FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[What's Burning?]

They stated in the past that the sweet spot is 3 teams the max is 4 teams. Less than 3 it's not profitable, more than four you begin to lose quality control. It's 5 PU for the year, multiplied by 4. That's 40 engines at least that have to be made by Mercedes in the current environment. Compare that with Honda coming in and making ten engines.

The costs spirals from there when in season development is factored in and you're "upgrading" engines as the season goes on. It effectively makes an early engine obsolete. Upgrades that are allowed are for reliability improvements and cost reductions. Both of which wouldn't make an engine obsolete. Further increasing the gap between the haves and the have-nots which was the reason they agreed to free the development of engines in season.

[Jabberwocky]

Again in the past some engine customers paid a bit less and got older spec engines.

[CigarGuy]

GOOD stuff, mates. Thanks for helping me out.
So, Lotus hasn't always sucked, right?

[What's Burning?]

But what you're doing there is creating an artificial line between competitors and making customer teams come up with stellar chassis design to even have a chance. If you're skimping on equipment you're also going to be skimping on design talent IMO since it's clear teams are very willing to skimp on driver talent as is just for the sponsorship deals.

Why bother competing in the first place? Which is exactly what Moesha's statement is all about. The money has to be divided more equally but I'm shocked the big teams don't like that option because it's more difficult for them to have 400 million dollar annual operating budgets.

[What's Burning?]

GOOD stuff, mates. Thanks for helping me out.
So, Lotus hasn't always sucked, right?

Don't use the word Lotus loosely... that's a story onto itself since at this point it's just a "name" with very little if any ties to the fabled Lotus of old.

The Lotus on the grid this year had pretty decent years the last two years (by mid team standards). They were very good with tired which helped a lot and the engines were very equal since they'd been frozen from development for a few years.

[Jabberwocky]

GOOD stuff, mates. Thanks for helping me out.
So, Lotus hasn't always sucked, right?

Lotus used to be called and owned by Renault. Until crash gate unfolded

[LRW]

GOOD stuff, mates. Thanks for helping me out.
So, Lotus hasn't always sucked, right?

Don't use the word Lotus loosely... that's a story onto itself since at this point it's just a "name" with very little if any ties to the fabled Lotus of old.

The Lotus on the grid this year had pretty decent years the last two years (by mid team standards). They were very good with tired which helped a lot and the engines were very equal since they'd been frozen from development for a few years.

GOOD stuff, mates. Thanks for helping me out.
So, Lotus hasn't always sucked, right?

Lotus used to be called and owned by Renault. Until crash gate unfolded

Everytime CigarGuy gets an answer, you guys fill his head with more and more questions....

[CigarGuy]

GOOD stuff, mates. Thanks for helping me out.
So, Lotus hasn't always sucked, right?

Don't use the word Lotus loosely... that's a story onto itself since at this point it's just a "name" with very little if any ties to the fabled Lotus of old.

The Lotus on the grid this year had pretty decent years the last two years (by mid team standards). They were very good with tired which helped a lot and the engines were very equal since they'd been frozen from development for a few years.

GOOD stuff, mates. Thanks for helping me out.
So, Lotus hasn't always sucked, right?

Lotus used to be called and owned by Renault. Until crash gate unfolded

Everytime CigarGuy gets an answer, you guys fill his head with more and more questions....

LOL. THAT'S why I started the thread......

[CigarGuy]

So, Vettel won four years in a row with Red Bull and Renault power?
Understand. I just started following this year, but watching this year,
I wonder how that is possible. Mercedes is so dominate and the Aussie
regularly beats Vettel?!

[Jabberwocky]

Vettel superiority came from the Redbull having a lot of rear grip. He managed to capitalise on it, where as his team mate (Webber) just could not get a feel for it.

This year the rule changes meant that the rear grip and traction (which Vettel relied on) was taken away.

Ricciardo in the other had, was used to the Toro Rosso which had a back end looser than one of Geets stars.

[CigarGuy]

Vettel superiority came from the Redbull having a lot of rear grip. He managed to capitalise on it, where as his team mate (Webber) just could not get a feel for it.

This year the rule changes meant that the rear grip and traction (which Vettel relied on) was taken away.

Ricciardo in the other had, was used to the Toro Rosso which had a back end looser than one of Geets stars.

Excellent. And did Mercedes really leapfrog the other power units last offseason?
Was it Nico and Hammy driving for them last year, too?
I'm thinking a lot of this has to do with chassis improvements, then?

[Jabberwocky]

there was a massive change in engines between last season and this.

Last year the engines where 2.4L V8's normally aspirated with KERS, not restrictions on how much fuel they can use.
This year 1.6 V6 turbocharged with KERS, HERS, that are limited to 100kg/h fuel flow rate and 100kg of fuel over a race distance.

So in essence they are totally new engines.

[What's Burning?]

We've got a lot of threads that discuss the differences here. You have to get somewhat creative with your searches because the search engine on Php frankly sucks. But if you go back to say this time last year you'll find a ton of discussion on how the regulations for 2014 would impact.

The reason Red Bull lost its dominance like Jabber said is because the reliance on aerodynamics is greatly decreased. This year saw smaller front and rear wings and the banning of the blown diffuser that started its life out as a double diffuser which saw Brawn and Red Bull really abuse in 2009. After that the double part of the diffuser was removed, and teams started "blowing" the diffuser with hot exaust gasses to improve their efficiency to get grip in the rear. Adrian Newey (wiki him) was the aerodynamicist for Red Bull for those years, really has a strong history in F1 and has designed many championship cars, was able to exploit it the rules to the fullest, giving Red Bull as strong a dominance solely with aero as Mercedes has this year with the engine. There is still a lot of importance on aero and packaging etc, otherwise all Mercedes powered cars would be strong and their not. You can still see Newey's influence in how strong the RB10 is in some circuits being the only other car to win a race this year.

[sagi58]

It's close to customer cars already. As of next year the only thing a team has to do is design their own chassis. They're already allowed to buy the PU, the transmission, the suspension components are allowed as well in 2015, and the brakes are already a third party...

Found a list of all F1 Suppliers:

Formula 1 Suppliers

Oh... and, these:

Formula 1 engines supplier history

Formula 1 engines supplier history - Tires

p.s. there are a number of other interesting links, if you scroll down to the bottom of any page!!

[CookinFlat6]

Great initiative sagi, although the lists are not current, due to the lack of info on ERS, which is what we really want to know about, its still interesting to have

Would be good if you found the updated version, although ofcourse thats likely to be like finding the lost City of Atlantis, such is the cost and secrecy surrounding the manufacturers internal arrangements with suppliers within the Merc or Renault ownership group

Ferrari get their turbo and lots of other bits from Magneti Merrelli and thats public domain info. Should be able to find a version of that list with Ferraris ERS suppliers as they pretty much outsource most of it