted.
Strange times we are at.
Competition in F1 are at its highest. All teams except FI and SA were on podium, yet there's much moaning at all sides...

[WhiteBlue]

hey modbaraban,

the fastest car may not be the one with the highest power and the highest downforce but the one with the lowest weight penalty due to lowest consumption. did you ever consider that?

Yes I did. And to reduce consumtion of a spec car you need a... what? Perhaps a driver that uses throttle better.

not really. you start making efficiency improvements like we have seen this year. less engine friction, lower thermodynamic losses from exhaust velocity and temperature, lower cooling requirements to the engine, less aerodynamic drag at given downforce, better HERS and KERS. you can go on and on. teams havn't even scratched that surface.