WEC round 8: Six Hours of Bahrain---WEC season finale.

[Deleted]

Not to try to defend Ebenezer Ecclestone, but wasn't he actually the one wanting big noisy engines back? You know to make the VIP persons and royal princes feel better whenever it's time to perform smalltalk while accepting their cash bags for himself and CVC.

[wolfhound]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Not to try to defend Ebenezer Ecclestone, but wasn't he actually the one wanting big noisy engines back? You know to make the VIP persons and royal princes feel better whenever it's time to perform smalltalk while accepting their cash bags for himself and CVC.

Yes but they will be low tech motors in comparison to what LMP have. To me it sounds like he would like NASCAR motors.

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

Yes but they will be low tech motors in comparison to what LMP have. To me it sounds like he would like NASCAR motors.

I don't think even he'd go that far, but clearly he wants F1 to remain a driver-centric series, at the expense of technology (amongst other things) if necessary. From his PoV the teams, suppliers, manufacturers, circuits, governments, are just there to facilitate the action on-track so he'll listen to them just as much as he needs to to keep the show on the road.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he really has been taking tips from NASCAR on how to drum up fervour in order to combat the falling audiences.

[bobec]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Not to try to defend Ebenezer Ecclestone, but wasn't he actually the one wanting big noisy engines back? You know to make the VIP persons and royal princes feel better whenever it's time to perform smalltalk while accepting their cash bags for himself and CVC.

Ecclestone was against the switch to V6 turbo hybrids, but were the previous engines better? Yes, they were bigger and definitely noisier, but with the development freeze since 2007/8, there was absolutely no excitement in the engine department. In fact, I would say there was basically no difference between the big 3 manufacturers since the '09 season (Renault had reliability issues in '09, though not as severe as this year).

In my opinion, that is definitely the wrong direction for F1. It becomes like a spec series, where everything is equal, as opposed to different, innovative and unique solutions, which I think is the in the true spirit of F1. It is more expensive, but that is what F1 is. Not to say that the current engine formula is perfect - why should all engines be V6 turbo? Why can't you have a 4-inline turbo, or even a V10 (hypothetically) if you want, as long as you are within the fuel consumption and flow limits?

[TF110]

In the Toyota thread I linked to an interview with Toyota's Vasselon where he suggested wec do a 'token' system to reign in spending on the engine side. He suggested 100 tokens spread out in increments of 30 if the translation is accurate.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by TF110

In the Toyota thread I linked to an interview with Toyota's Vasselon where he suggested wec do a 'token' system to reign in spending on the engine side. He suggested 100 tokens spread out in increments of 30 if the translation is accurate.

A token system that IMHO is doing F1 no favors. And it's unlikely to control costs. Why implement that mess in WEC?

Richard

[Artur]

I second that!

Nothing cuts costs. People will spend what they have to spend, if not on thing "X", then it will be on thing "Y". This token nonsense is almost a sort of freezed PU regulation. You severely restrict development and the possibility of performance shake up/variation throughout the seasons.

F1 will remain with it's boring domination, due to it, while WEC have much better prospects for next year.

Vasselon should be thankfull that WEC allows Toyota to come up with a whole new machinery for next season. I'm sure that other Japanese car maker would love that right now....

[tux]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

Yes but they will be low tech motors in comparison to what LMP have. To me it sounds like he would like NASCAR motors.

Hes trying to keep F1 alive, if anything WEC should really take lessons from the state of F1 at the moment. You need to keep costs under control even for big manufacturers. Its all well and good saying well we have Audi, Porsche, Toyota and Nissan everything is great but costs could easily increase and then what happens when teams start to pull out?

[Spyderman]

Originally Posted by tux

Hes trying to keep F1 alive, if anything WEC should really take lessons from the state of F1 at the moment. You need to keep costs under control even for big manufacturers. Its all well and good saying well we have Audi, Porsche, Toyota and Nissan everything is great but costs could easily increase and then what happens when teams start to pull out?

Costs will ALWAYS increase. Teams will spend what they can afford and what they can politically justify. As I have pointed out before (on another thread) , had the costs of LMP1 been half of what they were (at the time) Peugeot would have still left the series. They left because it was not politically justifiable to spend moneys on racing when the rest of the company was financially unstable. The saving from this measure were negligible (in the grand scheme of things), but it was important to be seen to be doing the right thing.
Having said all that, it is indisputable that some sensible measures should be taken to (try) achieve a balance, but constantly changing the rules is not one of them.
Manufacturers want stability , both in the rules and in the management of the series.

[Akrapovic]

Completely agree that at this level costs will always rise. Blancpain has a good argument for keeping costs down given the type of racing it is. But at this level, you won't cut costs. They will always find a way to spend money.

[Damian Baldi]

WEC is a different scenario than F1. At WEC you have three factories at P1, then P1-L, P2 and then the GTs. Factories invest huge amount of money, but they can leave from one year to the other and you will have a series anyway with the P1-L and P2. At F1, you have four factories supplying all the teams. Years ago with the small teams been able to buy private engines was different

[cokata]

Since budget caps are impossible to police, the only other alternative is doing this restrictions in the hope of that they will refrain the teams from spending too much. But in the end the teams are going to spend as much as they deem is needed and it will depend on how popular the series is and what kind of ROI they can expect. The difference with this restrictions is if they will spend 200m a year to find 5 sec per lap or 0.5 sec. It's up to the teams to spend wisely and not go over what they can sustain.

[TF110]

The token system in f1 is stupid because everyone runs the same exact engine formula. The wec has turbo v6's, v4's, petrol and diesel etc. Having a token system in the wec would limit how much engine development would take place, but it would'nt stifle it. On top of it, Vasselon never said the engines could'nt change from one season to the next. It's a suggestion for in-season development. I think it goes something like you present your engine to the fia/aco and the tokens are for certain areas to develop. So the turbo or the intake for instance. Im not sure how it'd work or if it'd work to cut costs.