Cosworth Engine an UNFAIR advantage?

[Astro1]

IMO there is a possible (probable) Cosworth engine advantage for 2010, given that they have the opportunity to re-enter F1, design their engine, after knowing the rules on "no refiling" and after the others are limited by the engine freeze? Who is going to control this?

This is IMO yet another move to disadvantage the manufacturers left in the sport.

Why couldn't teams like Ferrari and Renault start separate companies,
(example Ferrari "covallino engines" and use that company as a 3rd party supplier.

If Cosworth can enter F1 as a supplier, why couldn't or can't a factory outift. IMO is is completely unfair to introduce an engine supplier, especial given the engine freeze and significant rule changes.

FIA BERNIE [-X

[Giblet]

Why? As soon as one team has an engine that is down on power to the others, they are allowed to make changes to equalize.

Cosworth has been out of F1 while the teams have been honing their art, and have had time to test on their in house dynos full race simulations across multiple permutations.

Cosworth has been sitting down, laying off, and not developing for the most part of a couple of years.

On development time alone, their engines will likely either explode, or be overengineered to not explode, putting them down on power.

What is stopping a team like Ferrari from supplying engines, is that Ferrari supplies subpar high mileage engines to their customers, where a bespoke supplier has to sell the same lump to different teams. The FIA will not allow phantom companies like "Red Bull Racing Technologies" to act as offshore banks for IP, skirting the rules and their intentions for fairness.

Also, all the designers on all the teams do not consider the rule change to be that significant to the design. They know what they have to do. I don't see how the struggling Cossy can be said to have an advantage of any kind.

Sam Michael said on the subject "A Newton is still a Newton and gravity is still 9.8m2". They think their biggest design challenge is the baffles of the fuel tanks, which will be handled by ship building companies software.

I picture a calm, proffesional design office, and suddenly someone yells "What?!?! FULL RACE FUEL TANKS?!?!?!" and suddenly papers are flying through the air, phones are ringing off the hook, and people are running into each other as they panic and scream.

[Jersey Tom]

Thread can be summarized in 2 words:

Pure conjecture.

[Astro1]

I believe, that the FIA did, allow for some changes to be made to "re-equalize" the engines, but we are talking about a company starting from scratch, and companies having to modify what they've already got. The scope of the allowed modifications is unknown and I doubt that the teams can simply introduce entirely NEW engine blocks. That is not to say that new blocks will be needed, but certainly designing your engine knowing that "economy" will mean carrying less fuel weight the overall output of the engine becomes a moot point; economy though is still paramount no?

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, of course, FIA is going to control this, as you already know. Actually, that's one of the few things I find hard to complain about when FIA is involved: control.

Perhaps you want to follow this link before taking too hard a stance on our exalted Jean Todt and his merry fellows:

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/pr ... _fota.aspx

Excerpts for the "I will never follow a link" kind of guys:

"The lesson which emerged from five years of attempts to contain engine costs was that real savings could only be achieved by the removal of technical freedom: the engine freeze. All attempts to limit expenditure by ever-tighter technical restrictions failed. This is why we currently have a frozen engine, which will soon have to be replaced. The consensus is that the replacement will have to have a budget - a limit on what can be spent on development and a limit on unit cost, just like the engines being developed for road cars. The alternative would be to go back to unlimited expenditure on racing engines by the major car companies. This was never a rational approach, but would be insane in the current climate."

Please, be gentle with me and do not, I repeat, do not comment on the rest of the document in that link in this thread. I think it has its share of venom and we want to be happy here, don't we?

[Giblet]

They still have no time to tweak whatever magic design they come up with, let alone test it. They are not wizards.

Cosworth is not starting from scratch, they already have a high reving 2.4 v8. They do not have deep pockets. They went bankrupt and closed their doors for a time, and their founder has recently died. It could be argued they are at their weakest ever, until the new season starts and the engines get proven.

It won't look good if they really suck, a lot of cars will be in the rear stuck with the same lump.

