- 05 Nov 07, 02:31#22458
I simply cannot believe the shortsightedness of the FIA in banning all engine development for 10 years. What is the point? How is a car manufacturer supposed to pretend that F1 inputs their road cars when they bring out a new road car every three years, four in the course of a single design engine lifespan???
Now my point is this: It's not well known but the name "Formula One" refers to a formula which was devised to match normally aspirated and supercharged cars. This dates back before the Second World War, lasting until 1952, followed by a similar formula in the mid-50s, and again in 1966 the engine regs allowed normally aspirated cars to compete with turbos until the end of 1988. Renault only took up the Turbo gauntlet in 1977, but within two years they were winning races. It's about time we got this multiple-formula idea back.
Nowadays in F1, every car is a 2.4 litre normally aspirated V8 petrol engine, which in the current climate is so short-sighted as to be criminal. What about the diesels that are winning Le Mans? What about the biofuel-powered Aston Martins in sportscars? what about hybrids? What about fuel cells? what about hydrogen power? What about simply allowing any engine configuration, not just V8s?
The FIA, if it had any sense, would instead of narrowing engine development open it up to all these new possibilities, with a different formula (possibly covering chassis as well as engines) for each one. In this way manufacturers could quite easily justify an F1 project as a genuine branch of their R&D project, and get fantastic publicity from what the achieve, as Audi and Peugeot are with their deisel Le Mans entries. I doubt it's a coincidence that neither of these manufacturers or their parent companies are in F1 as it happens...
I really wish I had any trust in the FIA to think like this, but...
Now my point is this: It's not well known but the name "Formula One" refers to a formula which was devised to match normally aspirated and supercharged cars. This dates back before the Second World War, lasting until 1952, followed by a similar formula in the mid-50s, and again in 1966 the engine regs allowed normally aspirated cars to compete with turbos until the end of 1988. Renault only took up the Turbo gauntlet in 1977, but within two years they were winning races. It's about time we got this multiple-formula idea back.
Nowadays in F1, every car is a 2.4 litre normally aspirated V8 petrol engine, which in the current climate is so short-sighted as to be criminal. What about the diesels that are winning Le Mans? What about the biofuel-powered Aston Martins in sportscars? what about hybrids? What about fuel cells? what about hydrogen power? What about simply allowing any engine configuration, not just V8s?
The FIA, if it had any sense, would instead of narrowing engine development open it up to all these new possibilities, with a different formula (possibly covering chassis as well as engines) for each one. In this way manufacturers could quite easily justify an F1 project as a genuine branch of their R&D project, and get fantastic publicity from what the achieve, as Audi and Peugeot are with their deisel Le Mans entries. I doubt it's a coincidence that neither of these manufacturers or their parent companies are in F1 as it happens...
I really wish I had any trust in the FIA to think like this, but...
