Italian GP 2009 - Monza

[ISLAMATRON]

So it seems very obvious in the paddock now that the Mercedes engine is clearly dominant over other engines. FOTA it seems will be discussing this issue. Will the FIA actually notice and allow a "de-freeze" for teams like Toyota to catch up?

This whole "engine freeze" debacle though has been a huge mess. Even with the "freeze" in place engine inequality on the grid has continued to exist. The FIA should just get rid of this silly engine freeze, or make the move to a new lower-cost engine design sooner.

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headlines/n ... 3003.shtml

The point of the engine freeze was never to equalize the field(engine wise) it was to stop the huge investment into the engines for very minimal returns. If Ferrari was the strongest motor before the engine freeze, then they probably would have continued to be so even without an engine freeze, the only difference is the hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been spent for very few actual HP.

Even under the engine freeze it has been reported that Ferrari spent nearly $50M for a gain of 20-25HP in 2008... allowing any changes to the engines was a flaw of the freeze regulations that have been since rectified.

Changing to a new engine formula would be even moreso expensive, during a time when everybody is tighening their belts, for just simply pulling out like HONDA & BMW. The best solution for a terrible situation was to freeze the engine and use them until the initial investment could be recouped. They bettered the situation by extending the life of the engines. They have already stated the next engine formula will be much cheaper(much less RPM).

Toyota was weak before the freeze, and would continue to be so regardless of how much money they pour into it, that is just their M.O.

[Scotracer]

Bingo. The freeze was to leave the engines as they were at homologation (the end of 2006). Everyone knew some engines would be more powerful than others. But now they are moaning about it. I say tough: you should be penalised for not getting your engine up to scratch before the freeze.

There is talk that some teams were using over 18,000rpm at Monza. Of course it is just a rumour.

[vasia]

Obviously that is the point, no need to tell me that. Come now though, I hope you are not that naive to honestly think the engines have remained the same since homologation in 2006. In 2006, the engines on the grid were in fact fairly close to each other.

Since then, both McLaren and Ferrari made "reliability" changes to their engines. In 2006, the Mercedes unit was definitely not the best in the field. Now though, it definitely is.

This has nothing to do with teams "not being able to get their engines up to scratch before the freeze".

This has everything to do with the inequality and gap between engines increasing during the freeze.

Point is, during the freeze, engines should have actually remained FROZEN. What the FIA allowed is silly, to make engine changes based on "reliability" grounds.

I totally agree that teams that had weak engines before the freeze would be stuck with them, and to a degree that was the case with the Ferrari and Mercedes units. They were really not much better than any of the other engines.

The FIA should have gone all the way with the freeze, so that any engine makers stuck with an unreliable engine during the freeze would be penalized for designing an unreliable engine in the first place.

This was not the case. As usual, the FIA was very loose with the regulations and Mercedes and Ferrari, using reliability improvements as a cover, also increased the power on their engines, and they spent a lot of money for a small amount of increase. This is exactly what the freeze was designed to stop, but it didn't because the FIA was not serious about the freeze and allowed Mercedes and Ferrari to do what they did.

Now that this whole "freeze" has become a mess due to all the above mentioned things, and especially since Renault was allowed to improve the "reliability" (increase the power) of their engine last year, then Toyota should be able to do the same.

[ISLAMATRON]

I'm not so convinced that Toyota is that low on power... read on

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/78643

Even they themselves admit that they were running too much downforce at Monza, and they were consistently the fastest in the 2nd sector at Spa... indicating higher relative downforce than the field.

[Paul]

And what about Williams?

[Giblet]

Spec ECU's should keep teams from running over 18,000, or they are simply another failure.

The teams have been able to extract the opposing teams RPM from audio for years.

[ringo]

It can also be considered that some engines were scaled back in power to meet the reliability. Its possible the Toyota is weaker than the others not because the others made theirs stronger but because the Toyota engines were never really meant to run for so many weekends, so a scale back in power was in order.
The BMW engines i think are also running under par, in Monza they may have went to full power in Q2 and then fried them.

