Concept power units from 2030

[mzso]

High efficiency, low noise, low fuel consumption... ...1.6 litre, 4 cylinder inline.

What a fascinating formula - like a fully dressed Prius posing as covergirl of Playboy! NO.

We could even spice it up with math tests the drivers have to solve while driving in reverse in utter silence. Don't take it as personal, but I don't think you understand superstimuli as one of Nature's most important behavior-modifying effect. Biological entities tend to show a preference for exaggerated stimulus properties (y'know; light, color, size, etc.). The animals (like we are) will favor the artificial, excessive stimulus over the naturally occurring one. So good luck if you want to find a fan base who are interested in low noise, low fuel consumption formula, AS THE #1, THE PINNACLE OF MOTOR RACING.

I certainly did not have sweaty nightmares let's say in '86, because the turbos were sucking in that toluol-based fuel like a tornado an entire froggy lake, but definitely got boners and saw crying people at the start of the races in the normally aspirated 3.5 V12/V10/V8 era. And NOT because of bloody ears, mind you.

So I'd take the old faithful Honda RA-005E Suzuka Special, dust it off a bit, overhaul it with some contemporary materials, and I'd shoehorn all of its 88 kilograms into a (sacrilege!) Ferrari F2004. Slap a halo on it and enjoy! The perfect race car - for me at least. Imagine 22 of it starting a race (with foot clutches, just to honor Jean Alesi) and you would feel that your soul wants to depart your body, because the entire county is shaking underfoot; so you'd understand superstimuli in that exact precious second without any explanation.

Anyone, who doesn't understand the being(ness), the existence of such cars as the Huayra R, the FXX Ferraris, a 4-5-6-rotor Wankel, the above mentioned Honda V10s, the classic 65° Tipo 041 V12 or the 75° Tipo 043 Honrari V12, well, that someone is missing out the entirety of that unimaginable sensory fascination these engines once provided.

To be fair, responded to OP of a different thread moved here two posts above his, about a fairly open formula. Rather than expressing a desire.
But I'd like to not the the Porsche V4 had more acoustic appeal then F1 any time since it went hybrid.

But most of your comment is a collection of unfounded excuses to push your bias/obsession. Most people care precious little of the noise. Clearly evidenced by F1's recent surge of popularity.

I would go exactly to that direction (since going even to a slightly more radical change seem unrealistic). Instead of noise based on the more meaningful goal of reducing car size and weight. The weight and particularly the large size, makes the current cars movement sluggish and unresponsive and boring looking. Which both makes driver moves lackluster and contribute to collisions. And judging by the 919 they can bring enough noise appeal the wast majority of viewers.

An open engine formula inevitably leads to BoP. Nobody is going to want to redesign an engine, so they're committed for the cycle, and if you let everyone go hog wild, someone is going to nail it, and the rest are going to either feel forced to redesign at great expense, or yeah, BoP to constrain things. See how well that's received in WEC.

Fat chance of that. No-one likes that, not even the rule makers. The engine development limits and ADOU is the way of F1 to stop runaways designs.

[mzso]

.... The turbo isn’t going away, it simply increases efficiency too much.....

how would that be ?
is there a clear example of this ?
does Toyota know ?

if optimised the higher CR/ER of the NA engine will give a better in-cylinder efficiency
recent and ongoing developments in reducing heat loss to coolant and friction disproportionately benefit the NA engine
we could even have non-lossy reduction of induction pressure to the sub-atmospheric

the greatest tankages ever (in race recips) were in the 159 Alfa Romeo and the Novi

You still need to get that pressure into the engine somehow. At sea level, high speeds are enough to bring it into an efficient window. At low speed you will lose out of efficiency due to a lack of airflow. The engine is also forced to be optimized for a wider band of pressure ranges.

Still, the primary argument against NA is that the most popular arguments for it (low weight and high power to weight), are areas where turbocharged engines are just better.

The ideal four-stroke engine for F1, when considering power:weight over the whole operating range and ~1000 horsepower is likely to be a ~2L V6 with an MGU-H, a tiny battery only for the MGU-H and a small, ~50 kW MGU-K meant only for deploying MGU-H power.

