The Hybrid/NA Engine Debate (moved from Future Rule Changes)

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Oldtony

Spot on.
Most of the suggestions here seem to be for some form of glorified Historic Racing.
Great fun and a marvelous spectacle but hardly the pinnacle of motorsport.
If you bring back 3ltr multi cyl. NA engines, limited wings or ground effects with great big wide tyres the results would still be dominated by those who could spend most money on the even more irrelevant details within those rules. And F1 would no longer be the pinnacle of motorsport.

Ok, this is the bit that I can't quite compute. If you take the current PUs they are running 100 litres for a 200 mile (approx) race. I may be off base here but that equates to around 8 MPG for the full race distance, which we know is also supported by the electrical power so I suspect they are much thirstier than that.

Current, modern V8 production engines, as we know, can produce significant power for much less fuel usage using modern injection techniques compared to the old days. The cost of tuning a stock block to produce 800bhp would be much less than the cost of 20 million per unit and it would still not use more than 8 mpg but it would be lighter than the gubbins currently in the cars thus the cars would be dynamically better. Seems to me that is not "historic racing" but road relevant pinnacle of motorsport.

Yes I realise the current PUs produce more than 800bhp but they are also significantly heavier than a V8.

Originally Posted by Oldtony

Drive out the Manufacturers and the sport would again become the domain of a breed of garageists probably funded from even more unlikely sources that we have in F1 now. And F1 would no longer be the pinnacle of motorsport.

Yup garagistes such as Jack Brabham and then Bernie E, Colin Chapman, Ken Tyrrell, Guy Ligier, MARCH, Eddie Jordan, Williams, McLaren, to name but a few. Of course there were others such as the financier of Arrows, the Italian Shoe Magnate, allegedly VJ Mallya, et al.

I can't see why having those type of characters in the sport would be so wrong. Of course it's necver going to be cheap but in my opinion proper engines are far more fuel friendly per BHP than the current crop of PUs.