FMecha wrote:Why I feel your post is simliar
to this, Mario?
Random chance - I honestly had no idea that article existed until you linked to it. Keith Collantine does tend to comment quite often about developments within Formula 1, both technical, economic and political, though, so on a topic like this I guess that both myself and Collantine were thinking along similar lines.
The Mountain Man wrote:I think I was one of those disappointed by how poorly FIA handled KERS in F1. It had potential from day one but it was heavily restricted to "level the play field" since the Mercedes/Zytek system was felt to be having an "unfair advantage" over the competition. It was one of those classic cases when somebody with a good idea (and/or money to spend) was blasted to keep the rest of the field from mumbling too much and to provide "closer racing", FIA style. It alienated the big Japanese manufacturers (all of those spent tons of money on hybrid propulsion systems) and possibly Volkswagen. F1 has become very static in recent years, all in the name of "cost saving measures" and "closer racing": it as about time something was done about it. And if this means a few less entrants, slightly higher costs or less "closer racing", so be it. This is the pinnacle of motorsports, not a national Hornet Cup trophy (a popular form of low-cost motorcycle racing).
Then there was the problem that KERS rapidly spread from being just a pure technical discussion into a heated political debate. As you say, whilst BMW, Toyota and Honda, for example, were very keen on promoting KERS and HERS in F1 as part of their business models, other manufacturers, like Ferrari, and the non manufacturer backed teams were against what they saw as a considerable cost with little commercial benefit for them. Bernie, of course, was stirring the pot, no doubt because he saw it as a way of trying to fragment the increasing power of FOTA, whilst Max wanted to end his term in office at the FIA having made a difference to the long term future of the sport.
Perhaps inevitably, given the way the sport has been run recently, what we got was a clumsy bodged deal - a deal which, as you say, was a bitter pill to swallow for Honda and Toyota and gave them little incentive to stay (I remember Toyota being especially angry about the deal, complaining that they were using more advanced technology in their first generation hybrid road cars than they could use in Formula 1). The engine development freeze probably didn't help either - Honda and Toyota stuck fairly strictly to the terms of the deal, and paid heavily for it as their rivals abused the "reliability upgrade" system to build up more and more of a power advantage.
Now, instead of seeing Formula 1 benefiting from the technology that those corporations developed, we might well see the sport paying for that intransigence.
According to James Allen, Toyota are currently in discussions with the FIA about the possibility of a high profile electric vehicle racing series - coincident with Toyota announcing a world record attempt for an electric vehicle around the Nordschliefe - and it seems that the FIA are very interested in the idea.
As you say, whilst much of the currently available technology is unrefined and being driven by smaller firms, things won't stay that way forever. Electric and hybrid cars, for example, may still be relatively expensive compared to their conventional rivals, but advances in manufacturing techniques and energy storage devices are already beginning to make those alternative technologies viable.
Yes, as things stand, that technology might not yet be mature, and will require significant investment, but the potential pay off is also there - back in the late 1970's, nobody thought that a turbo charged engine would be competitive in Formula 1, and Renault were mocked pretty heavily when they tried, but those jokes quickly vanished when they started smashing their rivals on track. In some ways, hybrid technology faces a similar situation - McLaren and Ferrari, for example, took a lot of pain over the use of KERS in their cars, but both teams soon wiped the smiles off the faces of their rivals by winning races. The technology is there, and has considerable potential - but we'll probably see the existing power brokers within the sport fighting against it for some time yet.
but it's not for the formula 1.
