New way to uncap engine regs, but maintain performance..

[xxChrisxx]

You're right on that historical account, but M's more recent attempt to get turbo diesel F1 happening was snuffed by the only team/manufacturer/engine supplier with nothing to gain from it... Team Red.

*WARNING: He be my not so humble opinions*

And for that I will be forever grateful to Ferrari.

Turbo diesel F1... jesus christ. I don't want te sound of a tractor engine in a racecar, it's bullshit. Put it this way, who wants to go to the horse races to watch a fast mule.... noone it's just not the same as a thoroughbred.

Don't get me wrong road car diesels are now arguably much better than petrols, they have developed to a point where there is virtually no downsides.In endurance racing and touring cars, fine I can see the point, but not in openwheel and NOT in F1.

Half the allure is in the noise they make, I don't know if you remember, but the turbo cars sounded crap.

[SZ]

Two things Chris.

Racing diesels sound great, really.

But I don't think Max was asking for turbo diesels. He was asking for compromise. Turbo something. Eco anything. Usual --- in F1, the FIA asks for something impossible and get the compromise, and the compromise was what was originally sought. If you instead ask for what you want, you get a negligible version of that, and asking wasn't worthwhile.

Ferrari wasn't in the mood for compromise at the time... their new season prep was looking tickety-boo and the proposal on the table offered no immediate advantage in any form.

FIA's got an odd attitude with F1, Ferrari in particular - almost every other class of motorsport doesn't let the manufacturers involved dictate the rules. Makes regulatory progress in the premier class very slow... sad state of affairs.

[xxChrisxx]

Two things Chris.

Racing diesels sound great, really.

No... no they don't. I've heard the LMP Audi and Peugeot diesels on the TV, they sound rubbish. I heard the Seat Leon TDI car in BTCC in the flesh, and that sounded not only rumbly, but very very quiet (so it's not just the transmission quality).

A grid full of them would be just horrid.

But I don't think Max was asking for turbo diesels. He was asking for compromise. Turbo something. Eco anything. Usual --- in F1, the FIA asks for something impossible and get the compromise, and the compromise was what was originally sought. If you instead ask for what you want, you get a negligible version of that, and asking wasn't worthwhile.

Ferrari wasn't in the mood for compromise at the time... their new season prep was looking tickety-boo and the proposal on the table offered no immediate advantage in any form.

FIA's got an odd attitude with F1, Ferrari in particular - almost every other class of motorsport doesn't let the manufacturers involved dictate the rules. Makes regulatory progress in the premier class very slow... sad state of affairs.

I acutally hate Ferrari F1 team at the best of times (especially when Todt was there) they are not above screwing the entire sport for their own gains, but if Mad MAx wanted turbo diesels i'd jump behind the red team without a second thought.

Turbo petrols are an inevitibility really, i'd expect to see them by 2015. I will miss the clean sound of a naturally aspirated engine though.

[ISLAMATRON]

And the silly red team went on to build their stupid v-12's and were blasted by the Honda & renault V-10's... but for some strange reason Honda switched to a V-12 and did themselves in.

The cost of the turbos was not so high as to make up for the costs of developing all new N/A engines... and the power output was considerably lowered by the boost restrictions and the race fuel restrictions.

Ferrari ran the turbos out of the sport and F1 has suffered from these mid nineties technology N/A engines ever since, all so some idiotic tifosi can say "wow Luigi, that V-12 Ferrari sure is loud".

And no the turbos did not sound like crap, they made great sounds, just different to the N/A... If Ferrari wanted to keep their great sounding V-12 they should have without pushing for the ban of superior technology.

And we would have never seen a turbo diesel in F1 because against a turbo gas racing engine it would be hopeless... let the performance of the technology dictate what is on track, not the teams... especially Ferrari.

[SZ]

Bah, I like the sound. But don't accuse me of wanting them in F1. I'll accept them as a gambit to move engine technology usefully forwards. I don't think diesels yet have characteristics befitting an open-wheel race car.

But using them as a gambit for the teams to get their --- together is about as valid as FIM telling MotoGP manufacturers to get serious about cost cutting or be prepared to let 1000cc production-based engines race with the 800cc prototypes. The key difference is that FIM didn't sell out to any manufacturers - so they, in turn, got together by the required date with a bunch of proposals on the table, but FIA sold out to Ferrari - who the fck gives one competitor a technical regulatory veto in contract (!) - so nothing flies.

Max didn't want diesels, I doubt he was even particular about the turbos. The TWG is formed largely of team representatives though - Max served notice for these people to get their --- together and come up with some ideas that moved engine tech forward in a technically relevant manner, at a reasonable cost, with some marketable ecological (and thus audience/manufacturer marketable) relevance.

It's not hard, it's an engineering problem requiring engineers to sit around a table and dedicate time and resources to solving it.

But there's a tech veto, so we barely got an attempt at problem solving, and thus the sport will change when Ferrari is ready to. Which isn't just when they've something to gain from it, but when they've something more to gain than everyone else.

What a sorry state of affairs. To think Enzo stated the firm as a competition entity and couldn't give two shits about who bought his road cars, so long as there was a racing budget and an avenue to show the world that he'd grown up from hotting up Alfa Romeos and that his team's designs were best. Now there are revenues from replica cap sales and equities of various theme parks for the rich and tasteless to protect... it's gone from a team with an intelligent knack for bending the rules to one that writes them to serve a purpose - all praise Ferrari's marketing revenue. It's a marketable brand and all efforts are to protect its equity.

