Why you should care more about F1's undersold engine technology

When Lewis Hamilton rounded off his title-winning 2019 Formula 1 campaign with the grand slam of pole position, victory, fastest lap and every lap led in Abu Dhabi, it marked a fittingly dominant end to a brilliant season.

But, behind the public achievement of a such a crushing performance, lay perhaps an even more remarkable landmark for his Mercedes team.

In the back of his car was a power unit comprised of components that had completed more miles than their Le Mans-winning counterparts would be expected to do - and some components had gone further than the 6000km that a DTM device is expected to do.

Here, revealed for the first time, is the exact mileage of each of the six power unit elements in Hamilton's car as he crossed the finish line at the Yas Marina Circuit.

This year's Le Mans-winning Toyota completed a total race distance of 5247km, which means every component in Hamilton's power unit had gone further.

But this was far from being just an endurance challenge. Hamilton delivered a performance that was as strong as a season opener - where a completely fresh power unit would be running. That is something that has made Mercedes' engine chief Andy Cowell and his team particularly proud.

"It's the challenge of increasing life and minimising degradation," Cowell tells Autosport. "The team of engineers and all the technicians are just hungry to learn. And it's another area to differentiate.

"As you go into the seventh race [of an engine's life], if you can have reasonable confidence that you're going to finish, and are not ashamed of the performance level at that mileage, then it's hugely pleasing for the whole team to be honest."

The super complicated design and construction of F1 engines means some inconsistencies in the quality of each individual engine remain

The fact that Hamilton's engine was able to run so strongly having completed such high mileage says a lot about how F1 engine designs have come on in recent years in terms of minimising degradation. Especially considering how dramatic performance drop off was in the V8 era.

As Cowell recalls: "When I look at the degradation figures that we had for the V8 back in 2007-2008 era, it used to degrade at quite an alarming rate. Now, when you look at the base V6, it is tremendously stable.

"But it's a different beast. It's not a high-revving beast, and that's all about the tuning of the engine. But the cylinder pressure loads are tremendous on the V6.

"There are incredible peak pressures, particularly in qualifying. So, the piston, the gudgeon pin, the big end bearings, and the main bearings take an absolute pounding. But the wear is very low and the friction changes are therefore very low. So, if you can get your first race distance on these things, then they'll just keep going.

"But then there are other considerations too, like the efficiency of the compressor and the efficiency of the turbine. The turbine's in quite an arduous environment, in terms of high temperature and spinning at high speed. So, you need to ensure that the blades don't start creeping and things don't start deforming, and you lose efficiency because of that. That's a different engineering challenge compared with the V8s."

While the life length of Hamilton's Abu Dhabi engine is impressive, Cowell is only too aware that power unit lives will have to extend even further next year. The 22-race schedule means one engine will have to last at least eight weekends.

Hamilton's performance in the final race, allied to further durability running done afterwards on one of the power units shipped back to Brixworth, shows that the eight-race target is achievable.

But Cowell is aware that the super complicated design and construction of F1 engines means some inconsistencies in the quality of each individual engine remain. And the phenomenon of early-life failure of components can lead to a heavy price being paid. Some brand new engines expire while identical units can go on and on.

"I think the best engines are fine for next year," he says. "But as ever, it's not about the best one that you produce, it's about the worst one that you produce. So, it's about understanding the low-life failures - understanding the worst of the worst.

"That's where the focus is. Clearly the best of the best that you produce helps you learn and it's about lifting up those [others] - the young and medium age surprises."

The remarkable distances that F1 engines are now able to do with minimal degradation is a great example of the brilliant technological advances the category has made in the turbo hybrid era.

Sure, the current V6 turbo engines still have their critics - especially those who want the V8 noise back - but there is something remarkable about their 50% plus thermal efficiency gains.

It makes them the most efficient racing engines in top-level motorsport history, and among the best in the world. (Gas turbine engines can deliver more than 60% efficiency levels, but these are not suitable for racing cars).

But many in F1 believe the championship has not done enough to get its engineering brilliance message across. The failure to do that has been further compounded by the boom of interest around electric powertrain technology, which has become fashionable.

Cowell says the 'ERS' moniker F1 uses for its Energy Recovery System doesn't do justice to how much grand prix cars rely on performance from otherwise wasted energy.

"It will be decades before F1 can go electric, if it does happen" Jean Todt

"F1 engines are a marvellous marriage of high efficiency, internal combustion engine technology and high voltage, high power electric machines," he says. "Their batteries are 800 plus volts.

"We've got this dull ERS title, but it's an energy recovery system so it's waste energy that is being used. We're not charging the battery up from a diesel generator before we start the race. That battery is being charged by waste exhaust gas energy and waste kinetic energy in the car. That is a better story than Formula E. There is loads more we can do."

Amid the growing worldwide focus on the environment and sustainability, doing loads more is especially important. While FE may be showcasing the potential of electric racing cars, many industry experts believe that the future of road cars will remain a mixture of electric and hybrid.

As F1 CEO Chase Carey said recently: "Electric is going to be part of the solution. But you know, they have got their own issues - whether it's economics or batteries, or what have you. But I think there are a lot of issues around it. I think the hybrid engine can actually be, in many ways, one of the most important, if not the most important component, of addressing a billion plus cars out there today with a combustion engine."

Industry chiefs have similar thoughts about the direction of the road car industry, and FIA president Jean Todt believes an electric F1 is decades away.

"At the moment you can only consider F1 with a hybrid engine," he says. "You cannot envisage FE substituting F1. 300km? There is not one [electric] race car able to do 300km at the F1 speed today. It will be decades before it can happen, if it does happen. Today hybrid is the proper choice, the next step is to see how we can secure greener fuels."

Cowell agrees. He thinks that F1 building on the efficiency and durability gains of the current power units, allied to a shift to bio-sustainable fuels (starting in 2021), will keep the championship in a good place for many years to come.

When asked if he backed Todt's view of an electric F1 being decades away, Cowell says: "It is all down to the storage technology. If it's lithium ion, then his time frame is correct. If you go for a hydrogen solution - that can be done today, but the cars would be a lot heavier and a lot bulkier than they are today. At which point I think you lose the F1 aspect of it.

"So I think that is why the steps that we're taking for 2021 are important - where we're introducing a 10% bio sustainable fuel.

"If we can, with the next generation of power units, develop an engine around the 100% sustainable fuel then there is a huge amount of carbon dioxide that we could convert into a liquid hydrocarbon based fuel.

"So let's leave all the carbon that's captured in the earth in the form of gas and crude oil and so on. Let's just leave that there. The planet has done a great job of capturing that, so let's capture some out the sky rather than out of the ground.

"Let's create liquid fuels and a 60% thermal efficient engine, at which point it's not about throwing the internal combustion away. It's about adapting that and the petrochemical companies adapting to carbon capture and so on. I think that's the 10-20 year future."

If Hamilton's Abu Dhabi engine is a great example of the progress made with turbo hybrids up to now, it is clear that there is plenty of scope to do even more amazing things in the future.