McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh says equivalency rule unattractive – Formula 1 news
McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh has said that Formula 1 should not go with equivalency formula for the 2014 season.
Formula 1 will be changing its regulations from the 2014 season to change the cars from using the V8 engines to V6 turbo engines. The move is to curb the financial expenses in the sport to deal with the economic downturn faced globally.
The news is that it might be difficult to find engines for the whole field and FIA is trying to figure out a way that would resolve this situation. The idea of equivalency engines has come up and Whitmarsh feels that is not the way to go.
He felt that it is an unattractive way to go for Formula 1, he added that it has happened before and the results have been good for McLaren but it is not something that he recommends.
The smaller teams may also find it hard to get the engines for 2014 mainly because the costs may be too great for them, and this situation may lead FIA to allow V8 engines to run alongside V6 turbo engines.
“It's feasible,” he said. “I don't think it's an attractive thing to do, personally. Equivalence formulas, we have had it before, we had it in '88, we had turbos and normally aspirateds when we were coming the other way. It wasn't such a bad memory for McLaren,
but it wasn't an attractive formula.”
Whitmarsh also added that if the equivalency rule is applied it would have to be in favour of the V6 engines.
“I think you'd have to arrange, if you did it, such that the new turbo engines have advantage over normally aspirated, so you're creating a two-tier championship, which is I think not an attractive thing to have,” he said.
Formula 1 has already changed from V10 engines to V8 back in 2006. The only team that had to be accommodated at that time was Toro Rosso which was allowed a temporary dispensation to continue running a restricted version of the V10 engines while the rest
of the teams switched to V8s.
It will be interesting to see how things pan out as 2014 season approaches.
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