We don't know what the changes are, but most importantly, the teams do as they all sit on these change requests. We also don't know if what you are saying is anything, but like said, pure conjecture.

Reanult had to basically get the approval from other teams to modify their engine.

[Astro1]

Well, saying that they will be underpowered is IMO not correct. We don't know if they will or won't be underpowered. The fact is they have the opportunity to be overpowered NO?

Weather you believe it or not, but Max's attempts to drive all the manufacturers out of F1 and to have everyone run the same Spec engine, regardless of how stupid it would be for the premiere racing series in the world to run just one engine. He pushed the new teams to use Cosworth engines. One of his "ally" teams, Williams, has now gone to Cosworth power. He's got a massive stake in the success of the engine, and I'm sure he's done everything he can to help Cosworth put together a top piece in order to further his agenda.

We have already seen political decisions F1, (DDD) being the perfect example that flipped the field to suddenly have those at the bottom winning races from those at the top. Why couldn't Cosworth be destined to become the engine of choice, slowing pushing the larger teams out further still?

Williams has been quoted as saying that "The manufacturer dominance in F1 is over" etc etc. I see no reason not to believe that they know something, and that this is yet another move towards a spec series.

The FIA has just come back from a seminar about "overtaking in motorosport" why couldn't "SPEC" be the topic of discussion and agenda?

[Giblet]

Well, saying that they will be underpowered is IMO not correct. We don't know if they will or won't be underpowered. The fact is they have the opportunity to be overpowered NO?

Weather you believe it or not, but Max's attempts to drive all the manufacturers out of F1 and to have everyone run the same Spec engine, regardless of how stupid it would be for the premiere racing series in the world to run just one engine. He pushed the new teams to use Cosworth engines. One of his "ally" teams, Williams, has now gone to Cosworth power. He's got a massive stake in the success of the engine, and I'm sure he's done everything he can to help Cosworth put together a top piece in order to further his agenda.

We have already seen political decisions F1, (DDD) being the perfect example that flipped the field to suddenly have those at the bottom winning races from those at the top. Why couldn't Cosworth be destined to become the engine of choice, slowing pushing the larger teams out further still?

Williams has been quoted as saying that "The manufacturer dominance in F1 is over" etc etc. I see no reason not to believe that they know something, and that this is yet another move towards a spec series.

The FIA has just come back from a seminar about "overtaking in motorosport" why couldn't "SPEC" be the topic of discussion and agenda?

Sorry, again, you are missing the point that Cosworth has less time and money in the bank to DEVELOP the engine. This same spec engine that all the other teams have been pouring over a a couple of years.

There are more things stopping Cosworth from making a corker of an engine than there are reasons they could. It's all pluses and minuses. Cossy is rusty my friend.

A design needs tweaking from virtual space to reality.

Regardless of whatever intentions you may or may not be projecting onto the FIA has little relevance to Cosworths actual ability to trump the likes of giants like Mercedes and Ferrari. Even Reanult, the red headed step child engine of F1, has so much real world data and testing compared to Cosworth on the V8, with huge lubricant supplier investment.

I would hazard to say an F1 engine is impossible to make overpowered. Once you have more power, that is good, but these engines dance a fine line of power vs lifespan that is very easy to screw up, especially when you are rusty.
Do you see why the deck is so stacked against Cosworth's favor?

"Sorry Lewis we can't use that engine, it has too much power."

[Astro1]

I understand what you are saying and see it as a very likely outcome. Certainly if I was betting money on engines, Cosworth wouldn't be at the top of the list.

It's just that in the current F1 political atmosphere I can't help but think of a possibility that this may be another move away from what f1 is. (An is that agreed is debatable). I don't think though, that I would write them off just yet, becuase we really don't know what they are doing or how much capital they have invested or are investing.

When is the deadline to have an engine submitted to the FIA for next season? Is there one?

[Giblet]

They did have a very high revving corker at one point early in the cosworth v8 development, but the advantage was very short lived.

