good_Ralf wrote:dinizintheoven wrote:Williams, from here, will soon be announcing they've hired Flavio Briatore as an "image consultant" or similar, and their drivers for next year will be Tomas Enge and Johnny Cecotto Jr.
Meanwhile, I'd give a word of caution to Marussia about the use of Ferrari engines and gearboxes. Remember when Minardi had a similar deal (which, given that it was 1991, most of you won't actually remember due to not being alive at the time)? They broke the bank to get hold of those powerplants, only to find that they didn't come with an instruction manual as to how to get the best out of them, or even anything approaching that mark...
When Spyker and Force India were new to the grid, they were powered by Ferrari engines and they were often the worst cars on the grid. Also Toro Rosso do the same thing and only Vettel has been able do much with it. With that in mind and Pat Symonds departing, Marussia could find themselves dead last again next year if they're not careful. If Bianchi is staying on a situation like that that could destroy his F1 career.
In the case of Spyker, though, I would argue that was probably more down to the fact that Spyker F1 was making quite heavy losses at a time when the parent company was making even heavier losses (and continues to make losses), so the team was fairly short on funds.
As for Force India's car, the VJM01 was a modified Spyker F8-VIIB, a car that wasn't especially competitive to begin with, that was updated to the 2008 regulation package whilst the team focussed their efforts on the new regulations for 2009. To a certain extent, the team was still suffering from something of the hangover from Spyker's debts - there is a suggestion that the reason why the team allowed Fisichella to drive for Ferrari was the money from buying out his contract could then be used to pay off their debts to Ferrari from 2008 - so the car as a whole was knowingly underdeveloped.
As for Toro Rosso, well, that is a bit more of a mixed bag - the team as a whole, although a bit better funded, was partially depleted when Red Bull took over, with the parent team bringing a number of mechanics and engineers from the junior to the senior team at the same time as Vettel. Equally, whilst the team is financially stable, it is run on a reasonably modest budget, probably comparable to Williams, with the parent company soaking up most of the money. That said, the support from the Ferrari team should be better these days since the regulations make it compulsory for the teams to offer an equal spec engine to their customers (Minardi had to make do with a slightly older specification engine, IIRC, in 1991) and there is greater pressure on engine manufacturers to offer support.
The overall balance of performance between the current V8's, as they now stand, appears to be fairly even due to the regulations - Ferrari were slightly weaker than Mercedes in terms of power (though more powerful than Renault) and slightly thirstier than Renault (probably comparable to Mercedes), but the gap seems to have narrowed over the last year or two. That said, the Ferrari engine is probably not the best package out there - the Renault or Mercedes engines are better in certain areas, with Ferrari's engine being a bit more in the middle.
There is also another reason why Marussia would be interested in the Ferrari turbo engine, though, which is price - Renault are reportedly charging quite a premium for their engines, with Mercedes in the middle of the range and Ferrari being cheapest (the indication is Ferrari are charging $15-18 million, Mercedes $21-23 million and Renault $23-26 million). Given the financial pressure the team is under, the Ferrari engine would be attractive on price terms alone and, with the regulations being quite tight, the performance difference is unlikely to be massive.
The bigger question, though, is what impact Symonds's departure to Williams will have - he has been a fairly influential figure at Marussia and been fairly active in their turnaround, and it is going to be hard for an outfit of their size to be able to lure in a similarly high profile figure to replace him.
