pchall
12-26-08, 07:55 AM
Mosley is making a massive hedge on the spec engine plan already:
FIA president Max Mosley believes that the principal of freezing engine development will continue to hold sway in Formula One, despite his much-vaunted push for a single 'spec' engine in the top flight.
The latest step in Mosley's 'masterplan', the announcement that long-time F1 supplier Cosworth had secured the tender for any future one-make engine, coincided with - and was therefore overshadowed by - the surprise exit of Honda from the top flight, but the president has since admitted that he does not see the British manufacturer having a monopoly over engine supply.
"The plan, of course, was not so much a single engine, as for a single level of performance and a much cheaper engine," he told the official F1 website, "This will become increasingly necessary if we lose any more manufacturers. The withdrawal of Honda was a surprise. They were good enough to inform us in confidence four days before announcing it, but they would have been one of the last teams I would have expected to withdraw."
Admitting that the fear of losing more manufacturer teams from F1 had been part of the reason for his push towards uniformity on the engine front, Mosley conceded that the exact path to be taken by the category had still to be determined, with some of the staunchest manufacturers threatening to pull out if the spec engine plan is implemented. Alternative suggestions have included allowing the manufacturers to formulate their own method of ensuring that enough low-cost engines are available for customer teams, and allowing the manufacturers to build and badge powerplants to the same spec as that being proposed by Cosworth.
Later on in the article Mosley tries to rationalize the expense of the KERS development and speaks of it as essentially 6 seconds a lap of P2P.
Wouldn't it all be much more simple to just keep the current 2.4L V8 formula and contain costs and constrain performance with an air restrictor and rev limiter package? That could even put Cosworth back in the game with their shelved V8 project as a possible alternative engine for non factory teams.
full text at Crash.net (http://www.crash.net/motorsport/f1/news/172877-1/mosley_foresees_continued_freeze.html)
FIA president Max Mosley believes that the principal of freezing engine development will continue to hold sway in Formula One, despite his much-vaunted push for a single 'spec' engine in the top flight.
The latest step in Mosley's 'masterplan', the announcement that long-time F1 supplier Cosworth had secured the tender for any future one-make engine, coincided with - and was therefore overshadowed by - the surprise exit of Honda from the top flight, but the president has since admitted that he does not see the British manufacturer having a monopoly over engine supply.
"The plan, of course, was not so much a single engine, as for a single level of performance and a much cheaper engine," he told the official F1 website, "This will become increasingly necessary if we lose any more manufacturers. The withdrawal of Honda was a surprise. They were good enough to inform us in confidence four days before announcing it, but they would have been one of the last teams I would have expected to withdraw."
Admitting that the fear of losing more manufacturer teams from F1 had been part of the reason for his push towards uniformity on the engine front, Mosley conceded that the exact path to be taken by the category had still to be determined, with some of the staunchest manufacturers threatening to pull out if the spec engine plan is implemented. Alternative suggestions have included allowing the manufacturers to formulate their own method of ensuring that enough low-cost engines are available for customer teams, and allowing the manufacturers to build and badge powerplants to the same spec as that being proposed by Cosworth.
Later on in the article Mosley tries to rationalize the expense of the KERS development and speaks of it as essentially 6 seconds a lap of P2P.
Wouldn't it all be much more simple to just keep the current 2.4L V8 formula and contain costs and constrain performance with an air restrictor and rev limiter package? That could even put Cosworth back in the game with their shelved V8 project as a possible alternative engine for non factory teams.
full text at Crash.net (http://www.crash.net/motorsport/f1/news/172877-1/mosley_foresees_continued_freeze.html)