What will come after the 2.4 V8?

[Dukeage]

Something a bit unusual :p

With the drive for fuel economy (or at least the appearance of it) with KERS, and other reasons (read : costs) making the 2.4 litre V8 an option without much of a future (unless Spanky and co really want to kill the sport), what do we, the good people of F1 Technical think is a sensible idea?

[cba_]

V10's and V12's

[Dukeage]

Here are my ideas, not exactly brief but I think they are viable.

Engine must have the same number of cylinders and capacity (plus or minus 300cm3) as an engine used by that manufacturer group's road cars (low minimum, so we can see Renault do a V12 Clio homologation special). Gimmick technologies (VVT, rotary, twin turbocharging, superchargers) must be on that road car.
Fuel must be identical to that sold in normal petrol stations of that fuel provider in the EU (normal unleaded, super unleaded, ethanol ... if they were to sell it at 75% of stores in 40% of EU member states hydrogen)
Power is limited to 750hp at the wheels.
ECU software must be open source to prevent monkey business. No engine settings may be changed during the course of a race weekend, except for when the car is on jacks on Friday practice - with the exception of a pit lane speed limiter.
Six race engines, only previously used engines can be used for tests and as spares, unless previously used engines have ran out, in which case the engine will be limited to a reasonable level for a worn engine (730hp?) via playing with turbos/revs.
50 WCC bonus points for a fuel economy test, WCC points docked for engines that fail.
Mandatory supply price of engines for customer teams. Each manufacturer must be prepared to furnish three teams with engines (including itself), although only two would count for failiure penalties unless there aren't enough teams for that.

[wesley123]

Im thinking of V4 turbos, low feul consumption, smaller sidepods so less drag and much cheaper to build, you have to make 4 cyls instead of 8 etc.

[jddh1]

5.6L V8

[Scotracer]

3.0 V10 & V12s please

[Roland Ehnström]

Wouldn't this be rather interesting:

Rule #1: All drivers must start each race with a maximum of 150 litres of normal unleaded petrol (provided by the FIA).

Rule #2: No refuelling allowed during the race.

...and that's the complete rule-book! No restrictions on the engine at all, use whatever you want. Turbos is OK. Use KERS if you want, as much as you want. Just make sure you don't run out of fuel before the end of the race...

[jddh1]

Wouldn't this be rather interesting:

Rule #1: All drivers must start each race with a maximum of 150 litres of normal unleaded petrol (provided by the FIA).

Rule #2: No refuelling allowed during the race.

...and that's the complete rule-book! No restrictions on the engine at all, use whatever you want. Turbos is OK. Use KERS if you want, as much as you want. Just make sure you don't run out of fuel before the end of the race...

In that case I will enter with a four-horse carriage, with 150 liters of fuel on it.

[Dukeage]

Wouldn't be successful on cost control grounds though, a system that did that principle backwards (power limit, fuel economy development) wouldn't have that much of an issue.

[ESPImperium]

My Proposals:

2 choices of engine to go for;

1) 1.9 Litre V8s limited to 21000RPM / Non Turbo / 795 BHP limited
* Weight 95KG
* 90 Degree V or 110 degree V.
2) 2.4 Litre V10s Limited to 17500RPM / Non Turbo / 845 BHP Limited
* Weight 125KG
* 72 Degree or V or 90 Degree V

* Limit each driver to 5 engines a season, bomus points for relyability given before last GP of the year; 1 engine for the year gets 10 points down to no points for 5 engines. Each driver will be alloted a specific Test engine outside race allocation
* Each eingine will have a aloted gearbox as well Sealed by FIA at start of season, no changins any part for "relyability puroposes", suspect engines will be condemed by team, and "written off" by FIA for no futher usage
* Standardise engine management software and have telemetry open and free to all, realtime, allow other teams to watch other teams telemetry
* Allow the driver to only make a engine map change every 120 seconds, thus engine management for the driver will be lessened, meaning more time for him to think on passing the car in front.
* Free and Open allowances to each team for "green" or fuel saving technoligies; Eg: tunring off cylinders and being able for the car to run on 2 cylinders behing the Saftey Car or being able to have the car as a V6 for say 5 laps to save 2 laps of fuel when behind a slower car.
* Engine department (R&D, Building and staff wages) budget should not exceed £30 million for they year, Budget going up by no more than 2.5% each year for 10 years
* Each engine manufacturer must provide
* Car weight to go up to 625KG to allow for more green technoligies
* Fuel tanks will be limites to 40 litres, meaning that most races will see at least 3 stops Standard unleaded fuel that is readily avalable at the consumer pump must only be used, no speciality race fuel. Test samples will be taken by FIA and tested against samples taken from garrages arround the world, a variance of +/- 3% will be exempted.

Some may be conflicting, but some of my suggestions may be relevant.

[ISLAMATRON]

2.0L 4 cylinder (every car manufacturer has 1)
Turbocharged
Direct fuel injection
VVTI and all that jazz
pneumatic valving banned... bring Rpm's back to earth with sprung valves
4 race engines & gearbox
Limit fuel flow & volume
cellulosetic bio fuel from the grass clippings of each factories lawns.

