Report: FIA Castrates Spa

[Craig.]

[quote]Well, you'd have to go back pretty far to find a year when one make didn't dominate. As for turbos....um, no...not again. I'm sure Honda would love that though. The best racing was and always will be when it was basically unrestricted, but technology put an end to that. Indy was the same way. I remember seeing all sorts of wild designs in the 1960s-1970s era, many were built not in huge mega shops, but in small garages by men not necessarily with college degrees but with big imaginations. Sadly those days are gone, never to return.

[todayshorse]

hmm no one for turbos then? Interesting. I guess thats a throwback to the cars i remember when i got interested in F1 - and the later glory days of the TAG porsche, and Honda. Amazing engines.

oh well. Id be happy with unrestricted on the engines, do what you like type stuff. The car has to be this long, this wide and this high and you cant put bits here but you can do this.....thats how it should be i think, but i guess those days are over

I think turbo tech has moved on a lot from the late 70's and 80's - I was quite atsonished at the power figures of a VW Jetta i was looking at the other day, turbo 1.4, nearly 170bhp! And i dont think it will be a petrol drinking fire breathing push-you-in-the-back-of-your-seat type car (such as one i used to own - boy did that drink the gas!!!!) but more of a 'you wouldnt know it was a turbo' type car. Must go for a test drive!

[Craig.]

I wouldn't say no to a turbo engine personally. It was recently discussed with a 1.4 or even a 1.2L engine. But I'd much rather see the V10 back. I still think its the best of the bunch. I know a lot of people liked the V12 for the sound it made, myself included.
But for sheer noise, power and pretty much what F1 should be about. The scream of a V10 was pure perfection.
I agree with you, it should be about unrestricted performance. And this whole "lets do F1 on the cheap" is getting silly. GP2 cars are now less than 10 seconds a lap slower than the fastest F1 cars, and only 4 seconds a lap slower than the back of the grid teams. That essentially means that some GP2 cars, are on a level of some of the back of the grid teams of the late 90's. Thats just not right.
The head of the Vauxhall VXR team for the BTCC said it best when asked if he thought Diesel engines were the future, he said they might be but shouldn't be because Motorsport is about the excitement, and the noise. Fans dont come to the track to watch a bunch of quiet cars potter about, they like to hear the engines.

[Mushroom_Farmer]

The head of the Vauxhall VXR team for the BTCC said it best when asked if he thought Diesel engines were the future, he said they might be but shouldn't be because Motorsport is about the excitement, and the noise. Fans dont come to the track to watch a bunch of quiet cars potter about, they like to hear the engines.

 IMO there's maybe too much attention toward the fans and not not enough toward racing for the sake of racing. In the beginning years of motorsport spectators were the by-product of racing and the racing for the most part was unrestricted.
 Today's racing wouldn't survive without fans and sponsors because those involved have simply gotten too greedy for the green. It isn't as much about the racing any more, but about a big paycheck. To draw that check you need to have a large fan base, sponsors, and video rights to sell for big $$$.

 There was a Cummins Diesel raced at Indy twice that I know of. Once in 1931 with a Model A Duesenberg fitted with an 85hp, 361ci four-cylinder diesel. It qualified last, ran the whole race without pitting, and finished 13th. And again in 1952 Cummins was back with the inline turbocharged Cummins 6.6L Kurtis Kraft Special, which won the pole position with a speed of 138.010 mph and was 4 mph faster than Ferrari's  V-12.
 Indy also had the STP Special turbine cars, which came very close to winning.
 Now we have the Audi diesel in ALMS and I love it. I don't care about noise and to me excitement is a pass for the lead while going into a difficult corner.

 As for turbos I remember the Can-Am series where in 1973 the Porsche 917 had a 5.4L 1500 powerplant. Porsche only went to Can-Am after the FIA banned the 240 mph supercars from the period. Unfortunately they were killed off by rules restrictions.

just my 2

[C]

The head of the Vauxhall VXR team for the BTCC said it best when asked if he thought Diesel engines were the future, he said they might be but shouldn't be because Motorsport is about the excitement, and the noise. Fans dont come to the track to watch a bunch of quiet cars potter about, they like to hear the engines.

Well, we all kmow how "good" Vauxhall diesels are. If he was running a VW/Seat/Skoda/Audi team his views may differ! I think the Seat TDi in BTCC, the Audi R10 and Peugeot prototypes are fair demonstration of this!