- 30 Jun 11, 17:59#263460Forced induction tends to reduce reliability but it isn't carved in stone. And the decision whether it's worth the risk is best left to the teams themselves.
Stephen, I have been arguing in favour of your point for quite some time. The FIA are too meddlesome and too controlling.
F1 isn't a thing so much as it's a process. It reached its present station through the blood, sweat and toil of generations of designers and engineers exploiting the limits of the FISA's/FIA's rules and exploring the limits or Professor Newton's rules, which, at different times, left them free to experiment with forced induction, active ground effects, active suspension, continuously adjustable aerodynamics, all-wheel drive, gas turbine engines, even six wheeled cars!!! The current Bernie-inspired trend toward manipulating the formula in the interest of controlling costs serves to the detriment of the creativity and inventiveness of the engineers. The sport no longer is evolving, now it's being gardened like some damned bonsai tree, forever kept in a tiny pot with its roots trimmed sort, lest it should grow overly large.
A classic example of F1's process of evolution through competition was the V-10 engine. Ferrari undoubtedly is the world's leading proponent of the 12-cylinder car. As Il Commendatore famously said to driver/journalist Paul Frère, "Una Ferrari è una macchina di dodici cilindri." Enzo was so committed to this principle that when his company first marketed six and eight-cylinder cars, he insisted they be badged as Dinos rather than Ferraris. So, naturally, Ferrari raced 12-cylinder engines.
And the earth fair shook in 1996 when the Scuderia broke with a tradition dating back to 1964 and campaigned a V-10 F1 engine. Why had they made the change? Because of the new 3-litre displacement limit.
Since the earlier 3-litre era, research and race results had demonstrated the clear advantage of a cylinder sized from 300 to 350ccs (due to optimal thermodynamic efficiency). Ferrari's testing confirmed they could not tolerate the loss of performance a 250cc cylinder would have produced. So they swallowed their pride and built a V-10.
Thank god Enzo already was dead, else it would have killed him.
You'll never see Formula 1 return to that kind of inventiveness again, until the FIA overcome their phobia of a return to a free and unfettered evolution of the sport.
"I'll bet ya a hundred and five thousand dollars you go to sleep before I do."
--Dobbsie