Such an engine would have all the benefits of the 2014 engines, with massive weight savings due to the tiny battery and tiny MGU-K.

I think V4 is doable. Porsche got out 720 HP of an engine that was designed for 500, and that's an endurance engine. I would go for further weight reduction as well, instead of mandating steel allowing more advanced alloys with better specific strength, and no or a much lower weight limit. Maybe a split electric compressor/recovery turbine.

[bananapeel23]

Honestly people are too nostalgic for their own good.

Large displacement V10s and V12s aren’t happening. I’d be shocked to see anything larger than a 2L V8 and I’d be shocked to see an NA engine.

No matter what MBS is pushing personally in order to improve his public perception, the reality is that there is zero chance that the PU manufacturers will accept a large displacement NA engine.

I’m unsure whether the MGU-H will come back, but it really should.

Still, people misunderstand the glorious noise of the V10 and V8 eras. Their noise had very little to do with the lack of a turbo/MGU-H being incapable of producing the same sound. It was simply since you have a set amount lf air in an NA engine, so when combusion efficiency caps out, the only option for more power is more bangs.

If the teams wanted loud, high revving V6 turbo engines, they could easily get them. The reason they never made a ton of noise is that more boost and lower revs is more efficient due to lower friction losses, assuming that you get full fuel flow.

If the revs required to reach the fuel flow cap were adjusted up or down, the rev ranges of the engines would change accordingly. Allow max fuel flow at 16000 and they would hit ~18000 RPM on the straights. It wouldn’t be as efficient as unlocking max fuel flow at 10500 like it is currently, but it would create screaming engines.

[SealTheRealDeal]

Was about to post the same. There are too many variable to make a blanket statements, but conceivably an NA version of a 2022 car would have been slightly heavier owing to a larger, non-refueled fuel tank, even while helped by loss of the MGU & ES masses, the the key distinction would be that this would be the starting weight. At the end of the race this hypothetical NA car would be lighter than the turbo-hybrid car. An NA engine car could be lighter depending on how the engine was specified. In terms of peak weight, refueling could be a way to manage it, regardless of powertrain, and the FIA are nominally interesting in reducing vehicle weight--this year's cars are somewhat lighter.

Still, the primary argument against NA is that the most popular arguments for it (low weight and high power to weight), are areas where turbocharged engines are just better.

Such an engine would have all the benefits of the 2014 engines, with massive weight savings due to the tiny battery and tiny MGU-K.

Power to weight and efficiency are not always one-in-the-same for a turbocharged engine. When the focus is on efficiency, the power to weight benefit is minimized or lost completely. When focusing on power alone, like drag racing or 80s endurance prototypes, turbocharged engines can have better power to weight ratios than ICE, but fuel efficiency can suffer.

Another thing that should be mentioned is that if you start with 150-200kg of race fuel, which is what you would need if you wanted a NA engine with 900-1000hp, you would need cars built to crash on a full tank. They would start out with a heavier PU/fuel/cooling package than the current cars, and would thus need crash structures designed to handle their starting weight, which would drive the weight of the rest of the car up a lot. F1 cars won’t go below 700kg unless they compromise on safety. Even if it was possible, NA is not the path to get there unless you also reintroduce refueling.

Efficiency is king in all respects. Turbocharged V6 engines with an MGU-H are fairly light and are hyper efficient, which allows low fuel loads, and thus a lighter chassis.

2030 should stay with a low displacement turbocharged engine and 85-100kg/hr fuel flow, depending on whether they keep actove aero. They should then reintroduce the MGU-H while cutting the MGU-K back a ton. The battery should be tiny, like 1MJ.

If noise is a concern, they can always throw away some efficiency for noise by raising the revs required for max fuel flow from 10500 to 15000 or so, which would bring screaming engines back.

Addressing a couple of the assuptions:

"150-200kg of race fuel, which is what you would need if you wanted a NA engine with 900-1000hp"
There's no need to chase 4-digit hp counts if the rest of the regulations are competently made.

"They would start out with a heavier PU/fuel/cooling package"
A 2013 car dry (642kg), plus a halo (9kg), plus the typical race load of fuel (150kg) is 801kg, a 2026 car dry (768kg) and it's 70kg of fuel is 838kg. So you could add an additional 20kg of safety, in addition to a halo, to a 2013 F1 car and still have a noticeably lighter car at race start than the current car.

