FIA Plans 1.6-litre V6s For F1
Six cylinder plans for appease teams uncomfortable with four-pot proposals
A plan to spec all F1 cars with 1.6-litre turbocharged V6s has been put forward by the FIA, and approved by team owners.
The new rules, which would come into effect from 2014, would effectively kill the FIA's previous proposal that F1 should run to a formula of 1.6-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engines from 2013.
There are a few caveats, however. It is understood that the teams will agree with the FIA's proposal to ditch the current 2.4-litre V8 formula, providing the planned changes to the chassis regulations are also delayed until 2014 to coincide with the engine changes, and that the rev limit for the new V6s is 15,000rpm rather than 12,000rpm (the current limit is 18,000rpm).
The FIA hopes to get the new regulations pushed through as soon as possible - ideally by the end of the month.
the engines that are being proposed will be nothing like what we had before, with the fuel flow limit's etc, we will be lucky to get 600Bhp, and consider Coulthard comments that the current 2.4V8's were gutless at ~750Bhp
Would have had the the 3.0 V10 engine, six wheels (four driven at the back) full ground effects and they estimated it would 10 seconds a lap faster than the 2004 3.0 V10 F1 cars (the fastest year of all in terms of F1 lap times)
Downside it would pull 5g + when cornering and highly likely the drivers would black out unless they wore fighter pilot like G suits. which is probably not ideal for great racing.
The FIA and that idiot Ecclescake have been trying their hardest to turn it from a real sport into a spectator sport and while I understand they have to draw money in they've gone over the top a little.
What could draw spectators more than a looser ruling on design that allows people, (like Chapman used to), to innovate?
Six wheeler, the fan car maybe, ground effects, turbos - all great ideas.
Now we have the ridiculously artificial DRS to allow the top cars to more easily pass the slower cars and leave them without a hope in hell of passing them back as they'd never get within that 1 second of them by the time they reach the zone, (great way to prevent smaller teams scoring points). The A***holes can't even make up their mind how many and where to put them! Next thing you know there'll be a DRS zone in the pits.
If FIA get their way I might as well take my diesel Beemer down Halfords and slap some logos and a big rear spoiler on the back and give it a go. It'll probably be the fastest car there!
So in my mind, restricting the fuel will make teams come up with clever ways to get the absolute best engine performance while being as lenient on fuel as possible which, given the desire to reduce costs and make F1 'go green' can't be a bad thing.
Does it really matter if one team has a 1.6 4-pot and another a 2.4 V8 if they all produce similar power and use similar amounts of fuel?
Don't see how V6s are any more interesting than I4s?
I think the majority of comments on here are spot on; let the teams innovate to meet the fuel limits, rather than forcing all the teams to run identical setups. F1, until recently, was about innovation, not regulation!
I've seen what happens when regulation forces teams to build identical cars. It's called NASCAR. Same thing happened in stock car racing over 40 years ago. There were real innovaters back then, nitrous, supercharging, and turbos were all tried, and the "wing cars" that MoPar built in '69-'70 were the first American attempts at aerodynamics.
Subsequently, any experimentation was branded as "cheating", teams were forced to run identical engine setups in jelly-mould fiberglass bodies, and we have the boring spectacle of today.
Sad to see it happen to F1 as well.
let's face it, 600hp is hardly a challenge for a turbo'ed engine is it?
F1 needs more power, less aero, bigger tyres, not the other way round.
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