u401768 wrote:The BMW engine in qual trim were making 1300HP (if i remember rightly thy remove the wastegate all together and boosted the engine to what ever it would make). I also remember seeing a photo of them adding the fuel to the car, and the pit crew were all in things that look like space suits with their own air tanks - it may have been petrol - just not as we know it.....
Heres a url with some interesting info:-
http://www.gurneyflap.com/bmwturbof1engine.html
It would be fun to see them back - but may be at 1000cc that would be fun. And remove the restriction on engine placement...there were at least 2 teams look seriously at front engine cars again before they emasculated the turbo engines...
Renault have said their engine dyno capped out at 1600 hp and their quali engines maxed it's capacity. They estimated from volumetric flow somewhere slightly over 1800. But that's for an engine that was meant to survive 3 laps, 4 tops.
I would expect seamless shift to be a real boon to an engine like that. Audi said the first year of their deisel endurance car that it wouldn't have been possible without modern transmissions.
By far the easiest way to break a drivetrain with an engine like this would be to start feeding power back in before the gears had fully meshed. Gerhard Burger once said something like it's not that the best drivers don't miss shifts, they just mis fewer of them. If memory serves, he said it right after blowing his car up at Monaco.
As far as putting restrictions on development, I'm not at all a fan of Bernie and his silly restrictions for the sake of restrictions. I mean, a mandatory included angle? Seriously? However, there must be restrictions. Someone in another thread noticed that F1 cars of 20 years ago were only about 5 sec. / lap slower than todays cars. That's because it's the tracks that are the limiting factor. If you want to make the cars significantly more powerful you will have cars with significantly more energy when they crash, which means much larger runoff areas, much stronger barriers (which the fans universally hate), and a much greater safety distance between the fans and the track.
Either that or you take your chances and eventually you kill a 100 or so fans, have your sport banned entirely and unless you were racing in some place like Bahrain probably face criminal charges as well.
