The road to F1's latest turbo era

Perhaps it was inevitable that Bernie Ecclestone generated a few negative headlines after the recent Jerez test, when he once again made it clear that he is no fan of Formula 1's new power units.

The real picture will only emerge as the years go by, but the twin drives of a) employing technology relevant to manufacturers and b) giving F1 a greener, more sponsor-friendly image will have an impact far beyond any controversy stirred by unreliability in testing or the early races of this season.

One thing is clear - we haven't got here overnight, and it's been a long and involved process. And Ecclestone has been in the loop all along as the rules developed.

Determining exactly where the road to 2014 started is not easy, but arguably it stretches back as far as 10 years ago, specifically to a summit meeting in Monaco in May '04, when incumbent FIA president Max Mosley met with the teams.

This was perhaps one of the first times that the sport's stakeholders had looked beyond the next few races and the usual short-term debates about the following year's rules. The focus was on developing major changes for '08 and beyond.

At the time F1 was well supported by manufacturers, but Mosley believed the situation couldn't last, so there was an emphasis on cost control as well as improving the show. A raft of proposals emerged around that time, including 2.4-litre V8s for 2006, the requirement for engines to be used for several races, and a standard ECU.

After the meeting Mosley noted: "It was pointed out by one of the major manufacturers that we're currently spending €1000 million a year to provide engines to 14 of the 20 cars, and it therefore shouldn't be too difficult to reduce that by 50 per cent.

"That will make a big difference. That €1000 million is simply not sustainable, by any calculation."

The Jerez test was the first sight of a new breed © LAT

Just four months later Ford's decision to cancel its Jaguar F1 programme was a timely reminder of how fickle the boards of big companies can be.

Subsequently Mosley would look for ways to make F1 sustainable for manufacturers, both by attacking costs and helping them to justify their involvement in the sport by making the technology relevant.

It wasn't easy, as these were turbulent times.

The V8 stopgap measure

The GPWC grouping of Ferrari, Mercedes, BMW and Renault planned a breakaway series for 2008, once the existing Concorde Agreement ended, and that proved a major distraction.

Plans for a V8 for '06 had to be forced through, complete with a freeze on development. But the V8 was always going to be a stopgap, as Mosley believed the way forward had to involve greener technology, and that meant promoting efficiency.

In May 2005 he talked of a fuel-flow formula - famously championed by Cosworth's Keith Duckworth many years earlier - and in July that year he extolled the virtues of energy recovery, noting: "This concept has had an enthusiastic response from the car makers. We want to get the emphasis away from hidden technology, whereas this would have direct relevance."

He expanded on that at Monza in September of the same year: "I think what you can say about the use of hybrid technology in F1 is that the only debate is when? We would like to see it in 2008. Some manufacturers say that's too soon. It's a matter under discussion."

By February 2006, Mosley made it clear that an all-new engine formula, focusing on efficiency, was now in the planning stages: "There are various reasons for that, apart from it being politically correct.

"All the manufacturers are working on fuel efficiency, there are some very interesting things going on. And if there is a big oil crisis, which is more than likely in the next few years, then it will be far more defensible if we can say, 'Actually we are working on the cutting edge of fuel efficiency.'"

The aim was not just to keep the current manufacturers on board, but to attract others, specifically Volkswagen/Audi.

Genesis of a new concept

The men charged with coming up with a new concept for F1 were FIA technical consultants Peter Wright and Tony Purnell, the latter having been on the other side of the fence as Jaguar Racing's boss until the end of 2004.

Helped by automotive consulting firm Ricardo, their brief covered the whole technical package, including aerodynamics. The engine was the key.

Early problems were to be expected © XPB

"We started having a chat about what the car companies wanted from motor racing," Purnell recalls.

"And we had a lot of meetings with all the players, and some of the people who we thought might like to play in the future. We met with their chief engineers, the people who were leading their road-car programmes, not just their F1 employees.

"I'd already been to the Frankfurt show, where there was a massive, tidal-wave message, which was, 'What we are interested in is fuel economy and efficiency'.

"When we went round the manufacturers we got the impression that their challenge for the future was just that. There was the green issue with carbon emissions as well.

"So there was a lot of heat on within the industry, perhaps more than in a generation, for a pretty radical change in approach. They really had to think about doubling fuel economy, and doing that through efficiency, because people won't compromise: they don't want slow or utilitarian cars; they still want sexy cars.

"Max also had this relevance-to-society message, with the thought that F1, with the right direction, could become a hotbed of engineering activity, which did a lot more good rather than just being a job-creation exercise.

