Formula One's Engine Crisis

[ChrisF1]

It's pay TV combined with poor racing. When BBC get half the races, say the viewer switches on one of the few BBC live races and it's a Tilke-drome - good chance of nothing happening, and nobody watching.

The BBC have been lucky this year to have the Malaysian, British and Hungarian GP's, all of which had an interesting story. On another year they may have been left with duds.

They have Sochi and Abu Dhabi to come, and they will probably be pretty dull again - they won't attract new viewers.

[ME4ME]

Should be interesting to see if and what Bernie does about the situation. He has hinted earlier this year he could accept different engine formula with the less wealthy teams running the old V8's. Maybe this could be Bernie's last card to play to keep Red Bull in the sport.

Either way Formula 1 is in big big trouble - as are the people working at RB and TR. Hopefully a solution is found.

[Andres125sx]

Then you´re complaining about the lack of tests, not about the engines. In that case I agree

No im complaining about both. I know youre a huge fan of electric and hybrid vehicles...so its hard to grasp, but this formula is choking the life out of the sport and there is a mountain of data to prove it.

Yes, there is a mountain of data to prove... that F1 problems started way before V6T.

Audience have been reducing both on TV and track attendance for around 10 seasons at least, even when F1 is going to new countries so audience should be increasing, but not even those millions new spectators can stop the decreasing path F1 is suffering

Now turbo-haters/noise-nostalgics blame V6T about every single evil in F1, but reality is those evils have been around here for a lot more than V6T, so V6T can´t be the problem.

To solve a problem you first need to adress it, and V6T are not the problem. Neither a solution, but don´t blame the PU for old F1 problems like lack of competitiveness, boring predictability or unsustaibable costs for small teams and midfielders, those problems are the same today than they were in RBR era (V8) or Ferrari era (V10). Audience drop started at that point, not now with V6T.

[Juzh]

Should be interesting to see if and what Bernie does about the situation. He has hinted earlier this year he could accept different engine formula with the less wealthy teams running the old V8's. Maybe this could be Bernie's last card to play to keep Red Bull in the sport.

Unless minimum weight for a V8 equipped car is reduced to pre-2014 spec (no chance) it will be completely useless. V6T will own it so hard it's not worth even trying.

[ME4ME]

Unless minimum weight for a V8 equipped car is reduced to pre-2014 spec (no chance) it will be completely useless. V6T will own it so hard it's not worth even trying.

Yupp, you're right. Dropping the weight limit would also open a can of worms cause then the question is by how much. But never underestimate Bernie's can-opening abilities

[bill shoe]

The RB/TR situation doesn't reflect on the health of F1 because a viable business should not depend on whether a few eccentric zillionaires choose to throw money in. A good business, which is what F1 should be for the teams, would allow participation for an amount of money that can be covered by car sponsorship and a bit of the TV revenue.

A low-budget team doesn't have to compete for wins, but it has to have a thriving stable of similar teams to compete against. The current mid-field is really thin and predictable, and the backfield (Manor) is worse. They are all forced (maybe not the right word but allow me) to spend more than they'll ever get in sponsorship and TV/FOM money.

Don't focus on cost limits that affect the rich teams, rather focus on the minimum cost of participation for the small teams. NASCAR's top teams blow through a staggering amount of cash every year, but NASCAR still (almost always) fields 43 cars per race because their formula allows a relatively cheap car to pass tech and qualify. How many cars would NASCAR have if they cleverly required season-long $20 million engine packages?

[Andres125sx]

Bill, I´ve upvoted that despite I disagree with this

The current mid-field is really thin and predictable

The midfield is anything but predictable, it actually is the only part of current grid where there is real competition, with probably (will depend on the GP) 8-10 cars within half a second. On top of that we all know what will be the positions with Mercedes and then Ferrari, and below that we all know Manor will close the grid, but in between there´s a tough fight, really tough


Apart from this, I agree with the rest, problem with current F1 is not the PU. Well, part of it is cost related so a new concept of PU wich needs development and force every team to buy new PUs instead of old specs does not help obviously, but there was some teams who would have left F1 otherwise so this can´t be considered a cause of current situation.

Manor currently is in that position (perfomance wise) because old spec PUs underperform too much compared to new spec units, but this will be solved next season, or next one as much, once PU manufacturers reach diminishing return point and old spec PUs do not underperform as much as currently so small teams can be more competitive investing less money

[ScottB]

Where would Red Bull source a V8 from? I can't imagine Merc, Ferrari or Renault have lots of the old engine laying around, and may well have upgraded / replaced their assembly facilities for building the V6.

