Filed under: Motorsports
No Fair! F1 teams lobby for engine parity
You'd think that the teams in Formula One would all be striving to eek out every little performance advantage they can, right? Well, not quite. It turns out that some of the teams are lobbying behind closed doors to equalize engine performance across the series.
The development has been prompted by Sebastian Vettel's landmark domination at this past weekend's Italian Grand Prix. The young German drives for Scuderia Toro Rosso, which essentially – and controversially – runs the same cars as the senior Red Bull Racing team, only with one major difference: the engine. While RBR uses Renault engines, STR is powered by Ferrari. And according to Red Bull chief Christian Horner, the performance advantage which Ferrari has cultivated over Renault is what allowed Vettel to beat out the Renault-powered Red Bull cars, to say nothing of the rest of the field. Horner insists that Renault has obeyed the engine development freeze currently in place, while Ferrari, BMW and McLaren partner Mercedes-Benz have taken advantage of loopholes that has allowed them to find as much as 30 extra horsepower. "We don't need an engine formula to completely open up," said Horner, "but there should be a parity as much as possible among the engine suppliers – otherwise we will all end up with one engine at the end of the day."
[Source: Autosport]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4agze 5:41PM (9/18/2008)
so they will call it A1 GP2 lol
Reply
HotRodzNKustoms 5:42PM (9/18/2008)
I got a great totally original solution for their problems. Buy all your motors from Ferrari!
Reply
Franz 5:49PM (9/18/2008)
Neither Renault or those running Renault engines can seriously blame McLaren, Ferrari & BMW for exploiting loop holes in the rules. They should've done the same. It's not like this sort of thing is new to F1. Ferrari seems to have gotten the better of everyone though, because the last round of changes they were allowed to make to their engines was to help with reliability, and they seem to have found a healthy dose of power as a bonus. They play this game better than anyone.
Reply
johdaxx 5:51PM (9/18/2008)
When they froze the design and capped the revs to 19000 the Renault was designed to rev to 19.8K and the Ferrari to 19.2K. And Ferrari have been making a lot of 'reliability' changes which can, to the FIA rules, result in more power.
The whole freeze thing was ridiculous anyway. If they want to limit power, limit them to a production engine block - that'd do it.
Reply
why not the LS2LS7? 5:54PM (9/18/2008)
I am quite certain all the big teams violated the no more power rule. I'm surprised Renault didn't.
It's a stupid, unenforceable rule. If Renault expected the others to follow along, they weren't paying enough attention all these years in F1.
I'm guessing Renault probably just froze development to save money and then decided to whine about it as an added bonus.
Reply
stealthebeatles 6:03PM (9/18/2008)
I think that the rules should be enforced better, not made with the expectation that people will break them. Renault has every right to complain about things.
hashiryu 7:22PM (9/18/2008)
The rule was retarded to begin with, and I look forward to them eeking out 900bhp one day from those v8s
Mobius_1 9:45PM (9/18/2008)
Yeah, they probably barely have enough money to pay Fernando Alonso and the dead workers...
why not the LS2LS7? 12:42AM (9/19/2008)
Hoping they'll be enforced is great. Expecting them to be enforced is naive.
tuna 5:56PM (9/18/2008)
Wouldn't things be simpler if they'd just impose a horsepower and torque cap? Doing so would force the manufacturers to focus on fuel efficiency and weight, producing more advanced technologies and materials in the process. Plus, it'd make the competition more about drivers' skill than it is currently. Seems like a win-win for all involved, including us who'd eventually benefit from those technologies trickling down to the mass production cars.
Reply
tankd0g 7:32PM (9/18/2008)
Then it wouldn't be F1. We don't need another spec series.
why not the LS2LS7? 9:25PM (9/18/2008)
F1 was already a spec series. With a displacement limit and a rev limit, the engine was pretty much spec. The tires are spec. The ECU is spec. The brakes are close to spec.
tuna 5:58PM (9/18/2008)
Wouldn't things be simpler if they'd just impose a horsepower and torque cap? Doing so would force the manufacturers to focus on fuel efficiency and weight, producing more advanced technologies and materials in the process. Plus, it'd make the competition more about drivers' skill than it is currently and F1 gets a greener image. Seems like a win-win for all involved, including us who'd eventually benefit from those technologies trickling down to the mass production cars.
Reply
Steven 6:10PM (9/18/2008)
I'm all ears to hear about how to cap horsepower.
Adam 6:17PM (9/18/2008)
The same way they have in other racing series, namely WRC.
Seriously.
hashiryu 7:23PM (9/18/2008)
Makes sense in theory, but they would never be able to enforce it.
Amedeo 6:35PM (9/18/2008)
Ok, Ferrari and McL may have squeezed out a little more HP.
If you have been following this weeks tests at Jerez though, you will notice that Vettel took the fastest time on the wednesday with his ride for next year, the Renault powered RB4, leaving the Toro Rosso's a while behind him.
So sure, some teams got more horsepower, but it seems odd that this is why they would make the engines all the same, because it shows that a driver can still make the combination work.
As reported on www.f1-live.com it would make more sense that they introduce a standard engine to reduce costs, not to stop these whiny rich team-owners complaining because they decided not to take advantage of a few loopholes.
Reply
Richard 6:51PM (9/18/2008)
All those big manufacturers.
All those bazillions of dollars spent for "promotion."
And a minnow (Scuderia Torro Rosso) wins (with a Ferrari engine). So the Mercedes board, the Quandt family, Carlos Ghosn, Honda and Toyota say: "Screw that!"
And they did.
Welcome to CART-Euro!
And of course Max bent over for it!
Save us Bernie!
Reply
Mez Jr 7:02PM (9/18/2008)
You can't really limit engines to one supplier in F1 at the stage they're at. Considering that F1 went all out to get automakers involved, do you really think they're going to not put their own motors in their own cars?
Reply
tankd0g 7:32PM (9/18/2008)
What a load of crap. He won because it rained and he played it right. I didn't see any Ferrari factory cars finishing in front of him.
Reply