[Scotracer]

Obviously that is the point, no need to tell me that. Come now though, I hope you are not that naive to honestly think the engines have remained the same since homologation in 2006. In 2006, the engines on the grid were in fact fairly close to each other.

Since then, both McLaren and Ferrari made "reliability" changes to their engines. In 2006, the Mercedes unit was definitely not the best in the field. Now though, it definitely is.

This has nothing to do with teams "not being able to get their engines up to scratch before the freeze".

This has everything to do with the inequality and gap between engines increasing during the freeze.

Point is, during the freeze, engines should have actually remained FROZEN. What the FIA allowed is silly, to make engine changes based on "reliability" grounds.

I totally agree that teams that had weak engines before the freeze would be stuck with them, and to a degree that was the case with the Ferrari and Mercedes units. They were really not much better than any of the other engines.

The FIA should have gone all the way with the freeze, so that any engine makers stuck with an unreliable engine during the freeze would be penalized for designing an unreliable engine in the first place.

This was not the case. As usual, the FIA was very loose with the regulations and Mercedes and Ferrari, using reliability improvements as a cover, also increased the power on their engines, and they spent a lot of money for a small amount of increase. This is exactly what the freeze was designed to stop, but it didn't because the FIA was not serious about the freeze and allowed Mercedes and Ferrari to do what they did.

Now that this whole "freeze" has become a mess due to all the above mentioned things, and especially since Renault was allowed to improve the "reliability" (increase the power) of their engine last year, then Toyota should be able to do the same.

If the "reliability" updates were legal, the other teams were stupid (or stubborn) to not do them. I know BMW were very much against the freeze so they stuck to the letter of the homologation to try and prove it a failure. It was a failure anyway as it has turned a lot of people off the sport - engine development is vital to F1, just as much as aero (not in lap times, but in interest-factors). The freeze was a stupid idea when it came in - it was decided far too close to the start-date (about half a season is no where near enough to get ready for such a drastic change) and it is anti-F1. Now we're sitting with overly-expensive strangled units that do not stir the soul. Sure, we don't need 20,000rpm again but F1 needs something in the powertrain to make it stand out from everything else. I vote for a return to two-stroke. They have changed so much in the last 10 years and rival 4-strokes and in some cases are actually superior (in terms of performance). Oh right I forgot - the green party has guns now.

[ISLAMATRON]

have 2 strokes ever been allowed in F1?

bring back the turbos and limit the fuel, $25M max budget yearly... but not till 2012

The freeze may have been a stupid idea, but when the FIA put it to the teams they could not come up or agree to a better solution. Once again the FIA messed up on execution.

[ds.raikkonen]

Was it just me or were there really long cracks on the surface of the track along the back straight(since Im not sure what the back straight is in this case, the straight after Variante Ascari & before the Parabolica) at the Autodromo de Nazionale,Monza?

[axle]

I'm not so convinced that Toyota is that low on power... read on

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/78643

Even they themselves admit that they were running too much downforce at Monza, and they were consistently the fastest in the 2nd sector at Spa... indicating higher relative downforce than the field.

"However, Howett thinks that his Toyota power unit's weaknesses compared to the Mercedes-Benz was not the only reason why his outfit struggled to make an impression."

Clearly states that Howett thinks the engine IS weaker and they messed up on the downforce levels.

[Scotracer]

I'm not so convinced that Toyota is that low on power... read on

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/78643

Even they themselves admit that they were running too much downforce at Monza, and they were consistently the fastest in the 2nd sector at Spa... indicating higher relative downforce than the field.

"However, Howett thinks that his Toyota power unit's weaknesses compared to the Mercedes-Benz was not the only reason why his outfit struggled to make an impression."

Clearly states that Howett thinks the engine IS weaker and they messed up on the downforce levels.

And the Toyota V8 was terrible in 2006. I remember Trulli complaining like a bitch about it. Not that it's normal for Jarno to complain or anything...

[megz]

Well it was weaker - In the 2007 testing issue of F1Racing it was reported every team except Toyota had to remap their engines to get peak performance from the 19,000rpm limit. Toyota didn't need to because by the end of the season they were only just hitting 18,900rpm.

Now revs aren't everything I'm fairly certain that would be indicative of engine trouble/weakness.