"And he set us off to see how we could do it. We couldn't see how we could just nudge anything - it had to be a monster step."

The concept of a small turbo, with a strong element of energy recovery, soon emerged.

"There was a lot of talking to manufacturers about what they wanted," says Wright. "'Relevance' was the key word.

"The European motor industry indicated the direction they were going, and we were shown things by them. However, the Japanese industry at that time was saying, 'We don't believe downsized turbocharging is the answer.'"

Nevertheless Wright was convinced: "It doesn't take very long before you arrive at the logical conclusion, which is what we've got now. If you're going to have an efficiency formula you need to go for the smallest, most efficient configuration of engine you can go for.

"You've got to have the minimum number of parts. You don't want to run very high rpm with all the losses that go with it, so in order to get the power you've effectively got to supercharge it.

"Once you make the target efficiency, energy recovery is a no-brainer. A normal piston engine at the very best is 30 per cent efficient, so you say, 'What's happened to the other 70 per cent; how much can we get back?'"

"Different people wanted wildly different things," adds Purnell. "The one common ground was this subject of efficiency, and changing the rules fundamentally from power-per-fixed-displacement to power-per-drop-of-fuel-allowed.

"That seemed to get pretty much universal approval, although there were still different views - could a fuel-rate sensor be accurate enough? And then there was a fair bit of common ground on electric hybrid power trains."

V8s said goodbye in 2013 © LAT

Radical aerodynamics were also a crucial part of the 2007 proposals.

"Peter and I saw that we should just go for a 50 per cent fuel reduction for almost precisely the same speed," says Purnell.

"And to do that we could get away with a much less powerful engine, with a complete change in the aerodynamics.

"What we wanted to do was go back to the ground-effect cars and undo years of the FIA making the aerodynamics less efficient, because that's what we'd done with flat floors and bans on things that worked well, to make an aerodynamically somewhat perverse car.

"Just making a clean sweep of it we could get lots of downforce for way less drag, make the cars look a bit prettier, and match the speed profile."

The Wright/Purnell proposals were published as a 23-page 'white paper' in May 2007. Crucially they noted it was important to maintain the sport's "technical 'awe' in 2011 via perhaps the most sophisticated powertrains that F1 has ever seen."

Subsequently, for the first time a turbocharged future was formally tabled by the World Motor Sport Council, although after further discussion the report's initial suggestion of a V6 had already been superseded by a 1.3-1.5-litre, four-cylinder format (see bottom).

Mosley wanted new rules in place for 2011, but in typical F1 style there followed years of wrangling and debate about which direction the sport should take.

"We were just sitting round the table chatting more and more," Purnell recalls. "We were trying to focus in on it and get broad agreement, which was fairly difficult. It got very political.

"You can imagine, if we had someone present who was speculative about involvement in F1, the others would be saying, 'Why should these people have any say in it?' Then we'd get, 'There's no way we're coming in without knowing what the rules are.'"

There were many distractions, notably the ongoing battle between Ecclestone and the teams - initially under the Grand Prix Manufacturers Association banner, and later Formula One Teams' Association.

In addition the scandal in Mosley's private life eroded his powerbase, and made it harder for him to push through changes.

Meanwhile, Mosley's concerns about the sustainability of manufacturer support, voiced years earlier, proved to be well founded.

Honda withdrew in December 2008, and that bombshell was followed by announcements from BMW in July 2009, and Toyota in November of that year. Renault wavered, eventually backing out of team ownership, but remaining as a supplier.

"We had people who were very vocal and super-difficult on some issues," says Purnell. "And suddenly they left."

Mosley knew that manufacturer expenditure was not sustainable © LAT

In December 2009 Mosley bowed out and Jean Todt took the reins of the FIA. After the transition, Purnell lost his FIA role, although Wright remained on board.

Todt pushed ahead with the plan to move towards turbos, and he gave former Ferrari engine boss Gilles Simon the job of fine-tuning the regulations in conjunction with the remaining suppliers.

KERS had made its debut in 2009, but it wasn't until December '10, some two and half years after the Wright/Purnell report, that the World Motor Sport Council finally confirmed that a four-cylinder turbo was coming for '13.

Any plans for radical aero to boost efficiency - and reduce the power requirement - were dropped. And more power meant more weight, a bigger fuel tank and so on. The planned 50 per cent reduction in consumption drifted towards 30 per cent.

Renault, Ferrari and Mercedes now knew that they had to get on with the job, but things still weren't that clear-cut.

