Snapshot: Will new rules tweak to exhausts make Formula 1 cars louder, as planned?

Hidden among the 2016 F1 calendar changes, rubber stamped by the FIA World Motor Sport Council this week, was a line about some technical changes that will be made to the exhaust of F1 cars for next season, in an effort to make them louder.

The main complaint from F1 fans about the hybrid turbo engine formula is that it has taken away some of the visceral appeal of the cars because they are too quiet. Many fans miss the screaming V8 and before that V10 engines.

So the FIA has said that for next season, "All cars must have a separate exhaust wastegate tailpipe through which all and only wastegate exhaust gases must pass. This measure has been undertaken to increase the noise of the cars and will not have any significant effect on power or emissions."

Here is our snapshot analysis of this, a more detailed one will follow in due course.

We do not expect it to make a great change to the volume of the sound. Most of the time the wastegate isn’t opened because to do so would dump energy that can otherwise be recovered by the MGU-H (the motor generator unit connected to the turbo). It drops overall thermal efficiency which the engine manufacturers are trying to maximise.

As for the detail, there might be a small difference in noise and that typical ‘turbo sound’ when the wastegate does occasionally open. It happens most at places like Monaco and Singapore where there is more energy available.

What the regulation means is that a separate pathway for the wastegate exhaust is created that will be a smaller diameter than the main tailpipe (which has a regulation size).

This reduction in size increases the speed of the gases leaving the turbo and will probably help to make that familiar ‘whooshing’ and 'popping’ sound a bit like the old Group B rally cars or the BTCC Sierra Cosworths in the 1990s.

So it’s a change to the overall sound but we wait for evidence that it will genuinely make the engine sound 'noisier’.