Apparently, next season is going to change from “2.4 litre v8” (if I heard it right) cars, to “turbo-charged v6” cars.

How will this affect things?

They’ll be quieter, and be more torquey. Vettel will still win

I’m certainly not knowledgable and all I know is that they are going for smaller more fuel efficient engines and that Mercedes may be ahead of the game.
It seems it may be quite a big deal.

1.6 v6 turbo next year, limited fuel, increased energy recovery systems, 16k rev limit. Overall power is likely to be similar but the current engines have been broadly equalised to give v similar performance across manufacturers. There’s a good chance that next years power units won’t be so balanced so it could be an important factor in performance as well as reliability. ERS packaging and reliability will be another big factor.

Expect a few more mechanical retirements than we’re used to, but manufacturers will be able to make reliability related improvements, though not performance, so the number of mechanicals will drop over time.

It will affect the driving characteristics of the car slightly as they will be lighter and tourqier but they’ve spent so much time developing them that they will be nigh on identical.

Will be good to see Honda back in the F1 game as well.

New engine regs for 2014 introduce 1.6L V6 turbos with a 15k rpm limit.
Almost as significant the amount of fuel that can be used in a race will be reduced from 150kg to 100kg

There are also big changes to how KERS and energy recovery will work. It will now become a much more crucial aspect of the overall design of the powertrain rather than a bolt on addition.

Its the biggest regulation changes for about 30 year. F1 next year will in effect be a new formula, they only thing unchanged on the cars will be the tyres.

So it will affect everything. Team that have struggled this year like Mclaren will be hoping they can hit the ground running with the new regulations. Dominant teams like Red Bull will have to work hard to maintain their advantage with what are effectively blank sheet designs

DP

TP

QP

Will be good to see Honda back in the F1 game as well.

Isn’t that 2015? I thought next year was only going to see Renault, Mercedes and Ferrari ‘power train’ units next year.

RM.

Also there will now be a single central exhaust which means that blowing the diffuser isn’t viable next year. This is an area where RedBull have excelled and Vettel was brilliant at exploiting it (webber wasnt) so that’s one potentially significant factor.

“knowledgeables”, on this forum?

I’d expect so…

Team that have struggled this year like Mclaren will be hoping they can hit the ground running with the new regulations. Dominant teams like Red Bull will have to work hard to maintain their advantage with what are effectively blank sheet designs

So the boy Hamilton might do better… (and Jenson hoik himself up out of mid-field, maybe).

Mclaren have also poached redbulls top aero spod, but he’s not allowed to join until 2015.

Vettel will still win

No he wont. There were minimal changes this year. Next year is effectively massive changes. Personally I think Ferrari will be the winners of all the rule changes.

Some of the new engine tech is actually really clever and should eventually trickle down to road cars.

As well as KERS, which recovers energy from the brakes the new powerplants will have a second system which recovers energy from the turbo.

Turbos, as I’m sure most of you know, sit in the flow of exhaust gasses from the engine, passing exhaust gasses spin up a turbine which is connected to a shaft which then drives a compressor to compress the intake air of the engine. More intake air means more fuel can be burned, giving more power.

However there is a delay between the accelerator being pressed and the turbo building up speed and therefore delivering sufficient boost – this is known as turbo lag.

In racing engines there are various anti-lag regimes – all of them involve burning extra fuel to keep the turbo spinning, this won’t be an option with the new F1 regualtions

In road cars the answer is normally smaller more efficient turbos or most recently variable vane turbos, which tend to be expensive.

The other issue with conventional turbos is when you come off the accelerator excess boost pressure needs to be dumped – this is where a wastegate comes in, it diverts some of the flow of the exhaust gasses around the turbo so it doesn’t overspeed and destroy itself.

Both of these processes are wasteful and effect overall engine efficiency.

The new F1 engines will therefore adopted a totally new approach. The turbo will be connected to a motor / dynamo. The motor can be used to very quickly spin up the turbo to almost eliminate lag and instead of a wastegate the motor will turn into a dynamo and harvest energy from the turbo to control its speed.

As turbocharging is now widely used on road car engines improvements in efficiency would be very useful for everyday cars. So this new system will be looked at very closely.

The only problem is its extremely complex, turbos spin at around 100,000 rpm so controlling them with a motor / dynamo system is a real engineering challenge

The turbo system is likely to be a weak point in the new 2014 engines

Some very clever stuff but the most likely thing we’ll really notice is new design engines blowing up much more than the current V8s which were ridiculously reliable

http://scarbsf1.com/blog1/category/2014-engines/

blowing up much more than the current V8s

Visuals!! 😀

The new engine regs should be very interesting, there will be a lot more manufacturers interested again I would have thought as the tech in the new engines can be transferred much more easily to road cars.

I’m looking forward to the new breed of 1.6 hot hatches with 800bhp 😈

or more likely, smaller engines with more efficient energy recovery systems 😉

Spoilsport

Surely Red Bull’s top aero bod is Adrian Newey and McLaren have not poached him.

As for the change in regs – should be an interesting 2014 and possible 2015 season before the top guns fully get on top of everything.

Reliability may be an issue – Red Bull in particular may suffer as AN hates KERS as the weight and dimensions of the batteries mean he can’t make the car as sleek as he would like.

Interestingly Daniel Ricciardo has lost something like 5 kg already in his readiness to move to Red Bull and needs to lose a further 2kg – mainly muscle mass of his arms and legs – in order to fit AN’s design.

nterestingly Daniel Ricciardo has lost something like 5 kg already in his readiness to move to Red Bull and needs to lose a further 2kg – mainly muscle mass of his arms and legs – in order to fit AN’s design.

