Mosley: KERS to revolutionise F1

Mosley presented his vision of a 'green' F1 to the International Advanced Mobility Forum (IAMF) at the Geneva Motor Show in the wake of Toyota's F1 engine chief Luca Marmorini branding F1's KERS as 'primitive' in the Italian press two weeks ago.

Mosley stressed in his speech that he believes introducing the technology would have a huge impact on the car industry as a whole and outlined that the introduction of KERS was just the beginning of a massive push to make F1 the leader in developing 'green' technology.

"In 2009 Formula One is going hybrid as the first stage of a programme to divert the vast research effort at the pinnacle of motor sport towards energy efficiency," he said.

"The development of engines has been frozen, meaning that extra power can only be gained by making better use of energy, or by getting more useful work from the fuel burned.

"This hybrid device [KERS] is set to revolutionise F1. It will make the sport at once more environmentally friendly, road relevant, and at the cutting edge of future automotive technology.

"By bringing in rule changes which make these technologies the only means by which a power advantage can be obtained, we can ensure that the outstanding engineers and huge budgets available to Formula One will be deployed on energy recovery technologies which are directly relevant to the car industry's efforts to reduce CO2 emissions as well as the average motorist's fuel bill."

Marmorini's concerns were based on his belief that the KERS device under consideration by the FIA for F1 would be limited in helping the road car industry because it was "extremely simplified" compared to those already fitted to Toyota's Prius road cars.

"The potential of hybrid engines is immense, but the solution chosen by the FIA restricts itself to recover energy from the rear wheels," he told Autosprint. "The parameters involved should be more."