Aston Martin "Cancel" F1 Engine Plans

[Dirk Steffen]

That was to be expected news so short after having announced Aston Martin is now in the business of building shopping trolleys after having stated for years that they won’t ever build SUVs as that type of vehicular abomination is not compatible with their genetically superior traditional sportscar heritage. If you seek the sweet Chinese millionaire mistress money market F1 is out of the picture and playing the heritage card with SUVs is sooooo successful.

After all AM is a business and has to generate a profit in line with shareholder expectations.

 

[michelforest]

Personally I would love to see a regulation set that favours the return of independent and semi independent engine builders once again, rather than just big manufacturers.

Anyone remember Hart and Judd, heck even Cosworth and Yamaha and plenty more besides!

How cool would it be to see a return of the small specialists, and have a field where maybe 10 odd different engine manufacturers thrived? One can only dream..

Indeed. To be fair, some of these engines were real duds... Remember Porsche with Arrows? Subaru with Coloni? But yes, that was interesting to see all these various engines. (Lamborghini was also a supplier for a while.)

The worst of all, by far, was the Life W12. (Yes, W12, not V12). The single worst piece of junk ever put in a race car, I think. I still remember attending the prequalifying session in 1990, at my home track in Montreal. I was watching from the Casino straight (back then, it was not as long as it is now), and the Life made an absolutely horrible noise!! I think it was 70 KPH slower than everybody else. That was back when there were close to 40 entries each weekend. Fun times!

 

[michelforest]

It is not that surprising. The costs to develop these engines are insane. Aston Martin turns out to be another Audi, another VW, etc... Manufacturers whose names are mentioned once on a while as potential suppliers but never make the jump because the Board of directors won't authorise the expense. I wish Ford and BMW would come back, these are companies with strong F1 ties.

 

[oldswinner]

I agree with Paul and would love to see a proliferation of engine manufacturers. In my opinion F1 painted itself into a corner with the complex hybrid PUs. Liberty was the possible savior but folded when Merc, Ferrari and Renault pressured them out of a better formula. How many GPs have been spoiled by failed PUs? In my book it is too many, has caused the exit of Alonso and robbed us of Ricciardo's passes. We lost cars at Abu Dhabi too, I'm all for dumbing engines down to provide better racing again!

 

[DriveClubMaster]

Well Indycars are dominated by only two engine suppliers

Well its fifferent style of racing. Its kind of pack racing,

 

[DriveClubMaster]

F1 needs to watch out. As Formula E keeps on innovating and getting faster and providing more entertainment with closer racing and more manufacturers people will watch what is more entertaining regardless of engine sound

 

[Will Mazeo]

If you think FE is innovating and that people are watching (or actually paying for the tickets to go to races) you are sooooo mistaken.
And only reason manufacturers are there is because it's cheap. They aren't developing anything despite all the propaganda. Once they development actually starts and budgets reach at least LMP1H levels you'll see them leaving en masse. But then I doubt this is FE goal.

 

[ChaosZeroJK]

GT3 and GT4 sales have been good enough so far for the 2019 Vantage that most of the cars haven't even been built yet for some of their new and returning customers which is impressive considering that nobody cared about the old Vantage and privateers that bought one struggled to sell it off to somebody else because nobody wanted it.

Then there's DTM, that will be a money pit aswell, despite not being a factory program. But with at least one chassis potentially going to Japan to race in the GT500 class (alongside a '18 Mercedes rumored to have already been sold to a privateer outfit) aswell, they will already get more marketing exposure and R&D than F1 could ever give them.

Because failing in F1 means that you ruin your reputation forever. Failing in a GT-based championship, means that you can always cover up the faults of the car by blaming the BoP.

 

[Scottt]

F1 needs to watch out. As Formula E keeps on innovating and getting faster and providing more entertainment with closer racing and more manufacturers people will watch what is more entertaining regardless of engine sound

Hopefully it gets there in my lifetime, but even with all it's problems, F1 is light years ahead of Formula E in entertainment value right now.

 

[Scottt]

If you think FE is innovating and that people are watching (or actually paying for the tickets to go to races) you are sooooo mistaken.
And only reason manufacturers are there is because it's cheap. They aren't developing anything despite all the propaganda. Once they development actually starts and budgets reach at least LMP1H levels you'll see them leaving en masse. But then I doubt this is FE goal.

It's not the only reason manufacturers are there; they are also there because the technology is relevant to their current road car development. And starting with the upcoming season, development is really opening up. Teams will be able to develop pretty much the entire powertrain (I believe with the exception of the battery). Motors, MCU, cooling, transmissions, suspension, invertor, etc are all open now.

I don't think it's anywhere near as good as F1, but this year should improve a lot (if for no other reason that the ridiculous car swaps aren't necessary).

 

[Scottt]

Because failing in F1 means that you ruin your reputation forever. Failing in a GT-based championship, means that you can always cover up the faults of the car by blaming the BoP.

That may be a little extreme. Porsche's reputation seems just fine despite their F1 failings.

 

[Will Mazeo]

It's not the only reason manufacturers are there; they are also there because the technology is relevant to their current road car development. And starting with the upcoming season, development is really opening up. Teams will be able to develop pretty much the entire powertrain (I believe with the exception of the battery). Motors, MCU, cooling, transmissions, suspension, invertor, etc are all open now.

I don't think it's anywhere near as good as F1, but this year should improve a lot (if for no other reason that the ridiculous car swaps aren't necessary).

This thing about being relevant to road car is a myth bro (the engine itself). The relevant thing in motorport lately for road cars is the material engineering, in this part F1 is still king even if they use expensive stuff (that can get cheaper with time).
FE would be only relevant to road tech if the battery materials were free for research. If that was the case it would be costing way too much for some manufacturers to be there already.