"F1 cars won’t go below 700kg unless they compromise on safety."
A lighter 700hp car won't need as big crash structures as a heavier 1,000hp car.

[gearboxtrouble]

A NA V8 with no battery or MGUK would be ~90kg using modern materials. Thats ~60kg lighter than the current PU and doesn't include the extra weight you need for a heavier duty transmission and braking system, extra weight for more crash structures etc. You don't need 1000 hp, 800 hp will be enough if the cars are light.

[Bence]

mzso, F1's surging popularity and its exhaust sounds have nothing in common. It's just the marketing approach. And it would be even better if the cars would sound as proper F1 machines should. If you are a race visitor, then you should know the void that the sudden drop in noise have caused. Half of the excitement was just gone. When I first exerienced that I was able to do a relatively normal phone conversation standing on the man straight during a race... The only time I just left before the checkered flag. I was disgusted by those sounds because not only they were so muted, but they reminded me of the sounds of the dark spirits from the movie Ghost (go check it - early Merc turbo hybrid sound) who take down the rotten souls to Hell. In the subsequent years the sound improved somewhat.

And I'm not being neither nostalgic, biased, nor obsessed, just look at the facts. The mentioned 3.0 NA Honda RA005E weighed 88.6 kilos. It was compact with an incredibly low CoG and it was the most powerful V10 ever (in excess of 1010bhp). The Ferrari F2004 had fabulous agility, balance, aesthetics, so what's not to like? Someone should do a fuel economy comparison between the McLaren MP4/4, the BAR-Honda 007 and the hybrid mastodons...

Remember, enthusiasm is fueled by excitement for excess (superstimuli), and that's the only base to build on.

And there was that silly talk about wooow, the cars are huuuuge, etc. NO. Just pick out the right aspects. When some of today's knownothings are tooting loudly that the cars are unacceptably wide, therefore the fights are getting rare, they should have asked Senna, Mansell, and the old boys generally, as the pre-93 cars were 23-25cm WIDER than this years "optimized" ones... Only the wheelbase is too big (even now), because of those holier than holy electric components. I don't remember a single moment ever when a driver, a spectator or a TV-pundit said something like "I quit F1 if there won't be some partly electric propulsion..." We were forced into this fecal matter, because in the moment someone smart has put that quarter-ton anvil of hybrid drivetrain in the cars, an even smarter avalanche of thought was induced - because an ultra high-efficiency combustion was needed to counterbalance the weight penalty of the cleeeaaan hybrid. How very clean. Engineers then brought down the complete fortune of God from the Mount Sinai to finance the bizarre situation and at the end everyone was proud and happy because this was a frenetic solution to a problem no one asked for. And so we ended up with the most expensive engine formula ever and lost a significant amount of acoustic aura. But hey, at least hybrids had F1 relevance since the Prius I. Oops, wait, I thought it should be the other way around... Do you feel that that the whole hybrid era was well-spent money?

bananapeel, a NA engine will always be louder and more melodious because of the turbo's sonic/acoustic attenuating effect, as the turbine wheel is in the way... The only REALLY loud turbo I ever heard personally was the Toyota RV8 SST Indy V8, but that is understandable because of the single side turbo. One bank was driving the turbo, the other was open. On a superspeedway when a Toyota flew by, it felt like your lung was about to rupture. When it was idling beside you on the pit lane, you couldn't hear the Honda HRH on full throttle at the end of the straights.

With a correct exhaust a six can sing nicely too, just listen to the mid-2017 911 RSR.

And I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that after 40 years we deserve at least the same ancient power to weight ratio. 1500bhp/540kg in the unrestricted 1986... Errm 768... Oh well...

[bananapeel23]

Addressing a couple of the assuptions:

"150-200kg of race fuel, which is what you would need if you wanted a NA engine with 900-1000hp"
There's no need to chase 4-digit hp counts if the rest of the regulations are competently made.

