Why F1 should follow IndyCar's engine path

Jean Todt, you will remember, was long ago obsessively in favour of introducing hybrid power units to Formula 1, and at the time I bought into his reasoning that, for road cars, they were the future, and unless such a move were made the major manufacturers would see no R&D justification for remaining in grand prix racing.

Had we at the time still been running the sonorous and muscular three-litre V10s, I might have been less easily persuaded, but I never had much enthusiasm for the 2.4-litre V8s, all of which produced the same screaming white noise, and not a lot of horsepower.

F1 fans have always needed loud racing engines, and clearly - with the hybrid engines being turbocharged - that was going to be an important element lost, but at the same time they were going to produce more power than the V8s, and although I have always fundamentally agreed with Patrick Head's contention that F1 has no need to justify itself as a means of 'improving the breed', Todt's arguments about keeping the manufacturers involved seemed to make sense.

Thinking back - and looking at how things have turned out - I could hardly have been more wrong.

For one thing, the manufacturers have hardly queued up to be part of this 'new Formula 1'; for another, the inordinately complex power units have proved, as many predicted, to be ruinously expensive for those teams that have to buy them; for another yet, while Ferrari has lately come up on the rails, Mercedes domination through the first three 'hybrid' seasons caused countless aficionados to turn their backs on F1.

As some of the IndyCar drivers, incensed by Lewis Hamilton's suggestion that there isn't much depth of quality in their series, have this week pointed out, prior to the Ferrari revival in 2017, for three years Hamilton had only his team-mate to beat.

Bernie Ecclestone, it must be said, was always opposed to Todt's concept of F1's future, as he reminded me in a recent chat.

"It was wrong to introduce the bloody hybrid engine, and I said that from day one - I said this engine could kill Formula 1.

"All those years ago I was against replacing the V10s with the V8s, but at least all the engines were delivering the same sort of power.

"Since the hybrid arrived, the racing hasn't been good, has it? Alright, this year it's looking a bit better finally, but... remember the sound of the start of a grand prix in the old days! Oh well, never mind..."

Now it seems clear that the championship's new owner, Liberty Media, is well aware that the next iteration of the Formula 1 engine must be both simpler and significantly cheaper, and the teams are much in agreement - indeed Helmut Marko recently said that unless it were so, unless it were an engine that an Ilmor or Cosworth could produce for sale at a reasonable price, Red Bull's continuing in F1 could not be guaranteed.

At Indianapolis I asked Fernando Alonso about the differences - to a driver - between an F1 car and an IndyCar, not least in the engine department. After his initial one-day test at the Speedway, Alonso was back in the McLaren-Honda at Barcelona, and I wondered how that had felt.

"It felt good!" he said, somewhat to my surprise. "For one thing, of course, it felt familiar and more natural - you are driving the car straight again, rather than, in the IndyCar, sort of turning right on the straight, and when you touch the brakes there is a huge bite. Here at Indy, unless there is an emergency or you are coming into the pits, you never touch the brakes.

"The other thing is that, although we are running at very high speeds at Indy, the power of the engine - in 'oval' spec - is quite low, so when I got back in the F1 car, it felt - even with our engine! - pretty good.

"At Indy, though, something I've really liked is that starting the engine is just like the old days in F1. You just hold up a finger, and they fire it up, and away you go. With the hybrid engine it takes forever to start..."

Thinking outside the box, might not the contemporary IndyCar engine, a turbocharged 2.2-litre V6, be considered, with more boost, a basis for the F1 engine of the future?

"Why not?" said Fernando. "You're right - it could be interesting for Formula 1. It's relatively simple, not so expensive, and pretty reliable, and equal engine performance is more or less guaranteed.

"It's a nice idea, but we know it will never work in Formula 1 because the big manufacturers will never accept the idea of 'similar' engines, will they?

"It's a never-ending story, I think. For sure, the actual racing would be more spectacular if you had 20 Formula 2 cars with 20 F1 drivers.

"The spectators would love that kind of racing. With the cars so equal, the driver would matter more, and compared with what we have now it would be incredibly cheap.

"But having said that, Ferrari would not be there, Mercedes would not be there, Renault would not be there, so..."

Alonso is, of course, right, but if the F1 power unit of the future will inevitably retain some hybrid elements, even the likes of Dieter Zetsche and Sergio Marchionne would surely welcome the idea of a much less expensive programme.

As we have many times said, the power:fuel consumption ratio of the current engine is staggeringly impressive - but so has been the cost of achieving it, and if unfathomably nobody in F1 has thought to tell the world about it what has it all been about?

Monsieur Todt rarely concerns himself with racing matters these days, but perhaps, when he has a moment, he can tell us.