Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

Seven months ago this magazine's top story (May 24) was about how Formula 1 was going to put itself at the cutting edge of the green movement.

Small turbocharged engines would be stipulated from 2011 that would give comparable power to the current V8s but a massive 30 per cent reduction in fuel consumption using energy recovery and a fuel-flow limit that would effectively keep engine speeds under 10,000rpm.

Aside from the fuel economy and CO2 reduction of the engines, the new formula promised to align the road car and F1 parts of the manufacturers' engine R&D programmes, reducing the F1-specific spend. The common technology would allow the competitive intensity of F1 to contribute directly to huge efficiency gains in road cars, to the benefit of everyone, thereby defending in advance attacks against the sport from environmentalists.

With the cloud of a fuel crisis on the horizon and the unstoppable momentum of the green movement building, it was a remarkably well timed and proactive move on the part of the governing body.

Yet here we are in 2008 and far from that visionary outline, what we seem to have instead are the current 19,000rpm V8s, probably for the next 10 years. Yes, they will be fitted with energy recovery devices from 2009, but forget that deeply impressive 30 per cent reduction for the same power. Forget the innovation of a fuel flow limit, and with 19,000rpm engines forget any common engine R&D with road car programmes. How did we get here from there?

Tony Purnell is the FIA consultant whose vision the original proposal was. "The message we got back from the manufacturers," he says, "was that it was going to cost a gazillion dollars. I found that frustrating but understandable.

"I know from my time at Cosworth that to develop such an engine, when you had no possibility of getting the gazillion dollars, using your money efficiently, you could do a nice job for around Û50 million. But the budget requests that were going to the boards were 10 times that. While I'm sure the likes of Mercedes or Toyota or Ferrari could have done one of these engines for Û50m if they had to, they would point out, 'Yes, but we've got to beat the others'."

It's the old story of trying to save the participants from themselves, from their addiction to spending whatever money is available regardless of how the rules are framed to wean them off that addiction. Last year's engine freeze was a case in point. Specs frozen, other than minor ancillaries: no room there to spend millions on development, surely? Think again. At least one manufacturer spent in excess of $10m developing more efficient pumps. Estimated benefit? Around 2bhp.

There really does seem to be no way of untying the knot that F1's addictive nature gets it into. Meanwhile the F1 Titanic sails blithely towards the approaching iceberg of the environmental squeeze. Measures to limit global warming will soon be all-pervasive in our lives - we ain't seen nothing yet. Currently the EU is arguing whether new road cars from 2012 must meet an average emission of 120g of carbon per km (the average is currently around 170g) or a swingeing 80g.

The technology required to achieve those gains is going to be massive - so huge in fact that the European car industry doesn't believe it has enough resource or skilled engineers to meet the challenge. And that could well be another reason why the manufacturers in F1 have rejected the radical small- engine F1 formula: they need all that money and all those skilled engineers just to meet their road car emissions targets and can't afford to be wasting either on an F1 programme.

There's an irony that the manufacturers haven't felt able to invest in a potentially hugely environmentally beneficial F1 programme - because they are committed to meeting environmental targets!

All of which risks leaving F1 vulnerable in the future, much more so than it would have been under the original plans. Manufacturers would drop F1 like a hot brick if it became a pr liability. Furthermore if it became seen as an obscenely anti-social pastime given the perceived trouble the planet is in, the entire sport could be banned. You may not believe that, but 10 years ago smokers probably didn't believe they wouldn't be allowed to smoke in pubs.

Twenty years ago the hunting fraternity probably didn't believe their sport would ever be outlawed - and global warming is an infinitely more serious problem than smoking and hunting ever were. Purnell's original vision gave F1 a ready-made and very robust, very real defence against those charges, made the sport part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Purnell himself is far from exasperated and is looking forward to helping F1 meet the challenge, given these new constraints.

The FIA meanwhile will couch the current way forward in terms friendly to the manufacturers - and will talk of why the different duty cycles of road cars and racing cars meant they couldn't make the link as hoped etc. But be in no doubt: the current watered-down plans are nowhere near as effective in protecting the sport's future as the originals would have been.

Yes, developing KERS (kinetic energy recovery systems) at F1 rates will still contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gases through its application to the road car industry. And in time the FIA hopes to introduce a heat recovery device too (at present 70 per cent of the energy goes out the exhaust pipes), though this will have implications on engine design, which is supposed to be frozen.

And in the background there is still a chance that one day a fuel flow formula will be introduced. The only hope is that it doesn't all come too late, when there's no longer a chance to steer a path around the iceberg.