Unlimited KERS(including the front wheels)

That engine plus those KERS should give a max HP of at least 700.

[pitlaneimmigrant]

4 or 6 cylinder turbocharged engine. Drop the refuelling and set a maximum tank size.
If the manufacturers want to look 'green' that would be a good start. Leave the engine capacity open, design considerations will put a cap on that pretty quickly.
They're not going to sound amazing but if you want a design challenge with green credentials and marketability for road cars, that's the way to go.
Just PLEASE don't go to diesel.

Oh, and allow CVTs while they're at it. They'll sound rubbish but again, design challenge, green credentials and (hopefully) marketability if the technology transfers across.

Some interesting ideas out there, one can only hope Max and Bernie see them.
I can't agree with some of ESP's ideas though,

Limit each driver to 5 engines a season, bomus points for relyability given before last GP of the year; 1 engine for the year gets 10 points down to no points for 5 engines. Each driver will be alloted a specific Test engine outside race allocation

6 engines in total and writing off engines that might just need a crank seal replacing? Also, surely the reward for reliability is finishing the race.

Each eingine will have a aloted gearbox as well Sealed by FIA at start of season, no changins any part for "relyability puroposes"

Allotted gearboxes, what if there is a shunt which damages it. Would there be a penalty for changing it? Anyway, there is a current regulation on the number of races a 'box must do which achieves this to some extent

Allow the driver to only make a engine map change every 120 seconds, thus engine management for the driver will be lessened, meaning more time for him to think on passing the car in front

There are several 'engine maps' which the driver can change not just one, those aren't changed frequently anyway, maybe dozen times per race in total. So, the diver is hardly taxed.

Standardise engine management software and have telemetry open and free to all, realtime, allow other teams to watch other teams telemetry

Telemetry open and free to all, no thanks. Everyone then needs 20+ DST systems (or the FIA providing feeds to everyone) plus engineers watching the data. Anyway, from a practical point of view the data doesn't mean much without knowing the cars set up, more useful would be info about fuel loads. This could be achieved much more easily by banning encrypted radio systems in the pitlane
BTW the software is already standardised and has been since '08

tunring off cylinders and being able for the car to run on 2 cylinders behing the Saftey Car or being able to have the car as a V6 for say 5 laps to save 2 laps of fuel when behind a slower car.

The cars already have 4 cylinder modes which can be used under idle and safety car conditions. The fuelling map can also be changed by the driver to reduce fuel consumption when in traffic or at the end of a race

Fuel tanks will be limites to 40 litres, meaning that most races will see at least 3 stops Standard unleaded fuel that is readily avalable at the consumer pump must only be used, no speciality race fuel

I can see your argument for standard fuel though and it would be easier if the FIA just supplied everyone with the same stuff for each race. Comparison would be easier as well as you would just keep a sample from the batch. The only downside is that Shell, Total etc wouldn't be so keen on supporting F1 if fuels were standardised.
Current race fuel is not dissimilar to what could be bought as pump fuel. Do you know what happens to the leftovers when the fuel batch is changed? They get burnt via road going combustion engine, so it can't be that different
However, unless great steps are made in F1 fuel economy a 40L tank would mean more than 3 stops, more like 5 for a typical race.

The FIA did have similar ideas on a few things though ESP (software, 4 cyl idle, sealed gearboxes) but a few are, I think, impractical.

[ESPImperium]

Im just trying to think outside the box a little.

But one area id like to see free'd up in F1 to bring 2 more manufacturer teams into F1 would be Diesel engines. Id like to see what Peugoet and Audi could bring to the fore in F1 with a 1.7 litre CDTI or TDI engine.

Add KERS into the Diesel equasion as well.

Yes the diesel engines would be heavy, but the thing is that they would go miles longer than the petrol guys on fuel economy.

[pitlaneimmigrant]

No harm in pushing the boundaries a little, the FIA obviously felt the same way as you on a few points, ESP.

On the subject of diesels, although I was massively against the diesels coming into Le Mans, Audi and latterly Peugeot did an amazing job building engines for the series. The rules did favour the oil burners for the first year or two but I suppose they had to, to encourage them in.
That said, I really wouldn't want to see diesels in F1, it would just be... wrong! I know that's hardly an engineering argument but still...
Also part of the success of Audi at Le Mans was the ability to go 5-7% longer between pit stops which adds up to a lot over 24 hours. Scale that back to F1 race distances and I don't know that it would reduce the number of stops. Maybe if the minimum weights, tank sizes etc were tweaked you could equalise it but then you would end up with two classes in F1. I should stop here or this thread is going to get more off topic than it already is

[modbaraban]

Wouldn't this be rather interesting:

Rule #1: All drivers must start each race with a maximum of 150 litres of normal unleaded petrol (provided by the FIA).

Rule #2: No refuelling allowed during the race.

...and that's the complete rule-book! No restrictions on the engine at all, use whatever you want. Turbos is OK. Use KERS if you want, as much as you want. Just make sure you don't run out of fuel before the end of the race...

My thoughts exactly!

That plus the reduction of tank capacity from 150 downwards each season.
Plus allow diesels but with a different tank capacity limit (to make pertols and diesels level)