"They would start out with a heavier PU/fuel/cooling package"
A 2013 car dry (642kg), plus a halo (9kg), plus the typical race load of fuel (150kg) is 801kg, a 2026 car dry (768kg) and it's 70kg of fuel is 838kg. So you could add an additional 20kg of safety, in addition to a halo, to a 2013 F1 car and still have a noticeably lighter car at race start than the current car.

"F1 cars won’t go below 700kg unless they compromise on safety."
A lighter 700hp car won't need as big crash structures as a heavier 1,000hp car.

You also forgot driver weight increasing by 15-20kg. There is also no chance in hell that they go back to a KERS sized battery and MGU-K combo, so you can safely assume that an NA PU would be at least 15kg heavier than the 2013 V8+KERS combo.

Suddenly you end up heavier than a 2026 car with a full load of race fuel. It would still be a bit lighter in quali trim, but not in the race. Crash structures will be sized according to wet weight.

Again, going below 700kg dry isn’t possible. The crash structures will be large and the cars will be large as a consequence. Due to the safety requirements of modern F1, a low fuel, high efficiency formula is most likely to produce cars with a small footprint.

My personal guess is that the absolute floor for dry weight in modern F1 is ~720kg.

[mzso]

mzso, F1's surging popularity and its exhaust sounds have nothing in common.

Precisely. The sound is of little importance all in all for F1's success.

And I'm not being neither nostalgic, biased, nor obsessed

You write this, then you exemplify each and more.

And there was that silly talk about wooow, the cars are huuuuge, etc. NO. Just pick out the right aspects. When some of today's knownothings are tooting loudly that the cars are unacceptably wide, therefore the fights are getting rare, they should have asked Senna, Mansell, and the old boys generally, as the pre-93 cars were 23-25cm WIDER than this years "optimized" ones... Only the wheelbase is too big (even now), because of those holier than holy electric components. I don't remember a single moment ever when a driver, a spectator or a TV-pundit said something like "I quit F1 if there won't be some partly electric propulsion..."
quarter-ton anvil of hybrid drivetrain in the cars, an even smarter avalanche of thought was induced - because an ultra high-efficiency combustion was needed to counterbalance the weight penalty of the cleeeaaan hybrid

I don't think anyone is saying they're too wide. They are far too long. And not because of the hybrid system, because the lack of regulation and aero reasons. Until recently the K was on the side of the engine, the battery under the fuel cell. Now Honda (others unknown) moved it beside the battery. Which also doesn't increase length.
The efficient combustion was a goal, not a compensation for anything. The total weight of the PU is 185kg. Of which the ICE is the majority like 130kg. And it's only this heavy because of minimum weight regs.
If you want small weight, you need turbo with few cylinders. An NA with enough power large because of many cylinders, and inefficient because of that and high RPMs, which adds more fuel weight as well. If you limit RPM, then the engine needs to be a giant, so you waste what would you save on fuel weight, if anything.

[mzso]

You also forgot driver weight increasing by 15-20kg. There is also no chance in hell that they go back to a KERS sized battery and MGU-K combo, so you can safely assume that an NA PU would be at least 15kg heavier than the 2013 V8+KERS combo.

Suddenly you end up heavier than a 2026 car with a full load of race fuel. It would still be a bit lighter in quali trim, but not in the race. Crash structures will be sized according to wet weight.

Again, going below 700kg dry isn’t possible. The crash structures will be large and the cars will be large as a consequence. Due to the safety requirements of modern F1, a low fuel, high efficiency formula is most likely to produce cars with a small footprint.

My personal guess is that the absolute floor for dry weight in modern F1 is ~720kg.

If one proposes a formula, there's no point in speculating what "they" would do. They probably won't do any of our suggestions.

If the safety requirements stay the same, if you successfully save weight elsewhere you save weight on crash structures as well. While I don't think NA is the way to go, removing PU/engine minimum weight and other limits would result would result in a lot of weight savings. With a PU cost cap already established, I see no reason to allow a broad range of metals/alloys, 3d printing, metal matrix composites, etc. F1 is supposed to be "the pinnacle", but it's just in name only for the most part.

[bananapeel23]

You also forgot driver weight increasing by 15-20kg. There is also no chance in hell that they go back to a KERS sized battery and MGU-K combo, so you can safely assume that an NA PU would be at least 15kg heavier than the 2013 V8+KERS combo.

