F1: Ten year engine freeze.

On October 25 2007 20:41 Manit0u wrote:
Does anyone know if they finally decided to remove most of the electronics in the cars? They debated it for a long time because driver's skill wasn't really showing up (this cars automatically start because the driver could make too many mistakes at this point, the tech crew can change vehicles settings while it's on the track etc. etc.).

On October 25 2007 22:35 ToKoreaWithLove wrote:


No TC from next year, they will all use the same ECU (from mclaren tech, branded as microsoft). Autostart systems are banned but they get around it with clever tc and clutch systems. They are no longer allowed to change anything about the car from the pit wall.

*after qualification all cars are in "park ferme", meaning they can't touch them. They can look at things but not change anything.

And about the engines. All current F1 teams uses engines from one of the six manufacturer teams:

Toyota supplies Toyota and Williams
Ferrari supplies Ferrari, Toro Rosso and Spyker
Renault supplies Renault and Red Bull
Merchedes supplies Mclaren
BMW supplies BMW
Honda supplies Honda and super aguri

All engines are 2.4L v8 engines, rev-limited to 19000rpm and gives somewhere around 700hp. They are all pretty equal at this point, probably max 20hp difference, and you can easily gain that by small aerodynamic changes.

Engine development may be frozen completely, but there will still be rom for improvements in recoverable energies like reusing brake enegy (Toyota Prius is a road car that utilizes this) and releasing this energy when needed.

I also have some opinions:

Right now we have 2-race engines. This sucks horribly, because it leads to everyone turning their revs down at every opportunity, killing overtaking and racing. They want 4-race engines, something that will suck even more. For example in the last race in brazil hamilton had a fresh engine compared to alonso, meaning he could take a few more high revs out of his engine, effectively giving him a faster car. Last year ferrari even brought a special engine for the last race (no rev limit then) and absolutely demolished the field. Massa could have lapped everybody. Schumacher made up 72 seconds during the race.

Combine the long-life engines with the current horrible points system where the winner only gets 2 points more than #2, and it is easy for championship contenders to cruise and collect - like Alonso did in both 05 and 06, like Hamilton and Alonso and partly Kimi did this year. It sucks, and is bad for racing.