F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone said that the sport "plans to give teams an independent engine supply option" from '17 with a tender for the contract set to go out next week, according to Alan Baldwin of REUTERS. The Briton said at the U.S. Grand Prix that "the move would keep struggling teams in the sport by giving them a simpler and cheaper alternative to the costly and complex ones provided by the main manufacturers." Ecclestone said, "The FIA will put out a press release on Monday or Tuesday. They (the engines) will probably have more power and use more fuel. It means I suppose that there would be regulation changes, which have already been anticipated for 2017 so there’s nothing new." The sport "switched from V8 engines to a complex V6 turbo hybrid power unit last year." The alternative "is likely to be a 2.2 liter V6 twin turbo similar to those used in the U.S. Indy Car series." In the V8 era, Cosworth "provided an alternative to the manufacturers but they could not afford the huge costs of developing the new power unit and withdrew." Ecclestone said that "the introduction of a different engine would not turn the championship into a two-tier series and pointed out that decades ago teams had a choice of using turbo engines or normally-aspirated ones" (REUTERS, 10/24). The BBC's Andrew Benson wrote Ecclestone and FIA President Jean Todt are "pushing a plan that could kill the turbo hybrid engines introduced last year." Ecclestone and Todt are working toward a cheap customer turbo engine under an "equivalence formula" in '17. The road-car manufacturers in F1 "want to stick with the turbo hybrids and have rejected plans to introduce a cost cap on the engines for customers." The risk "is the rules would be adjusted to make their units uncompetitive." Top-level sources said that their concern "is three-fold:"
- Only Mercedes and Ferrari "have competitive engines, reducing the number of teams competing at the front of the grid"
- The two manufacturers' dominance "is increasing their political power in F1 at the expense of Todt and Ecclestone"
- The cost of the engines "is proving difficult for customer teams to afford"
Todt and Ecclestone "will present the plan publicly as an attempt to provide cheap customer engines to teams" -- the plan is to price the engines at €6M ($6.6M) for a year's supply. This "is about a third of the price of the cheapest turbo hybrid customer deal." It "is conceivable that Ecclestone and Todt would back down if the manufacturers agreed to supply engines to teams at a more affordable price and were less restrictive in terms of who they chose to supply them to" (BBC, 10/24).
V8 RETURN: In London, Sylt & Hewitt wrote Ecclestone will try to force F1’s teams to return to using V8 engines in '16 "even though they were only dropped last year" in favor of V6 engines. Switching back to the V8s "would come at a huge cost as the sport’s manufacturers have invested hundreds of millions of pounds in developing the new engines." The teams "would need to give consent to such a significant change as the engine regulations are fixed" until the end of '20. However, Ecclestone said, "I don’t think we should get consent from the teams. I think we should just do it and say to them, ‘If you don’t like it you can go to arbitration.’ We could get the V8s back next year. People can build them in no time so we ought to do it." Two weeks ago Silverstone Managing Dir Patrick Allen said that fans would stop coming to races because they "don’t want to see a procession" and that F1 is a "shit product" that is becoming more and more difficult to sell. The V8 engines "would level the playing field because the teams spent eight years working with them so know how to get the most out of them whereas some are still getting to grips with the cutting-edge V6." Ecclestone said, "This engine shouldn’t have been that complicated, to be honest with you. It was only when the engineers got hold of it that it became complicated. The product is not fit for the purpose" (INDEPENDENT, 10/19).
