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I hear they don't even have pushrods or carburettors.........

I agree with Head on the cost and complexity of the new engines. It is nice to see High Tech etc but raising the cost at this time that sponsors and money are difficult to find. I would have made a formula that would have force manufactures to us stock or production engines. the 4 cylinder bmw turbo f1 was based on stock block (Over 1400HP in Qualifying trim). Dan Gurney almost won Indy wtih stock block Ford. Ford won Lemans 4 times with stock block and detuned NASCAR 427 engines.

Maybe is my age that grew up with ford Lemans, Transam and NASCAR from the 60 and 70

The introduction of new engines was imminent. Renault and Mercedes openly admitted that they would've left F1 if new engines weren't introduced.

So what? All grid powered only by Ferrari and possibly Cosworth would be better? I don't think so.

Quote:

Anderis
The introduction of new engines was imminent. Renault and Mercedes openly admitted that they would've left F1 if new engines weren't introduced.
So what? All grid powered only by Ferrari and possibly Cosworth would be better? I don't think so.

A new era of propulsion is here, hybrid is the only way, and either you force car makers to proof their muscles or it would have a big risk to be a mono-engine-branded formula within some time, and then not anymore F1 IMO.

To understand why we have these overly expensive engines you have to study the history of regulating engine emissions. The first place to do so was the USA where increasing car use in the 50’s and 60’s caused smog. Also petrol engines produced the deadly poison carbon monoxide. Smog is caused by Nitrogen oxides known as NOx reacting to sunlight and turning the air brown. NOx is created in most internal combustion engines when free oxygen combines with nitrogen under heat and pressure. Remember N2 is 78% of our air and O2 21%. So to correct this, the catalytic converter was introduced that firstly converted the NOx back to N2 and O2 and used this O2 to convert CO to CO2.

As those of us old enough will remember these first emission regulated engines in the 70’s in the US and 80’s in Europe were dogs on both economy and power. The US countered this with bigger engines and the Europeans with electronics and the diesel.

Come the late 80’s (87) and the US introduces regulation for heavy duty diesels followed by Europe in 93. But it was the regulations on particulates that started the quest for more advanced fuels systems to counter the loss in efficiency and also to improve the ability to scale down the expensive fuel systems used on large heavy duty diesels into smaller light duty diesel engines in cars. Large diesels have used electronic controls since the 80’s and Cummins Diesel Engine for example have used Common rail fuels system since the 50’s (although the term common rail is recent)

The effect of these advances was that the diesel took over in Europe as the preferred engine for cars. The improvement in efficiency is just too compelling, despite every motoring mag telling us otherwise and trying to tell us you need to be doing x trillion miles to make it pay.

There are two things that regulators of today fuss about today. They are particulates and CO2, NOx and CO the focus of the original regulators are no more; in the west at least. Where as in the past we regulated on the basis of a real and apparent need, today we regulate on the basis of make believe or faith. It’s no secret that particulates are carcinogenic but what we don’t understand is in what quantities and what other conditions are needs to trigger cancer. So without understand either or where most particulates come from, or how they directly affect us, regulators have told motor manufacturers that they want them to switch the public back to petrol, and if they don’t they will regulate us back. The irony is that particulate emissions are now so low from the latest Euro 6 or US EPA10 diesel engines that the cannot go any lower due to the fact they struggle now to measure current NOx and particulate emission levels they are so low. Even the UN has now come out and said that most particulates are not from road transport.

The other obsession is regulating CO2 which is a nonsensical notion as CO2 is directly related to how much fuel you burn and directly related to the efficiency of the engine. All engines are already as efficient as they can be given their price bracket. And here is where it all comes back to F1. There is no way on god’s earth that these technologically advanced petrol engines can be justified commercially. Only the stupidly rich will buy them and only keep them whilst they are under warranty. And even then the diesel is still more energy efficient. Just look at what dominates Le Mans which is the proper place for efficiency and durability to be tested. F1 is where you test components to the limit, and along the way discover things that may be useful to the large Car Manufacturers, not the other way around. So the major manufactures are using F1 as a stalking horse in order that the public feel comfortable with this technology and then the regulators will regulate CO2 forcing their adoption. The major manufacturers have NO intrinsic interest in F1 other than how can they use it to their own ends.

As I have noted above regulators are always several steps behind reality. As is being discovered having reduced particulates emissions to an effective zero, atmospheric particulate levels have not dropped. So it will come to pass with CO2 emissions. CO2 is one of the fundamentals of life, just like water is. To call it a pollutant is beyond stupidity and not science. Likewise to imagine the tiny amount of CO2 (itself just a trace gas in the atmosphere) that is produced by man as compared to the biosphere, is responsible for controlling the climate is not just beyond stupidity, but not backed by one single piece of creditable science. However CO2 and global warming is a highly politically charged subject so is subject to the word consensus rather than fact, so it will be several more years before reality sets in.

The last part of the puzzle is peak oil. Since the 70’s and in some instances earlier we have been told we are past the peak of oil. Yet today reserves are higher than ever. How is this? Well it’s down to technology for recovering oil, and also down to the probability that oil is NOT a fossil fuel, but rather hydrocarbon fuels are like water and produced within the earth. Our understanding of the geology of earth and its history is slowly changing so that in 10 to 20 years what we think we know now will be consigned to the history books. But for now most people in the know realise that oil and gas are not limited by anything other than our imagination.

I think engine rules used currently in WEC and in Le Mans are more interesting than that the rules in use in F1.
The WEC rules promote the fuel efficiency but the manufacturer can chose the engine architecture that they prefer to develop.
Toyota runs aspirated petrol V8, Audi uses turbo diesel V6 and Porsche a turbo petrol V4 based in an energy equivalence formula . The F1 engines differ few each other because the rules are more restricted, so all the manufacturer uses a V6 Turbo due to it´s mandatory by the rules. In the 80´s there were several engines architectures in F1 from V8 turbo from Alfa Romeo to BMW turbo 4 cylinders.

Also I don't see any sense changing the whole technology used in F1 to immediately freeze the engines in a period less than one year, stopping the development. It also can cause distortions of competitiveness for a new entrant in that can take advantage learning from the errors and copying the good ideas from the competitors that are blocked to evolute.