FIA Standard Engine
Discussion
OK, having though about this again, I am even more of the view the FIA morons should be taken outside a shot.
Let's look at exactly how we have arrived where we are:
1) FIA have a wet dream about a world engine (Spankie)
2) they lobby hard on the basis that it will cut costs (Spankie again)
3) they final force though 1.6 4 pot turbo's (Spankie again but now with Renault on-board)
4) everybody screams this is madness but then agree to 1.6 V6 Turbo's
5) 2014 arrives and it's pretty clear that only Merc have actually done the job, basically by out spending Ferrari and Renault by some 100% on development work (Quotes of 800+ staff and $½Bn being committed)
6) after the whole principal of frozen engines get's thrown out in a scream of 'it's unfair' etc etc, 2015 engines show up on the grid (after yet more money is thrown in)
7) it's obvious Ferrari have spent a fortune to catch up, Renault though are still stuff and the new Honda is a joke.
8) Red-bull to a toys/pram with Renault then try and secure another engine (having already pissed off the entire manufacturer base).
9) Toad jumps in and tried to bully the manufactures into effectively giving engines away.
and if one person peeps up about reverence to road cars, they need to be taken outside a shot.
Having mandated the created of the most expensive power-units in history, the FIA are now b
hing about the costs.
I'm pretty sure the manufactures are still making a loss selling them for the current money, once you take into account the development costs to date, and I guess they committed to loose this cash already as the costs of marketing etc, but to then have the FIA try and strong arm you into loosing more money is just too much.
Maybe the smaller teams should have engaged some brain power a few years back and not supported these ridiculous power unit regs rather than whine on about how much they cost now, did it not occur to them this was going to be far from cheap?
Hell, Williams even started up a whole new development of flywheel storage (that they never used) so they much realise just how much developments like this cost? and with only 20 cars on the grid, it's hardly mass production where you can get you're investment back in the numbers shipped.
And before we all suggest ?€12M is plenty for an engine, just break that figure down a bit, it's not the cost of a single engine, it's the costs to supply the years worth of power units for 2 cars, the support staff to go with them, the development staff to back them up, the manufacturing staff/workshops/etc to make/test them, etc etc etc.
If they really want to cost cut, drop the green pretence and go and by LS-7's or the like.
this is the same green pandering bullst that's brought us Formula E, powered by a FUGGING GREAT Diesel genset!
Seriously, Motorsport should be about the racing both on the track and the technical frontiers, not some pandering bullst to the green lobby.
/Rant OFF/
Let's look at exactly how we have arrived where we are:
1) FIA have a wet dream about a world engine (Spankie)
2) they lobby hard on the basis that it will cut costs (Spankie again)
3) they final force though 1.6 4 pot turbo's (Spankie again but now with Renault on-board)
4) everybody screams this is madness but then agree to 1.6 V6 Turbo's
5) 2014 arrives and it's pretty clear that only Merc have actually done the job, basically by out spending Ferrari and Renault by some 100% on development work (Quotes of 800+ staff and $½Bn being committed)
6) after the whole principal of frozen engines get's thrown out in a scream of 'it's unfair' etc etc, 2015 engines show up on the grid (after yet more money is thrown in)
7) it's obvious Ferrari have spent a fortune to catch up, Renault though are still stuff and the new Honda is a joke.
8) Red-bull to a toys/pram with Renault then try and secure another engine (having already pissed off the entire manufacturer base).
9) Toad jumps in and tried to bully the manufactures into effectively giving engines away.
and if one person peeps up about reverence to road cars, they need to be taken outside a shot.
Having mandated the created of the most expensive power-units in history, the FIA are now b
hing about the costs.I'm pretty sure the manufactures are still making a loss selling them for the current money, once you take into account the development costs to date, and I guess they committed to loose this cash already as the costs of marketing etc, but to then have the FIA try and strong arm you into loosing more money is just too much.
Maybe the smaller teams should have engaged some brain power a few years back and not supported these ridiculous power unit regs rather than whine on about how much they cost now, did it not occur to them this was going to be far from cheap?
Hell, Williams even started up a whole new development of flywheel storage (that they never used) so they much realise just how much developments like this cost? and with only 20 cars on the grid, it's hardly mass production where you can get you're investment back in the numbers shipped.
And before we all suggest ?€12M is plenty for an engine, just break that figure down a bit, it's not the cost of a single engine, it's the costs to supply the years worth of power units for 2 cars, the support staff to go with them, the development staff to back them up, the manufacturing staff/workshops/etc to make/test them, etc etc etc.
If they really want to cost cut, drop the green pretence and go and by LS-7's or the like.
this is the same green pandering bulls
t that's brought us Formula E, powered by a FUGGING GREAT Diesel genset!Seriously, Motorsport should be about the racing both on the track and the technical frontiers, not some pandering bulls
t to the green lobby./Rant OFF/
I like these PUs, I'm glad they happened. My main reservation about them is that they were somehow sold to us as a cost cutting exercise and yet any moron could've predicted that brand new, from scratch turbocharged kinetic and thermal energy recovering power units with brand new eight speed gearboxes would be more expensive than the extensively developed V8s.
I don't want to see Mercedes, having done the best job, have their advantage neutered- I think the performance gap to the other teams will close (and is closing), just the same as it did with the V8s, and subsequently the V8s + KERS.
It's just frustrating that it's costing everyone so much money.
That said perhaps HAAS will show us the way of the future with their technical partnership with Ferrari.
I don't want to see Mercedes, having done the best job, have their advantage neutered- I think the performance gap to the other teams will close (and is closing), just the same as it did with the V8s, and subsequently the V8s + KERS.
It's just frustrating that it's costing everyone so much money.
That said perhaps HAAS will show us the way of the future with their technical partnership with Ferrari.
Scuffers said:
Hell, Williams even started up a whole new development of flywheel storage (that they never used) so they much realise just how much developments like this cost? and with only 20 cars on the grid, it's hardly mass production where you can get you're investment back in the numbers shipped.
I thought they did recover costs / make profit via the Audi LMP? Also Williams sold it to GKN for £8M - no idea if that constitutes a profit overall.Vaud said:
I thought they did recover costs / make profit via the Audi LMP? Also Williams sold it to GKN for £8M - no idea if that constitutes a profit overall.
no idea if they had already spent more than that or not, however the point still stands, it never got used in F1 and whilst it may have found a market in commercial transport (buses etc) and some limited use by VAG, it was zero benefit to F1.Pure development costs big bucks, always has done, but these days, all the 'easy' stuff was done years ago, so anything now is a hard and expensive slog, hell major OEM's spend billions developing a new family car (the Focus was the first car to exceed $1Bn in development costs).
If F1 is about the technical challenge, then get used to it costing a packet, add in enforced development in specific directions so that 3/4 companies are duplicating effort in what may turn out to be a blind alley and you have a problem.
The item that costs the most in F1 is change. Keep things more or less that same and costs will drop over time as development cots are spread over longer periods. If there's a particular problem, then if cheap/minor changes don't rectify it, then you are not looking hard enough.
Despite it being obvious that change costs, we've had changed imposed on F1 more than once on the grounds that it would cut costs.
We have problems now and the threat is for more change. You could make it up, but you'd have to be quite spaced out.
Despite it being obvious that change costs, we've had changed imposed on F1 more than once on the grounds that it would cut costs.
We have problems now and the threat is for more change. You could make it up, but you'd have to be quite spaced out.
Gassing Station | Formula 1 | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff