BMW to leave Formula One at end of 2009

[timbo]

Petronas... rebadged customer Ferrari engines, made in Italy.

I'm asking because they had Osamu Goto on board. Surely they could have someone else to rebadge engines. I heard that they used last year spec Ferrari, but modified it quite heavily? So, did they work as simple tuning workshop?

[SZ]

I'm asking because they had Osamu Goto on board. Surely they could have someone else to rebadge engines. I heard that they used last year spec Ferrari, but modified it quite heavily? So, did they work as simple tuning workshop?

Nope. Ferrari has a small division dedicated to customer engine builds.

[timbo]

I'm asking because they had Osamu Goto on board. Surely they could have someone else to rebadge engines. I heard that they used last year spec Ferrari, but modified it quite heavily? So, did they work as simple tuning workshop?

Nope. Ferrari has a small division dedicated to customer engine builds.

So, this devision received instructions from Goto on how to improve engines? Or having Goto onboard was a PR-trick?

[SZ]

I believe Goto was brought on board as part of Sauber's plans to have their own engine, funded by Petronas money. The Ferrari deal wasn't meant to go on that long, but then there was an oil market crisis and the cash simply dried up. There was a big push for 'Malaysian' engines in racing at the time... Proton was in MotoGP with KR, the Foggy-Petronas project, etc...

Ferrari at stage stage had a definite 'customer spec', as in Sauber had last year's engine and a bunch of ex-F1 or other project people looking after them. Now customers get what Ferrari have... well... they're supposed to

[xpensive]

Maybe it's worth remembering that in them days, there was a ferocious development pace on the engines, why it was perhaps natural that the customers were a few steps behind.

An entirely different situation with today's rules I guess, although I understand that the factory team once in a while gets a concession from the FIA for a "reliability upgrade", which STR don't immedietly receive.

[SZ]

xpensive, you'd have to wonder how Ferrari pick which engines go to STR and which go into their own cars...

...I'm guessing it's not random choice!

[xpensive]

My guess SZ, is that Ferrari have a rather advanced test-bench in order to detail- analyze each engine's performance.

Then as the true gentlemen they are, sending the best off to STR...

[SZ]

I think it's possibly a little more cunning. The engines probably aren't started prior to going into a car, as being highly stressed, they're probably only rated for a certain number of starts.

So I've got a mental image of an Italian man in a red Ferrari suit with vernier calipers and a magnifying glass going over each part pre assembly... 'ours'... 'theirs'...

'What's your job title?'
'I make sure STR's identical engines are lesser than the ones that go in our cars!'

You'd be loved in Italy.

[xpensive]

You might be closer to the truth than you actually think SZ.
If each and every component is machined to a certain window of tolerance, it typically results in a "normal-distribution-curve" within said window. Pistons and sleeves, electrical resistors or whatever

Then you could perhaps select the parts closest to optimum of said curve through laser-measuring or something similar?

[timbo]

Although STR made a good job with that engines last year .
Do you know for sure this is different at Mercedes?

[SZ]

You could indeed. No such issues probably at BMW... German precision!

Mercedes, hmm, good question. Not sure.

STR did very well last year. Vettel winning was the best part of the season IMHO. Great for F1 and fans everywhere.

One does have to wonder just how hard BMW were kicking themselves for letting him go.

[xpensive]

Perhaps there was this terrible mix-up made at Ferrari before Monza?

Probably an even more sophisticated selection made at Mercedes and Toyota, German thoroughness and all that.

[SZ]

Obviously BMW needed a customer to sell some 'barely tolerance' engines to

[xpensive]

SZ, this reminds my of a wonderful story told to me by some class-mates from university, working for Saab in the mid-eighties.

They had been buying a large amount of electrical resistors from this big Japanese manufacturer at a given +/- tolerance window. Upon the usual random checking of deliveries, the procurement dept at Saab discovered that they had been sent what looked pretty much like the two little "tails" of the normal-distribution-curve, while deliveries were still inside Saabs ordering tolerances.

Bloody wonderful if you ask me.

[SZ]

Hopefully they didn't discover this via customer feedback