turbof1 wrote:@Phil: what you are telling is that if Renault, Mercedes, Honda and Ferrari end up being slower then the alternative engine, is that they have to dump their high cost PUs to run an engine which cannot be produced by their own or rebranded. They are not going to do that. Rather they will leave the sport in that situation. They are in this to get brand exposure as engine manufacturers, to show how high techy techy they are. Running an engine that is not theirs is taking all of that exposure away, along with the incentive to stay in F1. Yes, even in the cases of Renault and Honda, who have not invested dozens of millions into highly regulated PUs, just to be beaten by an engine free from many restrictions.
I'm not saying what they will or won't do; I'm saying what they
can do. I really don't see it as a big issue. The big F1 teams are in F1 for promotional reasons, for exposure, image, prestige etc. It's a big marketing exercise. Not because they can prove that they can build engines. If the 'winning formula' is using an alternative engine by a supplier that is cheaper and off-the-shelve, it's not all bad. The important point is
winning with a car that has your name attached to it. People don't buy cars because of the engine inside; they buy it for all sorts of reasons, namely brand name, maybe prestige and the sum of all pieces that either makes the package attractive or not. When we had engine freezes it didn't stop teams from being in F1, so it's daft to suggest that if the sport moves to include alternative engines not bound by the same rules that end up being better to win, that everyone would just pick up and leave (especially if they could use those very engines and slash a huge sum off their R&D and engine development program).
Yes, the current dominator - Mercedes - might not be happy, but at least 2 from those 4 engine makers are not winning and are far away from even being close to. They'd trade an alternative engine that's capable of winning and increasing their success with their own not working engines in a heartbeat. Look at Renault; They're in such a crisis, we're still not sure yet if they'll be around next year. Because the exposure they are getting with the engine is namely negative and the money they are investing isn't paying off. It's not helping them better their image nor is it helping them sell more cars. And at this point, it's not a given that the money they are going to have to invest will yield any reward, or indeed if they can close that gap - if its in their ability to. Honda might find themselves in a similar spot if 2016 turns out the same as 2015. Ferrari is a toss up; They've been in F1 long enough to understand why they are in here and it certainly hasn't got anything to do with hybrid engines they're not using to promote their sports-cars anyway. And even if they are like Mercedes do, people are not actually stupid enough to think they are buying Mercedes A class with actual F1 engines in there.
What it effectively boils down to is that the sport is in a mess. We either have a sport that demands that you need to build your own engines to either have one and be competitive (which is clearly no given, seeing that from 4 engine makers, only 1 is capable of winning on a regular basis, another is close and the leftovers are far far away from that) and if you can't, well, then you're just there to fill the grid. Or we have alternative engines that are not bound by the same rules and thus might end up being better and that will give a viable alternative to most teams that is cheaper and performs better, but at the risk that it might upset the engine manufacturers. Either way, you're going to mess with someones interests.
Or, the engine manufacturers come to their senses and realize this can all go away by folding, enabling a selling-price-cap that is better affordable and not go the way of wanting A and B spec engines that will artificially give them control over how competitive their customer is.
The biggest problem is that we have a situation where a team might end up without an engine. That IMO is the biggest problem of all; it might be wrong to force a supplier to supply a team, but it's equally wrong to have a team unwilling to find an engine of choice. It is essentially because the engine suppliers are their own teams and because of that, supplying will have a certain conflict of interest. It's neither the fault of the suppliers nor the customers, but it's something the sport needs to address. The alternative engine just might do this (not without tears, but sometimes one has to chose the lesser of two evils).