Suddenly you end up heavier than a 2026 car with a full load of race fuel. It would still be a bit lighter in quali trim, but not in the race. Crash structures will be sized according to wet weight.

Again, going below 700kg dry isn’t possible. The crash structures will be large and the cars will be large as a consequence. Due to the safety requirements of modern F1, a low fuel, high efficiency formula is most likely to produce cars with a small footprint.

My personal guess is that the absolute floor for dry weight in modern F1 is ~720kg.

If one proposes a formula, there's no point in speculating what "they" would do. They probably won't do any of our suggestions.

If the safety requirements stay the same, if you successfully save weight elsewhere you save weight on crash structures as well. While I don't think NA is the way to go, removing PU/engine minimum weight and other limits would result would result in a lot of weight savings. With a PU cost cap already established, I see no reason to allow a broad range of metals/alloys, 3d printing, metal matrix composites, etc. F1 is supposed to be "the pinnacle", but it's just in name only for the most part.

I mean I’m in agreement with you here. Weight savings could easily be made with the current engine formula. I’m sure they could shed ~20-30kg with the removal of weight floors on PU components and by allowing more exotic materials.

People arguing for NA engines are clutching at straws when they try to justify them by citing weight. There are massive PU weight savings available without resorting to NA engines.

There are also weight savings available elsewhere. Simply going back to 13 inch wheels would save ~12kg.

[Bence]

mzso, F1's surging popularity and its exhaust sounds have nothing in common.

Precisely. The sound is of little importance all in all for F1's success.

You miss the mark. F1 could be wildly more popular if the sounds would be "right". Marketing is just an artificial focus-generating stuffing and it carries the risk of overgrowing the product (aka top of the line car racing) itself. When the films and series are gonna pass their marks, F1 in itself could be left alone.

And I'm not being neither nostalgic, biased, nor obsessed

You write this, then you exemplify each and more.

If you can master contextual understanding, you could see that I'm talking about objective numbers, like power-to-weight ratios, and high pitch, exact frequencies. The fact that these were produced by yesteryear's race cars is just mere coincidence. If I mentioned a GMA T.50s Niki Lauda, would I be suddenly future oriented? Or just simply contemporary with a Huayra R? No bias, no nostalgia, no obsession. Just decisions. F1 IS excess, no matter how regulators trying to dip it into slime green FloViz. That makes it exclusive, inaccessible, and insensitive to certain market behavior. If someone tries to squeeze the whole thing into a smaller container than needed, the damage will be permanent. It won't cause/solve strategically invented artificial world problems, no matter how certain PC greenfoggers want to see it do. I myself just want to enjoy the top this sport represents. Top horsepower, top RPMs, top bravery, risks, and elegantly executed solutions where imaginations can be free and not reined in like the current almost spec-twin looking, non-differentiated cells of a morula. Yes, they are different - but errrm, no. Very few people could differentiate the unpainted cars from each other. And yes, the sentimental boy in me says that somehow a 6-wheeler was vastly different than a gas turbine Lotus. Even the ugliest dildo/uakari/paddlefish/tapir-faced early 2010s cars had more variance. If you want to invent something advanced (just for NOT sticking to nostalgia), you can NOT, because the formula is not free enough any more. That again freezes F1 in the ever-moving space-time continuum, where the chance is unfortunately very high thet the world passes it eventually. A rigid, unmovable, inflexible thing can lose its luster in a second. The smartphone/Netflix generation grows up; and then? What will be the fascinating factor? Silence?

If you want to stick to the up-to-date tech, then why would someone want to use ICEs at all? Isn't it anachronistic? Use ultra high density e-motors with real-time zero-point energy modules, or hyper high energy TT Brown thrusters, electrogravitic downforce generators. But old-school shrieking ENGINES??? C'mon!

...Just pick out the right aspects... ...Only the wheelbase is too big (even now)... ...quarter-ton anvil of hybrid drivetrain in the cars, an even smarter avalanche of thought was induced - because an ultra high-efficiency combustion was needed to counterbalance the weight penalty...

