Sidepodcast

Customer Engines

This article was originally written for BellaOnline, but is republished here for posterity.

For the last few years, Formula 1 has been dominated by car manufacturers, and we’ve seen the decline of the independent team. In fact, Williams are the only team who exist solely to race in Formula 1. Red Bull sell energy drinks and the boss of Force India has many other business enterprises.

Nevertheless, the inclusion of manufacturer’s in Formula 1 has meant the opportunity for cars to bring on customer engines and form engine partnerships.

Continuing with the Williams example, the team use Toyota engines. This means they purchase their engines from Toyota, and get the benefit of their years of experience with road car and racing technologies. When the team were partnered with BMW, they would use the German engines instead, but since BMW took over Sauber they have been partnered with the Japanese manufacturer. It’s beneficial for Williams not to have to worry about the engine too much, and know that it’s coming from a team who are moderately successful within the sport. However, it does come with provisos. It’s no coincidence that Kazuki Nakajima is part of Toyota’s Young Driver programme, and found himself a spare seat at Williams. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that he was given a chance, as long as the deal includes some give and take.

Another important engine partnership is Red Bull and Renault. At the moment, Red Bull are falling behind their sister team Toro Rosso. It’s believed part of the reason could be because the smaller Italian team has a deal with Ferrari for customer engines, and the difference between Ferrari and Renault engines is fierce. Of course, there are many variables that go into making one team faster than the other, but the engine is a big part of it.

One of the questions raised by the engine deal is whether customers are getting the same engine as the works team. If Ferrari supply Toro Rosso with their top of the range engine, is it not slightly embarrassing that they were completely outclassed in Italy, with Vettel winning? Also, Force India run Ferrari engines, but are often two seconds off the pace of everyone else. Is this completely down to aerodynamics or does the engine play a significant role?

Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but even if customer cars are off the agenda for now, it looks as though customer engines will be around for a while longer yet.

Episode 43 - Moving Forward, Looking Back

• Length: 10:08 
• Size: 9.4 MB 
• File: episode43.mp3 
• Enhanced: episode43.m4a 
• Transcript: episode43.pdf 
• Torrent: episode43.torrent 

A short and sweet episode catching up with the latest news throughout the week, including:

• Renault's engine deal
• Prodrive's step backwards
• Honda's testing upset

Linkage includes:

• F1 Racing
• Sidepodcast on Jaiku

And Then There Were... Not Very Many At All

The Oxford Times ran a rather concerning story yesterday, detailing the anticipated loss of 30 jobs from Super Aguri's Leafield factory, in the not so distant future.

The team are having to cut back due to a lack of funds, after sponsor SS United failed to make agreed payments earlier this year. There is hope that the employees affected will be picked up by other teams within the area.

On its own this isn't a massive problem for Formula 1. Super Aguri had a fantastic 2nd year, exceeding all expectations and the lack of sponsorship payment could be considered a minor disruption. There is further trouble brewing for the team though, as an article on grandprix.com pointed out, customer cars will probably be banned from 2009 onwards:

[Super Aguri] was always aimed as being in an F1 in which customer cars would be allowed. It seems that this will still happen but only until the end of 2009 when all the teams will have to become constructors in their own right.

Finding a replacement for SS United, especially one that could fund the step from customer to constructor, could prove troublesome.

Brad Spurgeon extrapolates the idea further in the post F1 Speculative Fiction, in which he looks into his crystal ball to a future without customer cars (and then some). It doesn't paint a very rosy picture, in fact if such things come to pass it'll be very hard to tell the difference between F1 and A1GP.

I'm all for entrants having to construct their own cars. In principle it sounds like the ideal benchmark, but if such a requirement becomes reality then they'll be more than 30 people looking for employment in motorsport valley pretty soon.

The Customer Car Row

This article was originally written for BellaOnline, but is republished here for posterity.

Formula 1 is an expensive business. There are drivers to pay, engines to buy and designers to employ. The smaller, independent teams seem to have been finding it a bit of a struggle to break into the business, and some of their cost-saving measures have been causing a bit of a row.

The problem is that a couple of teams that usually bring up the rear of the pack do not have enough money to spend on designing and developing a chassis for their own team for next year. They think it will be easier to buy in a chassis from an existing team for a fraction of the price. Teams are willing to sell, because they are only supplying old designs and not giving away trade secrets, and of course, they are happy to receive the money. So, for example, Super Aguri has links with Honda, and will most likely be running an old Honda chassis for the year ahead.

The bigger teams are up in arms about this, saying that it completely disregards what the sport is about, and that it pretty much amounts to cheating. I suppose they are not happy that they have spent money on trying to develop the sport and move it forward, whilst the others are just happy to cling on to their tails.

The smaller teams are arguing that it shouldn’t make any difference where the chassis comes from. It’s not like they are ripping off designs, they are merely purchasing them instead of building them from scratch.

Both sides appear to have a good argument, and it’s difficult to know how this one will be resolved. It doesn’t help the sport if designs are just being recycled over and over again, but at the same time, we need to keep independent teams in otherwise the whole thing becomes a big corporate sell out.

To name names and shame people, Frank Williams is an independent team owner (WilliamsF1) and is threatening legal action against Super Aguri and Torro Rosso, two new teams that are using customer cars. Williams insist that the car sharing is not legal and that the Constructors Championship becomes a farce if the teams did not build their own designs. The others insist that they are not breaking the rules as they stand and are fine to use whatever they want.

Whilst I do not know who is right, and I can’t predict the outcome of the argument, I do know this. The two teams who are causing the stir are neither of them likely to win the world championship, either driver or constructor. I understand Williams wanting to be a stickler for the rules, they are an old-fashioned team like that, but if they are competing for the titles, the other two should hardly bother them.