F1 News
Date: 7/September/2012
The 2014 F1 World Championship could be decided by engine reliability rather than driver skill.
That was the concern raised by some team bosses at Monza on Friday, when asked about the impact of new engine and powertrain changes for the 2014 season.
Not only will the present current 2.4 litre normally-aspirated V8s be replaced by 1.6 litre turbocharged V6s - featuring further Energy Recovery Systems - but the number of engines available to each driver will be cut from eight to five.
With testing also heavily restricted, there is a real risk that one of the engine manufacturers could dominate the 2014 season, and that some others will struggle with major reliability issues.
“The concern when you have a big change in the regulations is that you don't want an engine reliability issue, especially when you are limited to just five engines per driver,” said Lotus Team Principal Eric Boullier.
“And you don't want to have one engine and powertrain manufacturer dominating, compared with the others, so there are a lot of question marks.
“We have to rely on the governing body [FIA] to make sure that any reliability issues are fixed by the beginning of the season.”
Red Bull’s Christian Horner agreed and, with only three engine suppliers now predicted for 2014, hopes that some kind of safety net will be provided to prevent any ‘unhealthy’ advantages.
“The key thing to remember is that technology will be very new,” he said. “Basically 50 percent of the power will come mechanically and fifty percent of the power will come electronically.
“The technology will be very immature and then you're talking about homologation of engines as well at the beginning of the season. So it would be very easy to freeze in an advantage or a disadvantage which would be unhealthy for the sport.
“So hopefully there will be some constructive discussion in the coming weeks to ensure that a performance advantage or disadvantage for a manufacturer, of which potentially there will only be three, will be addressed, particularly in the early years.
“It will all converge over time but as the technology is particularly immature there could be quite large variances, certainly in the first year or two.”
A long-running concern hanging over the new engine rules is cost.
The new engines are sure to be more expensive than the present V8s, at least at first. The big question for Toro Rosso’s Franz Tost is how much prices will fall in subsequent seasons.
“It’s not possible to make it as cheap as now, because there’s a new engine, new ERS system and new batteries,” he said. “So 2014 will become an expensive year.
“Now the question, how is the price depreciation in the following years? Can we level the costs down to an acceptable amount? This we will see and I hope that we can negotiate this with the manufacturers.
“I hope the manufacturers will be as fair as they were in the past. And then I’m convinced that we will find a solution.”
Turbo engines have not been seen in F1 since 1988, after which they were replaced by normally-aspirated engines of 3.5 (1989-1994), 3.0 (1995-2005) and then 2.8 litre (2006 to present) capacity.
No comments:
Post a Comment