stevesingo wrote: ↑13 Aug 2020, 09:18
Xwang wrote: ↑03 Aug 2020, 13:34
Just_a_fan wrote: ↑03 Aug 2020, 12:52
May as well have a spec PU if you're going to do that. Why would an engine manufacturer "compete" in a formula that prevents them from competing?
Because they could improve combustion efficiency, ERS management logics and so on and still be competitive.
At the moment the only way to do so is to do a spend race with Mercedes starting with years of delays and having to learn how to be sure that nobody comes and look at what are you doing and spending since next years and following ones rules pretend to limit how much you spend and how much hours you runs engine on bench test (but the only way to police that is by whistleblowers).
Do you not think they are doing exactly that under the current regulations? Those PU manufacturers who are better at just that produce more power through efficiency.
In your proposed context all PUs will have the same power, so the performance differentiator will be how much fuel they start the race with.
IMHO actual rules being fuel flow limited force every manufacturer to improve combustion efficiency, but also to exploit every possible grey area available to improve the energy content of the fuel itself.
Moreover these last few percent of efficiency gains are extremely expensive and, being gained with more or less different kinds of trickeries, probably not so useful as a research basis for the automotive sector (what I mean is that probably a lot of newer concept are optimal on the basis of the F1 rules, but they would have never been used in a unconstrained or differently constrained environment like the more general automotive sector).
So I think that adding a max power limit could improve the situation because it will relax a bit the hard bond given by the pursuit of the maximum efficiency and will also enable FIA to better police what the manufacturers are doing (the PU would become a sort of black box with a maximum FF entering in it and a maximum power exiting, with the additional benefit to be able to check that the power output is directly related to the power request made by the pilot through the throttle pedal).