The hidden agendas at play in the move to bring back V10s

Like so many populist moves, it started with a dog-whistle proposal and gained momentum from there. And then, at some indiscernible juncture, it reached a critical-mass point beyond which to challenge the concept was tantamount to blasphemy.

Before the bring-back-V10s movement passed that tipping point, Autosport pointed out some major roadblocks. F1 stakeholders are well aware of all of these – and more besides.

At the moment, discourse surrounding V10s is of the rose-tinted variety. The noise of a screaming V10! The noise!

Sadly, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. In those halcyon days the V10s came with a hefty supply and maintenance bill since they blew up so often, and manufacturers were losing their taste for it even before the FIA brought in the one-engine-per-weekend rule in 2004.

But, oh, the noise! Won’t you think about the noise?

FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem faces an election this December and it’s known that at least one credible candidate is shaping up to challenge him. It’s also known that he has lost the support of several national motoring clubs which backed him in 2021, including Motorsport UK.

In February Ben Sulayem stated that F1 should consider a return to V10 engines, last used in 2005, but was this just a tactic to get more votes in the upcoming election?

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

It’s difficult to read the bring-back-V10s proposal as anything other than a red-meat exercise to demonstrate to the grassroots that Ben Sulayem isn’t just a martinet with a peculiar aversion to body piercing and Anglo-Saxon epithets.

However, it’s also a red-meat exercise which has gotten out of hand. This became apparent when word began to sweep around the paddock in Australia that the unloved 2026 F1 technical regulations may be scrapped entirely, and the present ruleset extended until V10s can sweep in and save the day.

This would be immediately problematic for several reasons, not least because so much money has been invested already in research and development for the new powertrains – not least by manufacturers yet to actually arrive, including Audi, General Motors, and the Ford-backed Red Bull project. Still, to plough on regardless simply because money has been spent would be to fall into the trap of the sunk cost fallacy – and if these programmes are indeed as troubled as they are reported to be, those manufacturers may feel that pulling the plug could be less costly in the long run.

"You need to strike the right balance between what’s exciting to us dinosaurs, the screaming loud engines, and… maybe the audience has migrated a little bit from pure petrolheads to a younger demographic, to families coming to the track who haven’t even been part of those years" Toto Wolff

But that would leave just three engine manufacturers operating in F1, since Renault is already leaving. And Mercedes, whose 2026 programme is understood to be in very good shape, would no doubt resist a u-turn.

Little wonder the stakeholders have been scrambling to put on a united front – FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis held a media roundtable in China in which the messaging was very much keep-calm-and-carry-on. The 2026 rules will happen, how long they last is very much open to debate.

It was noticeable how keen the teams are to echo this line in public. Red Bull boss Christian Horner’s take was “it’s sort of 10 past midnight and Cinderella’s left the building” - a zinger he had clearly been keeping in his pocket for precisely this kind of occasion. His Alpine counterpart, Oliver Oakes, offered “the train has left the station”, a functional if somewhat jejune metaphor which is on the cusp of being eliminated in Q2.

The technical regulations will be completely overhauled for the 2026 season, a year in which Audi and Cadillac will make their series debut

Photo by: FIA

The sound of the V6 hybrids has been the subject of angry debate since the format debuted in 2014. It’s as if nobody foresaw that bringing in smaller-displacement engines muffled by turbos, and seldom reaching their 15,000rpm peak, would be quieter.

For all the noise about noise, it’s also a fact that F1’s audience has expanded and many of the newcomers haven’t experienced the visceral shrieks of yore – and therefore neither miss them nor hanker for them.

“We need to be open-minded, we’re all racers,” said Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff. “We like the engines of the past. And then you need to strike the right balance between what’s exciting to us dinosaurs, the screaming loud engines, and… maybe the audience has migrated a little bit from pure petrolheads to a younger demographic, to families coming to the track who haven’t even been part of those years.

“All of this needs to be set as questions: what are the objectives for a future regulation change in a few years? Let’s analyse that, come to a conclusion that’s best for our sport – that’s the single most important denominator between the FIA, F1, and the teams. We want to have the greatest product for our fans.”

A picture is emerging of the stakeholders switching into what-have-we-done mode and trying to contain the V10 monster before it gets further out of hand. At the risk of mixing metaphors, kicking the can down the road seems to have become the default solution.

But how far down the road, and are V10s a practical solution? Theoretically yes, assuming F1 can find manufacturers willing to build them and enough juice to fuel them – assuming that efficiency is going to cease to be an objective.

Given the move towards hybrid power units in recent years, while electric engines are seen as the future, what is the point of F1 returning to a specification last used 20 years ago?

Photo by: Mercedes AMG

At the moment it’s difficult for manufacturers to be as far-sighted as they’d like to be, given that governments are forcing them towards electrification while consumers, by and large, aren’t so keen. But the adoption of V10s wouldn’t just be a reversal of that, it would cut against the efficiency messaging of the past two decades. And in terms of road relevance, we’re a long way from sustainable fuels being available at the pumps, even if F1 is adopting it from 2026 onwards.

Indeed, far more energy is being poured into developing sustainable aviation fuel at an affordable cost. The commercial aviation sector currently consumes around 100 billion gallons of jet kerosene a year; sustainable fuel costs three times as much per unit and currently accounts for less than 0.1% of aviation fuel consumed.

Commercial aviation is much more important to the global economy than F1 – although businesses such as F1 are deeply intertwined with this sector, given their reliance upon it. Last year F1 announced its first investment in sustainable aviation fuels as part of its aim to reach net zero emissions by 2030.

Given the possibility of regime change at the end of this year, you have to wonder whether all this talk will amount to anything at all

Mention of net zero, of course, introduces a topic freighted with political angst and all the spurious noise that brings. Much doublethink, too, as the likes of Donald Trump pivot from declaring electric cars “a hox” to advertising Teslas on the White House driveway.

If the question of road relevance and fuel supply are questions for another day, rattling around in that can as it bumps down the road, what of the question of who would build the V10s? At the moment it’s very much a case of Honda, Mercedes and Ferrari saying “we don’t rule it out” – but they don’t definitively rule it in, either.

Back in 2008, when the global financial crisis prompted a panic-ridden exodus of the car manufacturers, Max Mosley, the FIA president at the time, posited a solution: a homologated powertrain at a fixed cost. He also opened a tender process for new teams to join the grid.

The idea requires the support of manufacturers, but they don't seem particularly keen

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

However, behind the scenes, Mosley made it clear to those applying for these spaces that they would not be considered unless they committed to the new powertrain, which was headlined by a revised version of the Cosworth V8 last raced by Williams in 2006. You may recall that Williams did a deal to get out of that and run a Toyota instead as soon as possible.

A dismal assortment of dreamers, timewasters, chancers and outright chumps therefore got the nod ahead of several far more experienced racing organisations. In the interim, Mosley was booted out of office and his successor left the homologated powertrain – and its customers – to wither on the vine.

As the FIA presidential campaign ramps up through this year, the V10 brouhaha will no doubt continue to rev up alongside as the various parties play the populist angle in public – while pertinent practical concerns are waved off with a “details, schmetails”.

Given the possibility of regime change at the end of this year, you have to wonder whether all this talk will amount to anything at all.

Despite all the talk, V10s coming back to F1 still seems quite unrealistic at this stage

Photo by: Sutton Images