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My days of understanding automotive engineering have long, long gone, although I can sometimes understand the fundamentals that underpin it. So, these are uneducated mumblings based on what I could garner fro the reams that have been written in the last couple of years.
It would seem that Mercedes took a unique decision about how they would design their whole power-unit, and, I would guess, that at the time they were crossing everything that the concept would not only work but that it would be better than Renault's and Ferrari's. And boy, was it. However, and apologies to Richard Casto, this is where everything goes pear-shaped.
Because of the restrictive rules and regulations on everything from on track testing to possible re-designs of PSUs, Renault and, to a lesser extent, were stuck with what they started with. In Renault's case (read RBR), and it would seem as though McLaren may have fallen in to the same trap, they decided to try to package everything so tightly that they couldn't have even followed Mercedes' path anyway.
Now we have the stupid position that both Renault and now Honda are stymied, being only allowed to make fairly minor design changes from their original PSUs. I think that it was Renault that said, during the early testing last year, that they much admired the way that Mercedes had designed their power-unit, but that they wouldn't be permitted to entirely copy the concept because of the restrictive rules and regs.
The problem that faces all the PSU providers is the extremely long lead time that they need to design the new units. If the same sort of prescriptive R & Rs had existed in the 60s, I doubt whether the world would have had the joy of seeing the DVF stuck in the back of the Lotus.
I know that money comes into the equation, or at least trying to save it. However, I wonder how much is wasted trying to wring more power out of the units to try to keep up with the Mercs, which may well have been better used to redesign the units. This is why I loved engineering cars that ran in the highly modified classes in the 60s; as long as everything fitted within certain dimensions, then away you go.
There are better ways of controlling costs than being restrictive.
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