FIA, F1 TEAMS AGREE TO COST CUTS.(News)

The FIA's deci-sion to open a tender process for the supply of a standard Formula One engine between 2010 and 2012 (Competition, Oct. 27) certainly captured the attention of the sport's six factory teamsexactly what the governing body appears to have wanted.

The announcement was followed by an Oct. 21 meeting in Geneva involving (among others) FIA president Max Mosley and the chairman and vice chairman of the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA), Ferrari's Luca di Montezemolo and Toyota's John Howett, respectively. The FIA believes that F1 can survive only if teams can race competitively on a budget very close to the income they receive from Formula One Management.

For 2010, the FIA is offering the FOTA three powertrain options: a spec engine, which the teams may build and badge themselves; an engine conforming to today's regulations but used by a consortium of teams at lower cost; and a proposal from the FOTA for the supply of power-trains to independent teams for less than e5 million per team per season.

For 2013, the FIA envisions a downsized, direct-injection engine with exhaust energy and heat recovery, coupled with an electrically actuated gearbox. However, it says, it is open to new ideas. Its only preconditions are that the costs of powertrain development, maintenance and production must be much lower than today's and that powertrains must be available to independent teams. Also starting in 2013, the FIA sees a range of common chassis components, such as standard suspensions and wheels and a standard underbody. All of these items were discussed in Geneva, as was a standard kinetic-energy-recovery system.

The principle of substantial cost reduction (as much as 50 percent) has now been established. Final solutions will be thrashed out in the coming weeks by everyone involved, and there will be a full FOTA meeting in Brazil the weekend of Nov. 1. Expect the new rules to be revealed before the December meeting of the World Motor Sport Council.

ENGINE EQUALITY

Also in Geneva, the FIA and the FOTA discussed concerns about the disparity in engine performance seen this season. The FIA noted that when the decision was made last year to freeze engine development beginning in 2008, some teams asked forand receiveda period of time to address reliability issues and retune their engines for the new-for-2008 limit of 19,000 rpm. The FIA admitted for the first time that some teams took advantage of this period to improve their engines' power output, something the FIA did not intend. Other teams did not improve their engines, believing performance to have been frozen.