If you have a look at the Red Bull engine activities it tells you what is going on. For some time an unknown investor with very deep pockets ran his own turbo engine development. Then all of a sudden that was stopped and we learned that Red Bull had a works deal with Renault. Later we learned that not only would the engines have a very narrow spec but they would be frozen very quickly as well. I see a certain coincidence in all of this. The private teams lead by Red Bull must have used their voting power in the FiA working groups and the F1 commission to create relatively tight restrictions for the manufacturers. Ferrari and Mercedes are probably not behind the idea to freeze the engines again. It benefits the customers who want to spend their money on aero and chassis work. They achieved that goal by restricting the manufacturer teams on the engine side.xpensive wrote:But this is the entire idea, "You've got 1278 kW to play with, let's see what you can do with it?"ringo wrote: ...
I'm expecting all engines to put out roughly the same horsepower. All teams will try their best to make maximum use of that 27.8 grams per second. All they can do is burn is efficiently without much heat loss, and then reduce parasitic loads and friction as best they can. I'd be surprised if one engine has a 50hp advantage.
For once in a lifetime myself and WB agree, though I'd given the manufacturers more freedom.
I'm not a fan of this asymmetric cost control that gives free spending on aero and tight control on the power train side. I was hoping for more technical freedom and some form of budgetary restrictions for all relevant activities. As it looks now we are not going to have that, at least not on the engine side. The F1 politics suck if you ask me. I would prefer that F1 gives less rule making power to the chassis constructors and make it more attractive for automotive manufacturers.