The freezing of engines finally reduced to 5 years

The FIA has committed this weekend to reducing the duration of the engine development freeze in F1. The ‘freeze’ will be reduced to 5 years instead of the originally planned 10 years.

The FIA has announced for a few years now its intention to reduce costs in Formula 1. On this occasion, one of the measures has been the freeze on the development of V8 engines for 10 years.

The teams last week filed an appeal to the International Automobile Federation to rectify this measure, which is very discriminatory in terms of competitiveness. In return, they committed to accepting more measures to reduce costs in F1.

To this end, the FIA organized a meeting this Friday in Paris with the various championship teams to study numerous ideas such as reducing wind tunnel time.

During this meeting, the teams were not very favorable to this kind of measure, but an FIA spokesperson stated that they will actively consider it: « The meeting was very positive and especially productive. »

The same person also reports that the engine freeze period was reduced from 10 to 5 years in order to focus on a new engine concept (much more efficient and environmentally friendly) implemented from 2013 – the 2.4-liter V8 power unit.

Without a consensus being signed, the various stakeholders in the championship committed to reducing costs in F1, for example by setting a budget cap of 105 million Euros for engines.

Ross Brawn and Nick Fry had spoken on this subject last December: « Ross and I are convinced that capping the engine budget is a good measure. When you look at a team’s accounts, you notice that the portion dedicated to engines keeps increasing… » Commented Fry.

« So far, we have only managed to shift costs from one team to another when one of them produces the engines for the others… but rather than chasing our tail, taking measures in such a way would be very interesting. »

Among the other measures considered, reducing the time spent on computer simulations also seems to be favored.