Anything is a possibility, but I am going to pretend to be ignorant for a short while and see what happens with Todtsley (Moslodt is just awkward), as the winds of change might be blowing.

It will be an interesting off season and test run. I hope the first thing changed is testing allotments.

But yeah, at least for 2010, we can probably count Cosworth as out, but 2011, with that many teams firing your pistons, that's a lot of data other teams won't have. Being a bespoke engine manufacturer with a narrow focus and nothing else might play to their advantage since design was not their strongest suit in the past.

No idea really about deadlines, but I am sure they won't have an UNFAIR advantage Mr.Scandalous Headline.

[WhiteBlue]

According to Michael Schmidt of Auto Motor und Sport, FIA and FOTA agreed about performance control of the 2010 engines during the Abu Dhabi weekend. All relevant engine parameters are supposed to be equalised to within 2%. He mentioned explicitly power and fuel consumption.

Schmidt is extremely well connected with manufacturers and the FIA. He has covered 400 F1 GPs for the German press. Considering his information I do not think that we have a problem in the making. Apparently one of the first moves by Jean Todt was the engine question and it looks like he got that covered.

[Astro1]

According to Michael Schmidt of Auto Motor und Sport, FIA and FOTA agreed about performance control of the 2010 engines during the Abu Dhabi weekend. All relevant engine parameters are supposed to be equalised to within 2%. He mentioned explicitly power and fuel consumption.

Schmidt is extremely well connected with manufacturers and the FIA. He has covered 400 F1 GPs for the German press. Considering his information I do not think that we have a problem in the making. Apparently one of the first moves by Jean Todt was the engine question and it looks like he got that covered.

Not that number lower than 2% is practical, but 2% is nearly 15hp on a 750hp engine. and I'm really interested how that 2% is going to be figured in terms of "fuel consumption".

A team that's allowed changes has to be withing 2% of what? The top engine or the lowest?

[xpensive]

According to Michael Schmidt of Auto Motor und Sport, FIA and FOTA agreed about performance control of the 2010 engines during the Abu Dhabi weekend. All relevant engine parameters are supposed to be equalised to within 2%. He mentioned explicitly power and fuel consumption.

Schmidt is extremely well connected with manufacturers and the FIA. He has covered 400 F1 GPs for the German press. Considering his information I do not think that we have a problem in the making. Apparently one of the first moves by Jean Todt was the engine question and it looks like he got that covered.

If this is true WB, F1 is just one step away from a spec-series and I seriously wonder why any manufacturer would bother when you can't make much of a performance difference anyway, neither power- nor efficiency-wise.

The other part is that I fail to see how it would work, are you out if your engine has less than 98% of the power of Mercedes, or should the FIA set target-numbers for the relevant parameters?
Besides, I figure that many within engineering would agree that it's difficult enough to keep machinery from the same production-line within a 2% distribution performane-wise?

[Fil]

If this is true WB, F1 is just one step away from a spec-series and I seriously wonder why any manufacturer would bother when you can't make much of a performance difference anyway, neither power- nor efficiency-wise.

The other part is that I fail to see how it would work, are you out if your engine has less than 98% of the power of Mercedes, or should the FIA set target-numbers for the relevant parameters?
Besides, I figure that many within engineering would agree that it's difficult enough to keep machinery from the same production-line within a 2% distribution performane-wise?

agreed, how is power-equivalency decided when some teams may detune their engines for better fuel efficiency as a tactic? Brawn's could be more than 2% out based on their tune compared to the FI engine..

As for the production line bit.. i hardly think 8 engines per year is a usual production line. i'd love some hard facts, but at this level i would be very surprised if they were out by more than a few hp.
altho this does beg the question, what constitutes your 8 allocated engines? do the teams build.. lets say.. 16 engines, and then, after testing them inhouse, submit their best 8 to the FIA?

[xpensive]

I'm rather certain that Mercedes built a few more than the minimum number of engines to be used this season.

How is that again, eight engines per team or car, 24 or 48 units? Wonder which team got which engines, luck of the draw?