I don't think anyone is saying they're too wide. They are far too long. And not because of the hybrid system, because the lack of regulation and aero reasons. Until recently the K was on the side of the engine, the battery under the fuel cell. Now Honda (others unknown) moved it beside the battery. Which also doesn't increase length.
The efficient combustion was a goal, not a compensation for anything. The total weight of the PU is 185kg. Of which the ICE is the majority like 130kg. And it's only this heavy because of minimum weight regs.
If you want small weight, you need turbo with few cylinders. An NA with enough power large because of many cylinders, and inefficient because of that and high RPMs, which adds more fuel weight as well. If you limit RPM, then the engine needs to be a giant, so you waste what would you save on fuel weight, if anything.

No need to do the exact math, as I was talking about 'hybrid drivetrain' above, so that includes ICE/battery/MGU whatever/trans/fluids which are roughly a quarter ton. And YES it was a goal to compensate the weight with efficiency otherwise the cars would have started the race with 250kg of fuel.

So let's agree to disagree and it's my decision that I don't wanna hear metallic hornet V4s, cheap sounding inline 4s, choked-down turbos with no personality. And the focus is NOT on me; I don't wanna sound narcissistic - I just know because of my background what people want to watch, and hear and what they are NOT interested in. The world and its various associations can (and will) spin it, bleach it, smear it with pink slime, introduce some -isms to rectify it, but ultimately people don't change. They (and I) want simple but jaw-flooring things. People can't explain how their smartshites work, they can't explain how a hybrid F1 powertrain works (not to mention the 26 regs!). They don't know what are those barrels for on the uprights. They cant tell the difference between a Macca or Ferrari suspension. They only know that in the recent years the whole circus just lost its glorious, signature stimuli one-by-one. Cars sound worse in engine texture and frequency, they are quieter, they don't spit fire, they don't bang as loudly, the glowing brake discs are disappeared and racing fuels don't smell as characteristically aromatic. Bring back some excitement in the place of power surges and depletions people now mistake as overtakings. If you treat the two exhaust channels of a cylinder in a V6 as separate runners and make a quasi-V12, it is fine with me. Crossplane 8into1 V8s would be perfect, because they scream like the BRM V16. Old school again, I know, but no modern Bug V16 was more exciting than a milk truck - the German word 'dumpf' describes it perfectly. So using the appropriate mindset, rules and talents, it wouldn't be occult wizardry to eke out some true excitement of this product called F1.

[SealTheRealDeal]

Addressing a couple of the assuptions:

"150-200kg of race fuel, which is what you would need if you wanted a NA engine with 900-1000hp"
There's no need to chase 4-digit hp counts if the rest of the regulations are competently made.

"They would start out with a heavier PU/fuel/cooling package"
A 2013 car dry (642kg), plus a halo (9kg), plus the typical race load of fuel (150kg) is 801kg, a 2026 car dry (768kg) and it's 70kg of fuel is 838kg. So you could add an additional 20kg of safety, in addition to a halo, to a 2013 F1 car and still have a noticeably lighter car at race start than the current car.

"F1 cars won’t go below 700kg unless they compromise on safety."
A lighter 700hp car won't need as big crash structures as a heavier 1,000hp car.

You also forgot driver weight increasing by 15-20kg. There is also no chance in hell that they go back to a KERS sized battery and MGU-K combo, so you can safely assume that an NA PU would be at least 15kg heavier than the 2013 V8+KERS combo.

Suddenly you end up heavier than a 2026 car with a full load of race fuel. It would still be a bit lighter in quali trim, but not in the race. Crash structures will be sized according to wet weight.

Again, going below 700kg dry isn’t possible. The crash structures will be large and the cars will be large as a consequence. Due to the safety requirements of modern F1, a low fuel, high efficiency formula is most likely to produce cars with a small footprint.

My personal guess is that the absolute floor for dry weight in modern F1 is ~720kg.

Ok, so 821 instead of 801, still noticeably less than 838. You could add 17kg more safety and only be equal in weight at race start, and then be noticeably lighter shortly after race start.

"There is also no chance in hell that they go back to a KERS sized battery and MGU-K combo"
KERS was 25-35kg. It was a primitive and very overweight system for what it offered relative to what hybrid systems have been used since then. A 2014-2025 hybrid component minus the MGU-H was 27-32kg.

