Racing green

At the start of the 2014 For­mu­la 1 sea­son, exist­ing 2.4‑litre 18,000rpm V8 engines were replaced with 1.6‑litre 15,000rpm tur­bocharged V6s, fea­tur­ing great­ly enhanced recov­ery sys­tems. They are the most effi­cient engines the sport has ever seen and mark the begin­ning of a new era for F1.

The switch is a gam­ble. The sport’s gov­ern­ing body, the Fédéra­tion Inter­na­tionale de l’Automobile (FIA), is bet­ting on F1’s future and its con­cerns for the envi­ron­ment must be bal­anced against the risks of trans­form­ing a 65-year-old win­ning for­mu­la.

A huge amount of mon­ey is also at stake. In 2013 Mer­cedes spent £133.9 mil­lion on its F1 engine divi­sion alone. The engine’s mate­r­i­al costs are believed to make up at most 10 per cent of this, with the remain­der spent on devel­op­ment. With anoth­er three man­u­fac­tur­ers – Fer­rari, Renault and Hon­da – com­pet­ing against Mer­cedes in 2015, it’s a big-mon­ey busi­ness.

The changes align F1 more close­ly with the direc­tion the motor indus­try is tak­ing and reflect the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of hybrid vehi­cles. The ener­gy recov­ery devices are dri­ven by heat from the exhaust, giv­ing a 120kW boost for 33.3 sec­onds per lap. Fuel econ­o­my has also been improved. A 30 per cent increase in effi­cien­cy means the cars are lim­it­ed to using 100kg (around 140 litres) of fuel per race. So, just as road-car mak­ers con­stant­ly strive to pro­duce mod­els that do more miles per gal­lon, F1 engi­neers are now chas­ing as much pow­er as pos­si­ble from a giv­en amount of fuel.

The intro­duc­tion of the new engines has not been with­out con­tro­ver­sy and there have been three key areas of con­tention. First­ly, lim­its on engine devel­op­ment, intend­ed to cut costs, have led to the dom­i­nance of Mer­cedes which won the 2014 F1 team and driver’s titles. At a time when sport on TV is fac­ing increas­ing pres­sure from new media as a source of enter­tain­ment, F1 can­not afford view­ers to switch off.

The V6 engines are small­er and more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, but cost around twice as much at an esti­mat­ed £20 mil­lion annu­al­ly

Anoth­er prob­lem is the new units lack the dis­tinc­tive high-pitched scream of their pre­de­ces­sors. F1’s dis­tinc­tive sound is one of its unique sell­ing points and cir­cuits have expressed con­cern that fans maybe turn­ing away from a sport which is break­ing with one of its defin­ing tra­di­tions.

V6 engines have a dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent sound com­pared to the icon­ic V8 engine

The third prob­lem is cost. Although the V6 engines are small­er and more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, they cost around twice as much at an esti­mat­ed £20 mil­lion annu­al­ly. This extra cost fuelled the col­lapse of the Cater­ham and Marus­sia teams last year.

F1’s chief exec­u­tive Bernie Eccle­stone has been one of the most vocal crit­ics of the new engines and recent­ly pro­posed a return to V8s which was reject­ed by the teams. His ver­dict on the new engines is clear. “Good pow­er unit and a won­der­ful bit of engi­neer­ing, but not designed for For­mu­la 1,” he says. It is an issue which will con­tin­ue to divide the sport over the com­ing sea­son.