[duke_toaster]

Originally Posted by Pingguest

A fuel formula would allow manufactures to develop whatever they want.

I didn't really outline my ideas, but I think a fuel formula backwards would work - instead of liming fuel and making them design power, I propose limiting power and incentivising fuel economy and reliability. Also, I feel that a large amount of latitude on selecting size, cylinders and technologies should be a given but they should have to be representative of a manufacturer's technologies - allowing them to develop what they want.

Compared to nowadays development costs will rise, but every new set of engines rules will result in that. In fact, until the current economic crisis started manufactures still spend millions to the development of something quite unrelevant as the exhaust, resulting in a 4 bhp increase per year and hence an increditable low return on investments.

Which would be helped by a power cap, as the development taking place would either be about fuel economy which can be transferred to the road cars, or about reliability which can help.

However, with a fuel formula and massive reduction of fuel consumption the production costs will decline. As pointed out by the Motorsport Industry Association, competition engine makers will start to focus more on improving specific fuel consumption than on specific power output, and this has considerable relevance to production engines. Engine rpm will be reduced in order to improve specific fuel consumption, engine noise will improve as frequency is lowered and engine life and durability will also improve with reduced rpm.

Agreed, but I propose doing that in reverse rather than a fuel limit.

And with a proper set of rules qualifying engines will be allowed but most teams would use a race engine configurated for qualifying only. I'd like to make my point by referring to the mid 1980's. McLaren became world champion in three consecutive seasons due to having the best fuel economy and despite lacking qualifying engines. In 1984 Lauda won five races and he won only one of them after starting in the top-3!

Is there any reason to even allow them? It's not road relevant at all to have engines that last at most 84 km.

That hard limit on power is very hard to successfully enforce. If possible, in can only be done with a mid-season ban on engine development. But last year's controversy on the engine freeze showed such a rules is not good for the sport.

Standard ECU hardware would be required, as well as all software on the ECU to be open source. A centrally approved data logger would be fitted to the cars, to either be used for the telementary (F1, and lower levels for other series) or just log it (most series). Check these against the homologated figures at the start of the year, and if anything suspicious happens select that car for testing - run the top few cars and random checks on rolling roads.

The handling of the F1 engine freeze was farcical, as some measures clearly were for power not reliability. However, under my system engines would be rehomologable at any time, but the engines must come online within the engine replacement rules. You wouldn't be able to get more power out of the engines anyway

A price cap isn't going to work either. Teams and manufactures could easily agree on a higher price and in that case the FIA will face the same problems as with enforcing the budget cap.

Not really, if the FIA were to act as the clearing house for engine purchases. CC the order form and cheque to the FIA, if the engine isn't delivered it's ban hammer time.

I think its impractical to have the same engins in both Formula 1 and WRC/WTCC. I think Formula 1 should share its engines with LMP1.Formula 2 should share them with LMP2, although they might be more or less the same as the F1/LMP1-combination (same engine rules but with a lower fuel consumption). WTCC and WRC should be another combination to make.

I largely agree - I'd carve them up like this

Evolution (basically what I outlined) for F1 (750hp), F2 (600hp) and LMP1 (700hp)
2.0 turbos for a series between F3 and F2 (420hp), WTCC (420hp), LMP2-Heavy and possibly WRC (300hp more torque)
1.6 turbos for F3 (220hp), other touring cars (300hp), LMP2-Light and rallying.

Originally Posted by the.cosmic.pope

Maybe I'm alone on this, but for me part of the beauty of motorsports is variety, especially in sportscar racing. Le Mans wouldn't be as fun if a Corvette, Porsche, Ferrari and Lambo sounded all the same.

You are certainly not alone, there should be diversity within classes but it does not hurt to share components between classes.