After endless debate over the preceding years, it took the confirmation that turbos were coming to really focus people's minds on whether a four-cylinder engine was what F1 needed. Doubts were voiced by Ferrari, which wanted a V6, and by a highly sceptical Ecclestone, who wanted something that sounded right.

Meanwhile, in April 2011 Craig Pollock announced plans to build a customer engine under the PURE name, and Todt was keen to cite the arrival of a new supplier as proof that the sport was heading in the right direction.

The FIA boss was adamant the rules were now set in stone, despite increasing requests for a postponement from manufacturers who had previously agreed to everything. Only Renault, whose future in the sport depended on the change, was happy to press on.

Then, in June 2011, we saw a rare example of a U-turn by the FIA. Not only was the four-cylinder dumped in favour of a V6, as lobbied for by Ferrari and Ecclestone, its introduction was postponed from 2013 to '14, giving everyone more time to prepare.

Even that date change wasn't enough for some, but Todt made it increasingly clear that there would be no further delays. Had the introduction been delayed a further year, the manufacturers would simply have faced another 12 months of R&D expense.

Nevertheless, there was one more concession. The rules had originally specified the use of electric power in the pitlane, but the belief was that it would be one step too far, and in December 2012 the requirement was dropped.

Purnell says change is a fundamental part of F1 © LAT

A key element that also slipped away was cost control. Back in July 2008, Mosley wrote to the teams saying that manufacturers should be prepared to supply the new powertrains to customers at "€2 million per season per team", a figure that seems laughable now.

The plan to rein in R&D spending was stymied by the manufacturers, and was quietly forgotten by Todt and Simon when the rules were framed.

Some argue that what we've ended up with was a little too inspired by what the engine men wanted, and perhaps not enough by those who could see a bigger picture. Having helped to finalise the rules, Simon joined PURE to develop his own engine, which might suggest that he was too focused on creating a technical challenge that he and his contemporaries would enjoy.

Crucially there has been no sign of VW/Audi, despite the company's close involvement in defining the turbo route, while the PURE project collapsed.

On the plus side, Honda is returning in 2015, although the consensus is that its decision was not inspired by a desire to build a turbo. The timing just happened to be right.

Wright was present at Jerez to see - and hear - the new power units in action. And, while much of what was proposed in 2007 has fallen by the wayside, he's happy with the way things turned out.

"The significant bit, which seems to be slightly lost, is to get the same performance for a third less fuel," he says.

"You don't have many ways you can do that, and the set of rules that we were looking at in 2007 and the set of rules we've got now differ only in detail. A four-cylinder looked to be the optimum solution, as you want the minimum number of parts, friction and pumping you can possibly achieve. The six-cylinder - you know where that came from...

"I think the rules are pretty good. I know quite a lot of people are firing at them, and that's a great pity. They need to be given a chance to settle down.

"The only thing is it would have been nice to go to variable aerodynamics, and in particular variable cooling. That would have given more potential. Back in 2007 we made a big push for it."

The bottom line is that the V8s could not have gone on forever.

"I know change leads to disruption, but you've got to refresh things," says Purnell.

"If you don't allow change in F1, it's not F1. And to have a powertrain unchanged for such a long time is a nonsense.

"You could take Bernie's attitude, just give them something loud and sexy. But if you're going to do a new powertrain, then trying to make it relevant to the industry is the right thinking."

The 2007 proposals - what was dropped

In June 2007, the FIA World Motor Sport Council used a report by Peter Wright and Tony Purnell as the basis for a proposed 2011 rules package focusing on efficiency, with energy recovery and drag reduction as key elements.

The issue of overtaking was also considered. Much of what was proposed has been adopted, although key elements have been dropped:

Regulations
* 1.3-1.5-litre, four-cylinder engine
* no RPM or boost limit
* energy-flow rate to generate 300kW, including energy recovery from the exhaust
* 200kW brake-energy recovery, both axles
* 400-600kJ energy return per straight
* pump-legal bio-fuel
* FIA-specified and supplied undertray and possibly other aerodynamic components
* 50 per cent 2007 downforce
* adjustable, regulated wings and cooling
* automatic downforce adjustment when following another car
* lap times and top speeds maintained at 2009 levels
* over 50 per cent reduction in fuel consumed

Costs
A number of measures to constrain costs were proposed, including:
* standardisation of components
* homologation of components/assemblies
* material restrictions
* extended life of assemblies
* restrictions on personnel and work at races; restrictions on the use of certain facilities (for example windtunnels).

This feature originally appeared in the February 20 issue of AUTOSPORT magazine