Bmw, Mercedes And Toyota New Engine Proposal

[Giando]

Only one engine from saturday to the following Gp-friday: this is the heart of a new proposal made to Fia by Bmw, Mercedes and Toyota together.

They're trying to avoid the rule which stated that the engine has to last for two complete races in 2005 season.

So: the same engine for saturday practice, qualifying, race, the following week tests and friday practices; this could double the kilometers run by each engine, reducing automatically the testing days.

Second proposal: the constructors who would not give their engine to a second team should be obliged to give 3 million euros each one to a special fund, financed by Bernie Ecclestone too, just to help minor league teams.

This is reported today by Gazzetta dello Sport, according to an article on Autosport.

What do you rhink?

[Kicking-back]

A very sensible approach.

It avoids going to two-race engines but also cuts in-season testing and saves money.

Very sensible.

[006_007]

I like the idea of the engine rule, however it would be interesting to see how they police that.

The second proposal is a great idea. Either make the engine s that you run available to a second team, or give x million euros into a fund for the non works teams.

[Snrub]

Problem with the "give an engine to a poor team" idea is that there are only 3 non-works teams. For '05 ferrari provides to Sauber and Jaguar provides for Minardi. That means out of the three manufacturers proposing the idea only one of them could give engines to Jordan (or whatever it'll be called). That means what they really want is to pay into a pot for smaller teams. How much $ are they proposing?

[Dick Spanner]

I like the first idea and the second one is okay depending on the size of Bernie Ecclestones "administration fee"! Bernie does nothing out of the goodness of his heart.

[Super Tourer]

Looks like some agreement on something, at last - knock me down with a feather.

The proposals look good and workable.

[Paddy_NL]

Reducing test time was more or less predictable as the number of race seem to go up on a yearly base now. There simply won't be enough time.

I think Bernie should fund smaller teams for testings, aswell as pay for their engines. And the man is rich enough, he can pay my ticket for next years race at Monaco too!

[raul_iulian]

This is F1 not Enduro!

[Kicking-back]

One side benefit of this is that test drivers will be the ones who get more running in between races, as their engines won't be affected by having to race.

That should mean more mileage available for up-and-coming future drivers.

[Sodemo]

These engine rules are becoming tiresome, why can't they just leave it as it is, 1 engine per weekend?

[Kicking-back]

If you think about it the proposed engine rules make more sense than the current ones, as the race would come earlier in the engine's life.

[touringlegend]

I'm amazed some sense has shone through in F1.. Well done BMW, Mercedes and Toyota!

Although this only applies to race drivers? The teams could still spend a lot on test programmes with the test drivers surely?

[Paddy_NL]

Well, at least the mechanics will be busy on a race-Friday night with these proposals

[Kicking-back]

True

But they can do that already

It will at least mean that Schumacher's not pounding round Fiorano five days a week

[Phoenix1]

What about test cars?

Glad to see them working together at least :-)

[Alpine Star]

Let me see...
at the start of last year there were a couple of teams who had some enginetrouble, i believe that Mercedes-McLaren was one of them... do they realy believe that Illmore can suddenly build a engine that lasts longer then three days?

They would have to cut down more and more on the power, and eventhoug i am a Ferrari-fan too, I can only see that one team has the finance, recources and knowledge to come out on top at the start of the season.

Ferrari would loose a minimun of power with a maximun of consistancy and reliability, so why this idea?

As for the fund... come on, I've found the idea of hand-outs in F1 always a riddiculus idea, We lost Prost, but at least he went down fighting, we lost Arrows (again) but he went down with a smile, the costs should be reduced for the teams and not keeping teams in F1 that only are there cause someone gives them money to be there...

There must be smarter plan that doesn't involve handouts...

[nkh]

How would it limit testing? It would just force the teams to build even more chassis, 2 for the races (which can then be packed away after each race) and some more for testing.. So, advantage the teams who can afford to have a fleet of F1 cars, too bad for Jordan and Minardi who might have one car they can test with besides the race cars. Oh well, they'll get a bit of money but what happend to Ron's fighting fund? I guess it's just rebadged money.

