Positive and negative impacts of the new F1 engines

Image Courtesy: Mercedes

Everyone seems to be complaining about the noise the Formula 1 cars generate these days. Technically speaking, the lesser the noise something makes the better it is, since noise is just a waste of the energy that is created. But let’s not delve too deeply into that, otherwise it would be more like discussing Formula E. Let’s just look at both, the positives and the negatives of having the new 1.6L V6 Turbocharged Power Units, also known as “mengines”, as some people in the paddock like to call it.

We’ll divide the article into two sections – negative and positive – and two sub-sections – impacts of the engine from the prospective of a sport and from a business point of view – to understand it better.

Negative impacts

Let’s first talk about the negative impacts of the new Power Units. Some may hit the sport and the business in a small way, and some in a big way.

Sport

The first thing that comes to anyone’s mind with the new Power Units is the noise that they generate. After listening to the V12’s, V10’s and V8’s, these new V6’s just sound too low. But if FOM increase the volume a couple of notches up, it will all be fine for those watching the races on TV. Track-side reporters have said that the noise the cars make isn’t bad, it’s just that the volume is a bit too low while watching on TV.

Business

Developing these Power Units is really expensive. The V6 Turbocharged hybrid engines are the most expensive engines in terms of development in comparison to any other engine since 1950, when F1 started.

On one hand, F1 talks about cost cutting, but on the other F1 wants manufacturers to develop the most expensive engine in the history of the sport.

Apparently, as per sources in the industry, the costs will be covered in the future. How, exactly? We’ve covered that under the positive impacts of the new engine from a business prospective, below.

Race promoters might just end up threatening to stop hosting races henceforth if the cars aren’t loud enough. Australian Grand Prix Corporation Chairman Ron Walker expressed his feelings towards the reduced decibel levels of the Power Units, stating that it was clearly a breach in the terms of the contract.

Promoters might just want to renegotiate the contract prices since quieter Power Units are certainly not what the promoters had agreed upon, paying millions for.

If the promoters’ demands are met and prices go down, the teams would end up getting lesser revenues since a percentage of the revenue that is received from the promoter’s end is given to the teams. And this would hit the smaller teams a lot more since they aren’t nearly as rich as the top 4 teams.

Positive impacts

So here’s where we try to make you believe why the change to the new Power Units is a good idea!

Sport

We’ve already mentioned the noise of these quieter Power Units as a negative, but there are positive impacts of it as well. In the previous seasons you never got to hear the whistling sound of turbo because the earlier V8 engines were naturally aspirated as opposed to current year’s force induction turbocharged engines. That “eee” noise the engine makes when the turbo kicks in sounds like music to an F1 purist’s ears.

Even the noise the car makes under breaking sounds really great; it is basically the sound of the tyres squeaking, especially when the drivers brake hard at a corner. One gets a better idea of how the car handles by just listening to these sounds.

Image courtesy: Renault

At some point of time, everyone will just stop complaining about the noise generated because they would’ve forgotten the noise the V8’s used to make. The same way no one really now complains about how ugly the noses are, unless someone crashes their car into a wall nose first and finds it as an excuse to curse the low and ugly noses.

With the quieter hybrid engines, we get to listen to all the radio messages which sounded as if they were broken into thousands of bits and pieces when heard with the V8 engines running in the background. One would always wonder how the race engineers could understand what the driver was saying, especially on straights when the engine would be running on maximum possible revs.

One would never hear what exactly it sounded like when a driver changed his gears, especially when the driver downshifted, or even the sound that turbo makes on retardation when you lift off. All this is now possible thanks to the turbo, and the sound is just exceptional to a purist motor-head; that’s exactly what one wants to hear.

At Melbourne you could hear the crowd erupt when Ricciardo held, for a while, the fastest time in Q3. Now, imagine how the grandstands would erupt if you’re at Monza and both the Ferraris end up winning P1 and P2. Such stuff would give you goosebumps even thinking about it.

Though these noises are mainly due to the Turbocharger and quieter Power Units, you could never hear such sounds when the V8’s were used. Even if some of the sounds were present during V8 engines, you couldn’t hear them due to the V8’s having an extremely high pitched noise.

Business

With players like Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault, and even Honda in 2015 in F1, other engine manufacturers may like to join in the battle for the top spot. It’s great PR not only for the engine manufacturers if they end up winning the races, but also for F1, whose viewership seems to be a bit shaky depending upon which German driver dominates the field every year.

Renault has been great in the PR area thanks to Red Bull Racing’s domination for the past four years. Every race Red Bull Racing wins, Renault would have an advertisement in leading newspapers. This year, for obvious reason they’re not able to do the same. Seems like it’s Mercedes’ time to dominate the front pages with advertisements.

It’s an excellent opportunity for manufacturers to transfer F1 technology into road cars. This has basically been one of the main motives of F1 since a really long time, but from this year on, there is a massive increase in the opportunities for manufacturers to transfer the technology.

If you look at cars manufactured by Ferrari and McLaren, there’s F1 engineering written on each and every square centimetre of the car. Cars like the LaFerrari, McLaren P1, Ferrari 458 Italia and McLaren MP4-12C have each and every piece of technology borrowed from F1. The engines, gearboxes, limited slip differentials, gear changes faster than a wink of an eye, steering wheel with buttons on it which Ferrari like to call “Manettino”, suspension, aerodynamics, materials used to make the body, etc – all of it.

Turbocharged V6 Power Units with such complex Energy Recovery Systems are the quintessential engines of the future. It’s pretty evident that the future is clean and green energy. When the world finally decides to make these hybrid engines mainstream, manufacturers like Ferrari, Mercedes, Honda and Renault will be ready with all their weapons to face the likes of Audi, Porsche and Toyota from Le Mans.

Hybrid engines such as these would help manufacturers like Ferrari start a new segment altogether. How many Ferrari road cars do you see nowadays with V6 engines? Close to none? Having mastered these engines, Ferrari can have V6 Turbocharged hybrid engines which feature the Energy Recovery Systems similar to the ones used in F1. These hybrid engines are as powerful as V8 engines in terms of power output and performance, plus they even use lesser fuel.

For manufacturers like Honda, Renault and Mercedes, it’s an amazing opportunity to transfer such technology into road cars that are built for a majority of the population. By saving fuel with the help of the Turbo and Energy Recovery Systems, you’re contributing to the environment by making it as pollution-free as possible.

The Porsche 918 Spyder is an example of what a super-car of the future is – speed as well as a powerful engine delivering 887HP from a V8 hybrid engine coupled with an Energy Recovery System. It goes from 0-100km/h in just 1.6s (stats according to Porsche).

Hope all this was enough to change you from being ‘against’ the new 1.6L V6 Turbocharged hybrid engines, to ‘for’ them. No doubt we will miss the naturally aspirated V8 engines, but these new engines have a bigger future in the whole consumer automobile industry than what the V8’s may have ever had.