[Lt_Boards]

Been thinking about how the engines, in particular their sound, provide so much of the emotional connection fans have with F1.



This video popped up after in youtube after I watched a video about how golf doesn't sound as good as it used to either. I never thought about it until I watched it and it made me feel the same way that the turbo v6 engines have over the last 12 years. A mate of mine is a mad golfer (with a negative handicap for as proof of his madness lol) and I shot him both videos. He mentioned how he was actually watching some old Tiger Woods clips the other day and was thinking at the time how golf just doesn't sound/feel the way it used to.



He is probably the furthest you could be from calling yourself a motorsport fan, but his response to both clips was that the sound makes you feel something. It creates this hard to describe connection to what is happening which you just feel. It evokes emotion, feeling and awe. This is what's missing form F1 at the moment.

I actually really like the approach that WEC have taken. Not their whole BOP system, but the approach of chose what ever engine you like, and go nuts with the electrical power too if you see fit, but no one is delivering more than 500kw at the wheel and we'll measure it in real time with torque sensor.

If something similar were adopted for f1, Manufacturers could chose to use whatever engine configuration fits their marketing directive. No more "rules were changed to entice Audi into f1". Whilst still heavily restrained through BOP in WEC, a fixed power output can drive design for performance by other means. e,g, weight, integration, fuel efficiency, drivability, rather than trying to find 'gotcha' loops holes in the highly prescriptive regulations. He'll you could end up with a heap more examples like the AMG-One with an "F1" engine.

In WEC, this has resulted in the deep thundering V8 Cadillac, and the incredible screaming Aston Martin, made all the more amazing by their contrasting sound in comparison to the other turbo hybrid engines on the grid. It reminds my of the days when you'd have a thundering deep rumble of a crazy looking Panoz followed by some small high revving NA engine, or a turbo V6.

The fact that they were all so different allowed the viewer and fans to make different connections to the cars. Current F1 is very polarising, you back you're team and/or driver 100% and then hate everyone else. i think we are all guilty of this to a degree. However my view on WEC at the moment is different. I think the Aston is rubbish form a performance perspective, but I can't help but love the car, the sound, and how they have gone about it. I'm your historically stereotypical f1 nut who thinks anything American is rubbish (form a f1 technical purist perspective) because... "NASCAR" and big fuel V8 pickups etc.... But I can't help but love the Cadillac LMDH because..... what can I say..... it has soul.

Rant over.

[mzso]

He is probably the furthest you could be from calling yourself a motorsport fan, but his response to both clips was that the sound makes you feel something. It creates this hard to describe connection to what is happening which you just feel. It evokes emotion, feeling and awe. This is what's missing form F1 at the moment.

It's just a case of "what I first experienced is right and normal, everything else wrong".

I actually really like the approach that WEC have taken. Not their whole BOP system, but the approach of chose what ever engine you like, and go nuts with the electrical power too if you see fit, but no one is delivering more than 500kw at the wheel and we'll measure it in real time with torque sensor.

If something similar were adopted for f1, Manufacturers could chose to use whatever engine configuration fits their marketing directive. No more "rules were changed to entice Audi into f1". Whilst still heavily restrained through BOP in WEC, a fixed power output can drive design for performance by other means. e,g, weight, integration, fuel efficiency, drivability, rather than trying to find 'gotcha' loops holes in the highly prescriptive regulations.

In this day and age, they would gravitate towards one solution very quickly. Whichever is the most compact and has the best power density. If electrification is not otherwise limited, it would very likely turn into a series hybrid. With a tiny ICE constantly producing power and the electric motors producing drive. Power densities can be quite spectacular these days with a Yasa motor of 12.7 kg producing more than 1000HP/750kW peak power. And not even using exotic materials.
Doubt these outcomes would satisfy your desires. It's the BOP that makes all those engine designs possible in WEC. Because no matter how incompetent a design is, it's compensated for.

[De Wet]

A NA V8 with no battery or MGUK would be ~90kg using modern materials. Thats ~60kg lighter than the current PU and doesn't include the extra weight you need for a heavier duty transmission and braking system, extra weight for more crash structures etc. You don't need 1000 hp, 800 hp will be enough if the cars are light.

These cars are safer than my Merc road car.