[RWC]

The two race engine rule is completely bonkers and just shows how out of touch max is!
These idiotic ideas he's comming up with don't help the smaller teams at all!!!

The first proposal is a definite good compromise which could have some added benifits.They could use it as a seudo testing limit (your engine breaks,you lose testing time!)

[Gt_R]

i think i like this compromise

Although it can cause some wonders as to why BMW and Mercedes would agree to this given that Ferrari has done such a good job so far.there are a couple of things which may influence.

1) The essential of V10 link between their road cars and F1 cars. The marketting power of leveraging and linking their road car V10s to their F1 counterpart.

2) At least, BMW and Mercedes know where Ferrari stand now, and have a good basis for their engines. Unfortunately, if there's a switch to V8, it will probably throw BMW and Mercedes into the darkness again.

[Toth]

I don't like this one bit....

What has it got to do with racing that a racing driver may only test with an engine already used in a race? To reduce power? It's a rather complicated way of achieving this. Why not go further and say that a race engine must last 10.000 km is a normal roadcar after each race? That would reduce the power...It has got nothing to do with racing, but that doesn't seem to be a problem anymore....(actually that's a pretty cool idea of mine, ferrari engine's in fiat punto, a clio v10, and a F1 BMW M3 especially for aysedasi...)

Is this cheaper? The purpose of F1 is not to be cheap.

Besides I don't even think this is any cheaper, teams will just build more chassis for more testing drivers.

F1 is expensive because it is competitive. Everyone wants to win. And if it takes 5 billion to win that's what they will spend. You could make them go round on lawnmowers with moped engine's, they'd still spend millions to make the fastest lawnmower with the most powerfull moped engine.

That's basically what you'll get now, less performance for the same money.

Reducing performance for safety is another matter (that I'm all for) but this doesn't seem to be about safety.


Usually the best solution is the simplest one. Want to reduce testing? Reduce testing days and/or cars. Want to reduce engine power? Chop 2 cilinders of, or squeeze the air intake abit, or do something radical and let them drive on hydrogen or whatever...I'm no engineer, but I'm sure there are plenty of simple possibilities. Want to make F1 cheaper? Eh...tell a billion people to care a bit less...

As for giving free engine's or money to the lesser teams, that's all really kind and stuff. If the better teams agree then good for them.

[eein]

The proposals are interesting, but not the way to go I think. Using the same engine in the next weeks testing means that new engine parts cannot be tested and so need to be dyno-ed and then put straight into a race weekend. This is potentially unsafe.

Trying to support the smaller teams financially is a good idea, but comming up with contrived schemes to get money to them is also wrong. Simply cutting their costs is the way to do it - for example manufactures need to supply a second team for free and if they don't then have some non financial penatly like limited testing. Maybe even some system that encourages manufacturers to help bring some new teams in.

As for V8s, if this were to happen, BMW would probably not like it in light of their recent addition of a V10 to the M5, but BMW, Merc and Ferrari are all very experienced in high power V8s. I don't think one would have any particular advantage from having more road car V8 experience than the others. And in the motoring world, one of the highest regarded V8 engines is actually the Jaguar!

[BootsOntheSide]

Bringing in a rule forcing teams to make a customer supply of engines available becomes much mroe important now that we're down to 6 engine suppliers and posisbly 10 teams. Toyota seem semi-keen to supply Jordan, whereas Minardi could do with a linkup with Mercedes or BMW.

[1200Datto27]

MMMM Minardi-BMW

[jonboyG]

Er, Autosport is reporting this as BMW, Mercedes and Honda, not Toyota.

http://www.autosport.com/newsitem.asp?id=39744&s=5

[BootsOntheSide]

Shows how few people read Autosport these days, that we've all gone on happily discussing the significance of Toyota's involvement, doesn't it? Thanks for the clarification Jonboy