@foxhound
I'll admit I'm playing a bit of devils advocat here.
You are right, engines are an integral part of F1. The sport needs new engine manufacturers (or for the current ones to stay) and with the change in engine development, it's crucial that F1 also adapts to make the sport more relevant to what happens outside. The only problem I see is that engine development comes at a huge cost - so the token limitation is a necessity. It's not to prevent other teams from catching up, but to ensure that costs are kept under control.
I just see a lot of similarities from the times when we had two tyre suppliers. It's a problematic situation: Take Williams and Sauber. In 2013 under the V8s, Williams was in a mess and finished the year in the WCC 9th. Sauber finished 7th. That was during a period where all engines were give or take very similar in power output. Then in 2014, Williams propelled itself to 3rd and Sauber went off the grid finishing 10th. Now, the financial struggles Sauber had are well documented in 2014 - but the engine played a big role in that, just as it did in propelling Williams out of the midfield it was during years before. For a team like that [Sauber], having a clearly underperforming engine is a huge problem - and it's nothing the 300+ employees can solve, because it's solely in the hands of the engine supplier. Sure, their chassis brought problems too, but together with a not performing engine, the problem is exaggerated ten fold. Williams on the other hand, proved to be in a very formidable position; tyre wear and corner speeds on many tracks showed that they clarly were not at the top of end with aero, but they still managed to be very competitive on most tracks, finishing a strong 3rd.
So, out of the view from Redbull, who as a 4 times WCC and WDC team have always excelled at creating exceptional chassis with aero - how are they to solve the problem that lies exclusively with their engine supplier? It's a bit like running on worse tyres to your competitor.
And engine manufacturers don't run these teams, the teams do. We only have 3.5 engine manufacturers (I'm counting Honda as the .5 because they are only supplying their own team), but we have 9 to 10 teams depending if you count Manor or not. If one engine supplier is severly underperforming, it is impacting at least 2 teams. If the engine continues to be such a large performance contributor and differentiator, don't you see it to be just a little problematic given to what extend it is out of the teams ability to control it?
Moose wrote:Yet even with all of this, you still assert that it's all down to the engine.
It's funny that you say that in light of you quoting the excerp from my post that sais the exact opposite.
So, again - it's not all the engine, that much
is clear - but my post goes to great lengths to explain how engine performance can perhaps
exaggerate what we may otherwise attribute down to a plain aero/chassis advantage. Do you honestly think that if you stick that Renault engine (assuming identical packaging requirements) into that Mercedes that it would still be significantly faster than the RedBull? I doubt it. What makes the Mercedes strong is the
package - the sum of all pieces; aero, chassis and engine - the relevant question is what factor does the engine play in all this?
