Just_a_fan wrote:90% say it's important for F1 to be cutting edge. These engines are cutting edge. If they were louder no one would be moaning about the engines.
It's quite amazing that they can make so much power from a small engine and then vent it through an open pipe and it's so quiet. Turbo cars can be noisy as we have seen in the past. Efficient turbo cars much less so.
As with all of these surveys the results are fairly meaningless. In effect it says "we want what we want and we want it now" "yes, but what do you want?" "we want what we want". There is never any meaningful data in the noise. See the bits where they complain that F1 is boring but don't want to slow it down if it makes for better racing.
First, you can't dismiss something as meaningless noise and then cite that very same meaningless noise to support another opinion one way or the other.
Second, "better racing" means different things to different people. For instance, the GPDA survey suggests "better racing" doesn't necessarily mean more overtaking...
Lastly, of course the data is flawed, because respondents weren't randomly selected. However, that doesn't mean the numbers presented are useless.
If we know that 90.1% of respondents (to the Autosport survey) believe F1 should feature cutting edge technology, but only 32% (from the GPDA survey) believe F1 needs to promote increasing fuel efficiency, it's perfectly valid to question whether or not hybrid powertrains are the answer. (For what it's worth, there's nothing about current engines that's genuinely on the cutting edge. From the hybrid layout to HCCI combustion, it's all been done before. The word here is novel. F1 power units are novel.)
And since 46.1% of respondents are against the 1.6L turbo-hybrid formula, but only 35.7% (from the same survey) think the cars aren't loud enough, we can safely assume that objections to the formula aren't just related to how it sounds.