So far as the guy who started it was concerned, it was just his race team. Poor bastard must be rolling in his grave.

[Giblet]

Well sound purists better hope they don't look at turbo compounding, which might be a possibility.

Scavenging the exhaust for any unused pressure and feeding the air back into the engine while feeding the power from the second impeller (in series or parallel) directly to the drive shaft, giving ~10% gains above traditional turbo setup on the same engine. It closes the system a little more and less sound would be heard.

I sort of hoped that KERS would be the turbo charger of the new century.

The sound of a turbo motor is about pressure and containment. A slower turning motor under extreme pressure and the sounds of a turbo exhaust are awesome to me.

Turbo Diesels are different all together. Power sounds like power, no matter how loud.

I have never been unimpressed by the sound generated of any F1 engine generation.

[Giblet]

Enzo was a dinosaur even when he was alive.

Even though the Coopers were mid engined, and everyone knew this was the way of the future, Enzo famously said "The horse should always pull the cart" and demanded his cars be front engined, to the dismay of his drivers and team.

Instead of just running the race like usual, at the Monza race they decided to open up the unused high banked corner again, giving the larger front engined Ferrari's room to stretch their legs and an advantage. Ferrari got the 1 2, but it was a hollow victory as everyone but the Alfas and Ferraris withdrew from the race as the closed high bank section was considered too dangerous.

But... I bet it was an awesome sounding race.

[SZ]

Sure he was a dinosaur... but a racer, albeit an occasionally desperate one at times.

Scuderia Ferrari did, after all, built the Bimotore... properly mental for the time, if inelegant...

[Giblet]

Didn't want to take away from Enzo. Like other Italian men of his generation I have known, they were quite... 'opinionated'.

I have great respect for the power of dinosaurs, even if their approach is a little more brute force than needed in modern times.

[SZ]

Let's call it 'hammer' engineering... you go find a big one...

[xpensive]

People make up their own history of course, but Ferrari was actually one of the turbo-pioneers in F1 with the 126C and FIA at the time was not checking with Ferrari before they made their decisions. If anything, Frenchman Jean-Marie Balestre would see to Alain Prost and Renault's needs first of all.

Perhaps it was a mistake to ban the turbos, but the years before the the decision, fuel was used as coolant and the cars were veritable tankers. Teams had earlier indroduced pressure-tanking in the pits, intercoolers were packed with dry-ice in qualifying, things were going out of hand. With the capacity-limit on fuel, things slowed down a bit, but in 1986 there was really only three or perhaps four teams competing.

The team that had lost the turbo-battle was actually Renault, not Ferrari, why they left after their disappointing 1985 season, only to return to winning ways with the atmo-V10 in 1989.

[SZ]

One of the pioneers... note not 'the' pioneer

Somewhat amusing that F1 called dry ice 'out of hand' at the time... yet the sport's since become what it is. In 1986 only three or four teams really competing... I'd pay to see that again! These two-team title races we've been getting are sh*t boring!

[ISLAMATRON]

But there's a tech veto, so we barely got an attempt at problem solving, and thus the sport will change when Ferrari is ready to. Which isn't just when they've something to gain from it, but when they've something more to gain than everyone else.

Which is why I was extremely happy to see turbos in the back of that new McLaren road car... if they can utterly destoy the lastest Ferrari offering on the track and make the car useble on a daily basis it would force Ferrari to move towards turbos in their road cars and make them less resistant to them in F1. An actual road KERS system has been hinted at for both McLaren and Ferrari, so that may not be done with either. But McLaren didnt go bold enough with the styling.

Renault changed the game with their turbos, They got plenty of attention from running them. Ferrari went from most talked about team(and winning) to an also ran with laughable italian drivers. Yes Ferrari were one of the first turbo runners, but they never got them right, they were terribly laggy, then underpowered, allways unreliable and then towards the end too thirsty... it was just too complex for their simple minds and methods to conquer.

[xpensive]

One of the pioneers... note not 'the' pioneer

Somewhat amusing that F1 called dry ice 'out of hand' at the time... yet the sport's since become what it is. In 1986 only three or four teams really competing... I'd pay to see that again! These two-team title races we've been getting are sh*t boring!

Renault were of course the turbo-pioneer already in 1977 with a quite hopeless car, but they never won anything significant during that era, Prost came reasonably close in 83, but that's all.

Only when the government-owned Renault and president Francois Mitterand coersed Jean-Marie Balestre and the FIA to ditch the turbos and give the Regie three years to develop the 3.5 V10, they finally won the WDC in 1992.

[SZ]

Still xpensive... glamour days back then. When you consider the guy driving the thing on Sunday was doing much of the technical development the rest of the week - and I mean the engineering, the desk job, not just the driving - we can't quite say that Team Yellow Teapot competed on an even footing with other teams, and a lot's changed since!

But they did win their first race in what, two years from that start? Not bad for a bunch of hacks turning up with some fresh thinking... something quite fantastic, would have been something very exciting to have been a part of.

(Fresh thinking is not allowed today.)