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What Does the New Engine Formula Mean for Formula 1?

Is it going to ruin the racing?

By Tom JamesPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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Honda engine and electrical recovery systems. Source

The 2017 season has been a far better one than previous years in terms of exciting racing, with the field becoming closer together in terms of performance. We have certainly seen a decline in the number of races in which Mercedes just drive off in to the distance as we saw so often before.

The vast improvement of the Ferrari power unit has seen them produce a car which can match and sometimes better the Mercedes on performance and certainly we have seen a closer battle this year, which had the potential to go down to the final race of the year at least until Vettel’s reliability issues put an end to that. And of course we have seen an improvement from Red Bull, although their power unit is still down on power which is often evident in qualifying.

Whilst the racing may have improved, there are still large concerns over the current configuration of the power unit, mainly the noise — or lack of it! The MGU-H, the hybrid system that recovers energy from the turbo. While the technology of this is very impressive, the downside is that absorbs a lot of the noise produce from the engine. Another contributor to the lack of noise is the restriction of the maximum fuel flow rate of 100kg/hour. The vastly reduces the drivers ability to rev the engine, by as much as 3,000 rpm in fact purely because the restrictions prevent them from burning fuel so quickly. Now I understand the need for the automotive industry to develop ways of reducing the impact of vehicles on the environment, but is Formula 1 really the place to do this?

Formula E was introduced a few years ago as a racing formula to publicise and develop the zero emissions side of the industry so does Formula 1 really need to get involved in any of this at all? I’m not convinced.

This is why I feel the new regulations could produce a better Formula 1 which is precisely what the new owners Liberty Media are after. They came in to the sport with the aim of making it into more of a show, which the spectators can really get behind and get involved in.

The removal of the MGU-H component and the relaxing of the fuel flow rate restrictions will make the engine a lot louder, something which the fans really desire — a noisy engine is just much more engaging.

However, my concern is the impact it will have on the racing. We are only just seeing a return to racing in which more than one team are truly competitive. Following the last engine regulation overhaul, we saw Mercedes dominate so much that frankly it just got boring. The costs involved in developing the power units are quite simply staggering, which clearly exaggerates the differences between the front and the back of the field — with Sauber even having to pay for an out of date engine! The fact a car from one of the leading teams can start last and be up in sixth or seventh after a few laps is frankly ridiculous (but that's another rant entirely). And so the retainment of regulations allows teams’ performances to become more in line with each other, partly because they learn from each other and also just because they have longer to develop their engines.

The top teams with vastly larger resource pools will begin to develop power units for the 2021 regulations within the next couple of years, but of course the lower teams simply don’t have the finances to be able to do this. And so, come 2021 we are just going to see a massively spread out field again which I think is a shame.

Aside from noise, us fans want to see good racing. The cars we have this season — although unable to follow each other very well due to the "dirty air" they produce — have brought some better racing due to the engines in the various cars being on closer levels of performance than the seasons before. When the current engine formula was brought in, we saw one team literally miles ahead of all the others, so what's to stop this from happening again? It will definitely be interesting to see if we suddenly go back to a team parading around to the finish line once again.

motorsports
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About the Creator

Tom James

Engineering student with main interests in the automotive industry. Also a big football fan.

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