One of the problems with the new designs is that the new engines or powerplants are a good bit heavier than this year. The minimum weight of the cars has been increased to counter this (690kg vs 642kg) but this still doesn’t account for the full increase. As a result the easiest place to try and lose some weight is off of the driver.

So larger drivers like Nico Hulkenberg, Daniel Ricciardo and Jenson Button will be on a year long diet

Button doesn’t have anything to lose except for a straggly beard.

I hope it mixes things up again. Domination of one car is boring; it doesn’t matter whose it is.

Red Bull’s top aero bod is Adrian Newey

Technically, AN is head of design or similar so not the top Aero person… but you’ve got a point.

Think the max engine revs allowed drops from 18k to 15k rpm too?
Be interested to see the overall reliability though. I’m not expecting regular fires like the last time turbos were used, but even now, things like KERS have still been giving grief.
Personally, I’d like to see DRS scrapped, and more use of KERS etc. for driver to use wherever around the track, and some way of turning undercut tactics and tyre preservation turned back in to racing on track.

Let’s face it, whatever they do with the rules, there’s too much money and publicity at stake in formula 1 for it to be really entertaining. It’s like the Tour de France, the default position is the safest, there’s less of the win it or bin it attitude these days because drivers know that someone will be willing to take their seat, and it’s better for teams to follow everyone elses strategy and come fourth rather than tying something else that could pay off or leave them 18th.

Formula one is what it is, enjoy it for that, then when it’s finished watch the V8 supercars or the BTCC.

There’s also a maximum fuel flow rate (and max fuel capacity), so the software that controls the power train will need to balance where the power comes from, to keep the flow rate below the limit.
(This does need a very accurate fuel flow meter. There are some reports that there are problems with this.)

Hopefully, the added complexity of more powerful KERS and the addition of TERS will mean there are ‘more ways to skin the cat’ during racing, so perhaps more overtaking and cars ‘out of place’ due to either tech issues or simple differences in strategy (like having to suddenly save fuel for example to get to the end of the race).

Personally i think targeting fuel economy in F1 is pretty stupid. It’s all about the spectacle, and if you want to save fuel or the environment, how about you don’t fly hundreds of people halfway round the world with tonnes of equipment just to watch some other people drive around in circles for 2hrs……. 😉

tend to agree there.
we started calling it the tyre conservation championships.
at least the Brazil race yesterday had some good wheel to wheel action.

at least the Brazil race yesterday had some good wheel on wheel action.

FTFY

As a result the easiest place to try and lose some weight is off of the driver.

So larger drivers like Nico Hulkenberg, Daniel Ricciardo and Jenson Button will be on a year long diet great, so it’s going to be a dieting tournament, then ? 🙄

(should have a notional driver weight of 70kg and a minimum cabin size to accommodate an actual adult, IMO)

we started calling it the tyre conservation championships.
at least the Brazil race yesterday had some good wheel to wheel action.

Apparently Brazil is a big growth market for Pirelli so they were determined not to bring marginal tyres. That helps explain why there was a bit less tyre conservation going on yesterday

I suspect engine reliability wont be such an issue as people are expecting. The engine manufacturers have had plenty of notice of the new reg changes, so have had plenty of time to develop enignes, also turbo technology is many generations further down the track than it was in the ’80’s when they had 1.5ltr turbo engines kicking out more than 1000hp, far more than current n/a engines. Also when they went from 3ltr V10’s to the current v8’s they very quickly got back upto V10 levels of power with no detrimental effect to reliability. Coupled with much better design techniques like finite element analysis, CFD and new materials and manufacturing techniques, baseline reliability should pretty good. There will be the odd blow up i’m sure, but by mid season I would think they’d have cracked it.

In the ’80’s rally drivers developed effective techniques to manually manage turbo lag on the group A rally cars, so with computerised clutches and throttles it should be possible to manage lag pretty effectively.

Rule changes are usually introduced to mix the grid up a bit every 6 years it seems, despite them saying its “cost cutting” and “bringing manufacturers into the show” (as Cosworth has exited at the end of this season in come Honda in 2015) Last time it was to prevent Schumacher from constantly winning, now its for Vettel.

Anyone else noticed how easy Lewis is to pass these days, is he taking his Pension cash from Mercedes? if the 2014 car isnt up to scratch I got a feeling he’ll leave F1 for America for a few years and enjoy the stardom the Indy/NASCAR drivers get , and of the course the massive pay and tv deals.

In the ’80’s rally drivers developed effective techniques to manually manage turbo lag on the group A rally cars, so with computerised clutches and throttles it should be possible to manage lag pretty effectively.

Think Rich touched on it above (or another thread), but I don’t think they’ll have the fuel to manage lag with the throttle.

b2b remember Hamilton had a cracked chassis for a few races and then spent the 2nd half of Brazil with a damaged floor – I wouldn’t write him off just yet…

Lewis easy to pass? How short is your memory?

Class line of the year ‘I can’t drive any slower, look a Williams has just overtaken me’ 😆

Also when they went from 3ltr V10’s to the current v8’s they very quickly got back upto V10 levels of power with no detrimental effect to reliability.

Not really.

the 3.0 V10’s were regularly pushing over 900bhp in qualy trim

If you look at lap records the 3.0 era is still where most of the fastest lap times are from.

the 2.4 V8s have both a lower capacity and a lower rev limit. They also have much stricter reliability regs – no more qualy engines max 8 engines for the whole season. So I think 720-750bhp would be the absolute maximum these engines could produce.

Most of the lap time that has been clawed back since the 3.0 V10 era is down to superior aero and slick tyres

Richmtb –

“The other issue with conventional turbos is when you come off the accelerator excess boost pressure needs to be dumped – this is where a wastegate comes in, it diverts some of the flow of the exhaust gasses around the turbo so it doesn’t overspeed and destroy itself.”

Where is the exhaust gas coming from if you have closed the throttle?