There's so many factors contributing into F1s decline, when you look at how much money even the lowly clubs in the English Premiership rake in, F1 teams struggling to even break even is an alarm bell:

• The V6T costs the non manufacturer teams too much
• The sport has singularly failed to promote the technology in these engines; using half the fuel, pushing technology for future road cars etc are all things to shout about in the wider media, instead Bernie has spent the last few years slagging them off.
• Engine dev rules preventing others catching up / being less embarrassing
• Far too much of the sports income leaves the sport
• Pay TV makes it harder for new fans / casual fans / poorer fans to watch
• Replacing well attended European races with soulless Tilkedromes - Casual / non fans will know what Spa or Silverstone is, likely not going to care or be interested in a race in Azerbaijan
• Races in Bahrain and Russia damaging the sports image

And so on, it's not solely the fault of the engines, indeed, with some decent spin, the current engines could attract new fans.

[emaren]

Ticket prices seem to be somewhat insane nowadays.

My father took me to the British GP in 1972. We camped on Friday and Saturday nights and had a grandstand seat for the race on Sunday. The tickets were, I believe, £2.50 for adults and 50P for children. We also went to the French GP (25 FF/.5FF or about £2.20/45p) the same year and camped right outside the circuit.

Adjusting for inflation, the same ticket should cost around £30/£6 today.

We looked into going to the race at Silverstone this year and £30 would not even pay for the parking. The cheapest Sunday ticket for an adult and a child in the cheapest grandstand was over £200, add to that the cost of parking and we were way beyond what we were comfortable spending. We skipped the race and went to the Goodwood Festival of Speed and had way more fun.

F1 is pricing its self out of contention, the TV viewing costs are terrible, the ticket prices are plain stupid and the drivers and cars are not easy to get close to.

[ChrisF1]

The ticket prices are what they are because they have to cover Bernie's costs...

[emaren]

Bak to Engines once more.....

My understanding is that the limitations to development have not reduced the development costs even slightly.

What started out as a way to reduces the cost of the engines has actually turned out to be very, very expensive.

The idea of limiting the development in any way is on the surface perfectly reasonable.

Except in reality what has happened is that vast amounts of money has been spent figuring out the best way the spend the development tokens prior to the announcement that the engine manufacturer makes regarding the spending of a token in the combustion chamber.

In order that the development makes enough of an impact, many, many iterations of the development will have been done, many engines sacrificed to the alter of the Dynometer and many late night sessions developing the best possible use of just that one token.

Given the number of tokens that they have and the importance of getting it right under the current engine limitations, the development costs must be staggering.

[kptaylor]

We almost need a way to divorce engine manufacturers from teams. If Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Honda, and potential newcomers Audi/VAG and/or Cosworth want to build motors, it should be more like tire manufacturers. Develop and build your motors, price them out, and be willing to sell as many or as few as there is demand. No development restrictions and no worries if one engine is more in demand than another.

Of course this wouldn't help manufacturer's teams, but by opening up development but capping costs and forcing supplies to whoever can afford them could help out. I know this isn't what F1 has been, but it seems a better option than what it has become. We'll see better racing, more viable privateer teams, and PUs will be reduced to consumables like tires, fuel, and lubricants. Let there be a tire war, a fuel war, an engine war, but cap out the overall costs to the teams to even the field a bit. The manufacturers don't need to recoup all of their costs upfront. They can do that over time.

[ScottB]

Companies will spend money if they have it, regardless of restrictions.

Things are probably going the right way; cap the cost teams buy the engines at, then if Merc or Ferrari fancy pouring in their own cash on top of this money, so be it.

[sgth0mas]

We almost need a way to divorce engine manufacturers from teams. If Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Honda, and potential newcomers Audi/VAG and/or Cosworth want to build motors, it should be more like tire manufacturers. Develop and build your motors, price them out, and be willing to sell as many or as few as there is demand. No development restrictions and no worries if one engine is more in demand than another.

Of course this wouldn't help manufacturer's teams, but by opening up development but capping costs and forcing supplies to whoever can afford them could help out. I know this isn't what F1 has been, but it seems a better option than what it has become. We'll see better racing, more viable privateer teams, and PUs will be reduced to consumables like tires, fuel, and lubricants. Let there be a tire war, a fuel war, an engine war, but cap out the overall costs to the teams to even the field a bit. The manufacturers don't need to recoup all of their costs upfront. They can do that over time.

Thats almost indycar...but with free chassis development.

[dans79]

Companies will spend money if they have it, regardless of restrictions.

Things are probably going the right way; cap the cost teams buy the engines at, then if Merc or Ferrari fancy pouring in their own cash on top of this money, so be it.

And then they will just say we only have the facilities to support one team (the works team).