Insight: Four wheel drive 1300hp F1 cars? What kind of engine should F1 have next?

How do you like the idea of an F1 car with over 1300hp that accelerates out of the low speed corners like a bullet and so can overtake other cars coming out of corners, as well as under braking?

Earlier this year a potentially dangerous standoff between the FIA, Bernie Ecclestone and the manufacturers was avoided when a deal was struck to retain the current hybrid turbo engines until the end of 2020, in return for the manufacturers making them more affordable for the customer teams.

Given that the discussions around the introduction of the hybrid turbos began several years before their 2014 introduction and as lead times for engine technology are measured in years, not months, the question now arises: What engine F1 should have next?

Ecclestone wants to go back to basics with engines that make a lot of noise and are very inexpensive for the customers.

Asking around the paddock, in the final Grand Prix before the summer break, among teams and engine builders about what they thought was the direction of travel for engines the response was very interesting.

The consensus seemed to be that the post 2020 engine will be broadly based on the same 1.6 litre hybrid turbos as today with some standardised parts for cost control reasons.

But where it got really interesting was the discussion around taking the electrification of the engine to the next level and having an electrically driven front axle, like the World Endurance Cars (WEC) have, which would supply around 350hp to the front axle in addition to the power going to the rear wheels; currently 950hp, but which will be over 1,000hp by 2020. That would create an F1 car that had over 1300hp and which would accelerate out of corners like a bullet.

One of the phenomena around hybrid turbo cars, that is little remarked upon, is the way that they are subtly changing the art of overtaking. Traditionally an overtaking move starts on a straight and is completed in the braking zone. When the car ahead has tyres that are more worn than the car behind, the following car can gain an advantage with better traction and pull alongside. That is greatly magnified with the hybrid turbos, where better deployment out of a corner means that a driver can overtake on corner exit, not just in the braking zone.

F1 insiders worry about the new 2017 aerodynamic rules; history tells us that higher downforce cars have problems getting close to each other and the racing suffers.

One can imagine a pathway that looks like this: overtaking reduces in 2017 and so a typical F1 knee-jerk response happens, which leads to reworking of the regulations to find the best compromise.

In parallel the teams, FIA and Ecclestone discuss the post 2020 engine formula and decide to adopt an electric front axle to offset the higher downforce of the cars and encourage more overtaking. The cars would be significantly faster with the improved front grip out of low speed corners. Keeping the overall weight of the cars down, will be the major challenge here.

We don't know yet who will be F1's exclusive tyre supplier in 2021, but whoever it is would be required to make tyres that fit with this approach and keep the racing close, with overtakes that start on the exit of corners, with different ages of tyres, as well as in the braking zones.

Speaking to chassis engineers, they quite like the challenge of building an F1 car with a driven front axle and several observed that they have experience of packaging the extra weight from the differential that would be needed in the nose, as some have tried variations on that theme in the past in seeking a gain in front grip.

There was some discussion about the post 2020 engines in the Friday FIA press conference in Hockenheim, with Ferrari's Jock Clear urging the rule makers to plan better next time and to have more regard for what the fans and the viewing public wants,

"I think what we have learned from this cycle and this era of hybrid engines is that the power units now are very very complicated and it needs a lot of planning and I think we’ll go into those next negotiations with eyes wide open this time.

"I don’t think there’s anybody who didn’t fall into the category of underestimating what might have been involved, and as such, the sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be aware and the sooner we can come to a solution that will be the best for the sport.

"We need to think about it in the context of what the sport needs and what the public wants."

Red Bull has been on the wrong end of the hybrid turbo era so far, although the signs are clear that as the engines converge in performance, Red Bull is set to benefit most, with its class leading aerodynamics. Paul Monaghan urged the rule makers to avoid allowing engines to become a big performance differentiator next time around.

"I think Formula One should look at itself and decide what level of power unit performance differentiation does it seek? Should it be a dominant [factor] between the teams?

"And then look at how long has it taken these power units to begin to converge – we haven’t converged as yet – and how does that look into the next few years of those next engine rules? If we can establish those perhaps more successfully than we did for the 2014 engine, then I think the formula could be healthier."