Auto Racing: F1, f1 cars, relative advantage

Question
Hi Adam
Do you know what are next years rule changes for the cars? i heard that they are changing the engines (from V10 to V8),is this to try and slow them down? why not just make F1 cars go as fast as they possibly can?

cheers

Answer
Hi Dimitre, thanks for the question.

Firstly, no engine rule changes for next year. These are currently locked in and the discussion is about the next engine rules to be introduced after 2007. Also, we currently have a V8 Formula in F1, V10s were banned after last year.

The problem about F1 cars' speed is safety. It has to be a trade off and put simply, the tracks are only acceptably safe up to a certain speed. When lap times increase above this level then serious accidents are more likely.

F1 engineers being the best in the world at what they do, after any rules are introduced to limit speeds, they find a way to bring it back, and aerodynamics, tyre science, engine electronics and other technical developments will always make cars go quicker. The Administrators are then left with a few options only:

Change the tracks to make them safer (or emasculate all the exciting ones! This is already been done and isn't very popular as it reduces the spectacle for the spectators).

Single tyre supplier. Reducing competition between companies means that the tyre compounds are fixed and there is no relative advantage in making one tyre go faster than another. This has been done and will kick in next year.

Restricting engines. Already done. Turbos, V10s and V12s are now banned (apart from 1 team this year running a V10 as an exception). The rule this year is V8 only.

Hope this helps to give you the lay of the land,
Adam