Andrew Frankel Column in Motor Sport

This is a portion of Andrew Frankel's April "Diary" column in Motor Sport magazine. It makes an inordinate amount of sense:

I like Nico Rosberg. I think he was a deserving F1 champion, and smart to retire at the top. But when at the World Economic Forum at Davos last month he said he thought F1 cars should become electric, I despaired...

He makes the same mistake as the car manufacturers which populate the sport; he thinks it's about them. These manufacturers will have to sell electric cars, ergo F1 should be electric too. Sod the fans already struggling to maintain enthusiasm in these days of halos, Tarmac run off areas, on-message drivers, fuel management and races more often won by strategy in the pits than drivers on the track.

To think of F1 as an environmentally aware sport is simply a joke, and until someone can think of a way of the circus transporting itself all over the world in aircraft powered by a renewable source of hydrogen, a joke it will remain. Someone once said the only way for F1 to become environmentally friendly is to abolish itself, and they were completely right.

If you went to a random track on the calendar and asked 100 spectators, how many would say they'd be no less likely to come back if the cars were powered by whirring electric motors rather than internal combustion engines? Not many I'm guessing. How many others not present are keeping away just because of those nasty, noisy petrol motors? Not many either, I would suggest. But the sport doesn't listen to the fans who pay for it, because its frightened of losing the manufacturers.

But if F1 once more became populated by teams born to race rather than sell goods, would that be a bad thing? If you quartered the budget, killed the downforce and mandated 3-litre V12 motors, would that bring not only more spectators to the grandstands and viewers to their tellies, but cars to the grid? Would that not therefore be "for the good of the sport?" Or did I simply miss something?

 

I think you are right.

F1 should allow 2 formulas to run on the track at the same time:

1) the current 1000 HP hybrids
2) 2.4 litre V8s or 3.0 litre V10s or 3.5 litre V12s

With the stipulation one gets only 100 Kg of fuel at the start of the race with no refueling.

 

Yes and no.

F1 cars should be high tech, and non hybrid big engines are not high tech. It would be like those 17 litre engines of the '20s: yeah, impressive, but not as clever as a 3 litre Cosworth.

There are many things they could do before throwing in the towel and going back to the past: higher fuel flows, grass run offs and many more.

 

People should stop looking in the past, I think.
As the hybrid technology progresses, engines will become cheaper in future; most of the R&D has been done already. .
The hybrid power units take a lot of flak for the cost in F1, when in fact it's reducing the aero the authorities should work on, IMO.
They are only allowed 3 engines per season, but the aero change constantly and swallow most of a team's budget; how can that be right?

 

That would be a two-tier formula.
I don't think a 2.4 litre V8s or 3.0 litre V10s or 3.5 litre V12s would make it to the end on only 100 Kg of fuel.
They needed almost twice that in the past.

 

I love the sound of the old engines but F1 should always be high tech. I like to think the twin turbo V6 in my Quadrifoglio bears some lineage with the F1 (CaliT) package even without being hybrid. But then around town I hear mostly 4 bangers with busted exhaust and massive SUV belching V8s and so on. We still need the sound and power of petrol in F1. It doesn't have to go away, contrary to some extreme views of world we live in. Nature will kick our @$$ if needed. Until then, I give you this link to the sights and sounds of the glory days when testing and innovation were still encouraged. I'm pretty sure this was the first car with the F1 robotic transmission, or at least the same era. And this was even before Williams' adaptive suspension, no matter how you feel about driver aids and other tech.



And Ferrari should paint their wings black for good luck. I think it would look good with the new livery, matte too.

 

That is the point of the hybrids--they are <now> operating above 50% thermal efficiencies compared to the 35-37% thermal efficiencies of the NA motors.

The smallest power plants operating above 50% TE are 50+MegaWatt Container ship motors. Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C

 

And the aero has NO relevance to production vehicles so why do the manufacturers tolerate it?

+1 absolutely

 

These engines are huge polluters running on high sulfur fuel, aren't they?

 

I agree, but the teams want to keep aero spending because it makes their cars go faster, and it's the only area left where they can make a difference.

It's bonkers, but that's the situation we have.

Ideally, teams should only be allowed 2 aero updates per season, and not constant changes.

 

I honestly think if these PUs sounded good not many would really care what they are Rev them out and fix the exhaust to make them have a unique sound. I doubt we’ll ever hear the glory of the NA Vx era ever again. The swarm of bees ripping down the straight is lost...likely forever.

However.. they could do a lot with the sound of these cars and make them unique and inspiring as well. They just don’t do it.

 

Current F1 cars use maximum of 140 liters of fuel (regulation limited). In the V10 era, the cars used around 220 liters in a race. V8's where around 15% more efficient at 190 liters per race (give or take a bit more or less on certain tracks). These engines weren't direct injected even, or assisted by batteries.

Those engines where pushed harder than the current ones, they where driven harder as they didn't need to last nearly as long as these current ones...Dialing the RPM limit down some 10% would actually allow those V10's to have a much higher reliability factor. I know the Cosworth engines in the BOSS formula are detuned slightly to run around 17000 RPM and engine life is around 5000km....FAR more than the <1000km they lasted in the last years of the V10 era (1 engine per 2 weekends). If we take figures of 500km per weekend on the current engines (race 300km, practice laps and qualifying another 200), current F1 engines only do around 3500km before binned. Even if we give them a generous 600km per weekend thats still 800km short of a 10% limited Cosworth V10.

I don't have fuel figures for how many liters per race a 10% limited V10 does but I'm sure it's considerably less than unlimited. Lets keep it at a fair 10%. that's 200liters of fuel per race (60 more than current). But the engines weren't direct injected and fuel technology is 15 years behind. I can't give an accurate figure on how much fuel would be used during a race but credit where it's due, the V10's where a lot more efficient than some think.

Sure a turbo engine would always be more efficient than NA but the margins are closer than some think.