Latest article on the Cosworth

[ChrisB]

There's a good Gordon Kirby article on CART.com today here:

http://www.cart.com/News/Article.asp?ID=5484

Ian Bisco says that Cosworth would obviously like to be the only supplier, but he's also pragmatic:

"If I were to be selfish I'd like to continue as we are," he professes. "But you've got to be realistic. Competition between manufacturers is good. Any competition between anybody is always positive and good."

Also mentioned is the need to combine rpm limits with minimum mileage.

"Not only do you need to put a limit on rpm but you must state a mileage limit too, because no matter what mileage or rpm limit you put on an engine you will build an engine to run those rpm. If it's 12,000 rpm with no mileage limit everything will be as light as it can be just to run 12,000 rpm. It might only run 100 miles. You have to state the two things together--an rpm limit and a mileage limit. I think those are probably the two key factors."


So... how could this be done in the rules when they get back to multi engine supliers? The rpm-limit part is easy... but how to do the minimum mileage part? Would the engines be "tagged" and must be used in at least 6 races or something like that? (assuming 1200 miles @ 200 miles per road-race) Anyone have any thoughts on how they could do this?

[Napoleon]

Originally posted by ChrisB
So... how could this be done in the rules when they get back to multi engine supliers? The rpm-limit part is easy... but how to do the minimum mileage part? Would the engines be "tagged" and must be used in at least 6 races or something like that? (assuming 1200 miles @ 200 miles per road-race) Anyone have any thoughts on how they could do this?

Thats easy, each engine has a serial number and is sealed by C^RT prior to entering service. Prior to each session the team must report the engine being used so C^RT can track its milage.

The hard part is if the engine does not go the distance. Max Mosley, or whoever wrote that letter to the F1 teams earler this month hints at how that maybe a problem.

Unfortunately I can not find a link to the letter which I saw on the web but to summarize what Max M. said on the subject was that F1, which is implementing a mileage rule, needed to come up with a sufficient penalty to a team which is forced to make an engine change to seriously dissuade them from swapping an engine just to swap, yet it can not be so drastic to take someone out of a championship race. Obviously the most drastic penalty would be to force a car to sit out an appropriate amount of track time to account for how long the engine should have lasted. With the car counts being what they are I doubt either series would take that hard line of an approach.

[nrc]

Seems like some kind of point penalty would discourage engine swaps. No points for that car if the swapped engine made it less than half distance, half points from there.

Something similar could be done for drivers, but not as severe. Maybe a 2 or 4 point deduction from the points that they earn in that race.

[formulaben]

I think the mileage requirement is easier said than done. The beauty of the single (call it spec if you like) engine supplier is that they are only competing against themselves, so the engines are still high tech, but built conservatively. Once you get more competition in, the engine failures will go up...exactly what they DON'T want. Although we tend to want more manufacturers in the game, I think in 2005+ we will look back and say that the Ford years were good for racing.

[ChrisB]

a sufficient penalty to a team which is forced to make an engine change to seriously dissuade them from swapping an engine just to swap, yet it can not be so drastic to take someone out of a championship race

And THAT's going to be the hard part!