The FIA wanted fours. The teams wanted eights. They met in the middle.
It isn’t often in heated political battle that such a perfect middle ground is decided upon. The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) recently laid down a mandate to switch Formula 1 race cars from their current 2.4-liter V-8s to turbocharged 1.6-liter inline-fours in an effort to show environmental awareness; the effort also would have included a reduction of maximum engine speed from around 18,000 rpm to just 12,000. The teams were understandably upset, not only about the chopping of cylinders, but because part of F1’s draw is the scream of those high-revving engines. This week, a middle ground was found: Beginning with the 2014 season, the new engines will be turbocharged 1.6-liter V-6s with a redline around 15,000 revs. Isn’t it beautiful when people can get along?
According to an FIA release, the current kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) used on engines will be replaced by ERS, a new system that apparently gathers energy that isn’t kinetic. It’s said that the system will allow power output of the V-6 engines to stay on par with the outgoing eights.
This all might seem like a nice, easy compromise, but a report from ESPN proves it was far more complicated than it seems. According to an interview with Red Bull engineering boss Adrian Newey, the decisions all revolved around Audi. The boys from Ingolstadt said they’d join F1 only if it switched to four-bangers, only to reverse that decision once the change was announced. Without that leverage, the FIA was forced to compromise. Newey went on to explain that the switch to fours would have been an engineering nightmare: “Certainly from an engineering point of view a four-cylinder turbo is not a nice engine to install, you’ve basically got to put a spaceframe around it, you can’t make it properly structural. A racing V-6 is a much nicer engine to package.”
You may remember that this isn’t the first time F1 has used turbocharging and, in fact, the last time around, forced induction was employed on four-cylinders. The engines produced absurd power figures well beyond 1000 horses for legendary drivers such as Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna and were banned following the 1988 season.
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