 

[Scottt]

This thing about being relevant to road car is a myth bro (the engine itself). The relevant thing in motorport lately for road cars is the material engineering, in this part F1 is still king even if they use expensive stuff (that can get cheaper with time).
FE would be only relevant to road tech if the battery materials were free for research. If that was the case it would be costing way too much for some manufacturers to be there already.

Pretty much everyone who has any skin in the game would disagree with you. The reason WEC went to the LMP1 hybrids was because that's what the manufacturers wanted; despite it costing absurd amounts of money. Same goes to a lesser extent with F1. It's no coincidence that BMW, Nissan, Porsche, and Mercedes are all entering FE as the regulations open up

And it wouldn't be relevant to open up battery development for the manufacturers involved because for the most part they don't use their own batteries in their road cars (not sure if Nissan still does). Nearly all of them use someone else (Panasonic, Bosch, Lion Smart, etc).

Edit: And it seems that even Nissan doesn't use their own batteries, they just signed a deal with LG

 

[Will Mazeo]

Ah I see you take "what the manufacturers want" as road relevant because they say so. Okay if you want to believe it. That's not what I meant but we'll end up running in cicles, I even like ovals but not in discussions.

 

[Scottt]

Ah I see you take "what the manufacturers want" as road relevant because they say so. Okay if you want to believe it. That's not what I meant but we'll end up running in cicles, I even like ovals but not in discussions.

Not sure I follow your first sentence mean. My point was that WEC didn't push hybrids on the manufacturers, the manufacturers pushed hybrids on the WEC. And the reason being is it was relevant to what they were developing. Is your point that they are lying to everyone and only certain people are able to see through the conspiracy? If so, what's their motivation to lie and spend large fortunes on developing these things with no benefit beyond that which they could have gained through more conventional drive trains that would be immensely cheaper???

 

[Will Mazeo]

Lots of developmend happened in WEC just like goes in F1
Yes they pushed it, but things actually happened there. In FE... nothing really. They are only there to look good for a crowd that dont care about motorsport and as I said it's cheap. Nuff said.

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Indeed. To be fair, some of these engines were real duds... Remember Porsche with Arrows? Subaru with Coloni? But yes, that was interesting to see all these various engines. (Lamborghini was also a supplier for a while.)


The worst of all, by far, was the Life W12. (Yes, W12, not V12). The single worst piece of junk ever put in a race car, I think. I still remember attending the prequalifying session in 1990, at my home track in Montreal. I was watching from the Casino straight (back then, it was not as long as it is now), and the Life made an absolutely horrible noise!! I think it was 70 KPH slower than everybody else. That was back when there were close to 40 entries each weekend. Fun times!

To be fair here, that “failed” Arrows - Porsche engine project was on an Arrows F1 team budget and Porsche after the project was halted has revisited this frozen in development F1 engine several years later as a base for their new stillborn (thank you VAG) yet very promising and revolutionary LMP900 project for the 1999 season.


After Porsche was forced a deal with the devil and had to shelf this LMP900 project including complete denial of its existence forced by the “gun to their head agreement to get into the Porsche Cayenne / VW Tuareg development project with big VAG money to save the Porsche road car business economically, that very V10 LMP900 Porsche engine landed in the Porsche Carrera GT super car.


The Porsche LMP900 project also likely turned up a few months later in form of the new Audi / Joest Racing Le Mans project - and we all know how well that went.


I would hardly call the Porsche F1 engine project a failure. It didn’t help Arrows win races as of budget and time constraints not because Porsche is unable to generate exceptional engine designs.


On a side note - the highly successful Porsche RS Spyder / Penske Racing effort is in engineering terms regarding chassis and engine design linked to the stillborn Porsche LMP900 project. What Porsche learned with that project went to create the RS Spyder which raced very successfully in the ALMS.

 

[Theodore 2019]

We are not interested = We are not capable of

 

[Richard Dastardly]

GT3 and GT4 sales have been good enough so far for the 2019 Vantage that most of the cars haven't even been built yet for some of their new and returning customers which is impressive considering that nobody cared about the old Vantage and privateers that bought one struggled to sell it off to somebody else because nobody wanted it.

Then there's DTM, that will be a money pit aswell, despite not being a factory program. But with at least one chassis potentially going to Japan to race in the GT500 class (alongside a '18 Mercedes rumored to have already been sold to a privateer outfit) aswell, they will already get more marketing exposure and R&D than F1 could ever give them.

Because failing in F1 means that you ruin your reputation forever. Failing in a GT-based championship, means that you can always cover up the faults of the car by blaming the BoP.

DTM - the factory has zero to do with that, the badge is just politics to keep a manufacturer in DTM; the money is coming from R-Motorsport backers so it's irrelevant in budget terms, they put more money ( IE, more than zero ) into F1 by sticking their name on the Redbull cars. There's talk of a GT300 Vantage entry in SGT which I hope happens.

For an old car, there were a lot of people running both the GT3 & GT4 Vantage last year. No-one is going to buy one when they know a new model is coming! same as Balfe trying to sell their 650S, watching the price fall week after week was pretty amusing.

Any A-M F1 engine would be a badge on someone else's ( Mercedes? ) surely, I can't see one being built 100% in-house when they can't even get round to building a V8 replacement for their road cars.

 

[Antony Snook]

Technically Aston Martin are a partner which i don't understand. Don't Just be a partner and put Aston Martin Engine in the back instead of Renault. It is just a major brand putting there partnership with a smaller brand. Why don't Scudaria Ferrari just ditch the Ferrari engine and put in a FIAT. This is the logical thinking why be Red Bull Renault when you can be Aston Martin and realy intimidate the boys in Marenello.