Adrian Newey says Audi was looking into F1 over V4 engines for the 2013 season – Formula 1 news
Red Bull’s technical director Adrian Newey has stated that the German car manufacturing company Audi was looking into Formula 1 as an engine supplier for the 2013 Formula 1 season with V4 technology.
Although the V4’s have been dropped and instead V6 engines are going to be used starting from the 2014 season, Newey commented that Audi was the driving force behind the V4 engines in the first place and all the Formula 1 teams and engine manufacturers agreed
to it.
However, Newey further explained that from a technical point of view V4 were never feasible for a racing car and V6 turbo is much better.
Newey stated, “The big driver behind that was Audi. They said they would come into the sport if there was a four-cylinder turbo, and that's what everyone agreed in order to get Audi in.”
Newey stated that V4’s were eventually ruled out of the Formula 1 sport and the F1 working group agreed on V6 turbo to be used for the 2014 season.
He further added, “Certainly from an engineering point of view a four-cylinder turbo is not a nice engine to install, you've basically got to put a space frame around it, you can't make it a properly structural. A racing V6 is a much nicer engine to package.
That will now be the 2014 engine.”
The International Automobile Federation (FIA) proposed that V4 engines should be used in Formula 1 instead of current V8 to cut down the cost of the sport. It was believed that some smaller engine manufacturers will also come into play.
However, the Formula 1 teams and officials agreed to have V6 engines so that the cars remain racing cars, rather than road products.
Still some tweaks are open for discussion such as the RPM (revolutions per minute) rate of V6 was proposed to be 12000 but Newey stated that it will be translated into 14000 or 16000.
Audi has not made it official about their inclusion in Formula 1 after the V4’s were ruled out but it will be interesting to see what they might think about the V6 turbo.
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