Max Verstappen spoke recently about how much he enjoyed the endurance racing at the Nurburgring. And how he liked “pure” motorsport with the V8 engines and would welcome that or even the V10s back in F1. Is that even possible now? Or has F1 fully embraced the electric/hybrid system, and there is no going back? – Peter
This is a really complex topic, with many conflicting elements to it.
Verstappen – and Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris – has expressed his view this year that to return to “pure” racing, F1 should go back to naturally aspirated engines with no hybrid element.
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has also been pushing a return to naturally aspirated engines, first V10s early last year, and more recently V8s.
Ben Sulayem has cited the evocative sound of V8s as one his main reasons, as well as lighter cars.
But naturally aspirated engines would use more fuel, so the cars would for half the race or so actually be heavier than they are now. The FIA has even investigated the idea of refuelling returning – which is not popular with the teams.
In F1 these days, only Alonso and Lewis Hamilton survive from the days when the drivers could push flat out throughout a grand prix with no concerns about tyre management.
But occasionally circumstances align to allow that to happen again. And in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, on the low-abrasion Baku circuit in the final stint, it did.
Race winner George Russell said afterwards: “The final stint, I think, is the most amount of fun I’ve had in a race for as long as I can remember because the tyre felt great. We were pushing flat out every single lap. It was like qualifying one after another.
“You needed to be so alert around this circuit because the walls are so close, especially through the castle. You’re threading the needle.
“Those final 10 laps felt really, really fun. And it almost felt like the stories I hear of the drivers in the early-mid 2000s, of when every lap was like a qualifying lap.
“The heart rate is higher, you’re pushing the limit every single lap, there’s no management. We’ve had a lot of conversations this year about power-unit energy management, but the tyre management is still there and it has been there for years and years (since Pirelli came in in 2011).
“But just with how the temperatures and the circuit fell out today, with the tyres there was no management, and that was exceptionally fun.”
On a romantic level, there is an argument that this is what F1 should be about – drivers pushing themselves and their cars to the absolute limit all the time.
And, it’s worth pointing out, tyres are as much of a problem on this front as engines – much more so, in fact, before this year.
But it’s not as simple as that.
Statistics show that the years of refuelling from 1994-2009 had the least amount of on-track overtakes in history.
Then there are the optics of using more fuel at a time when F1 is trying to go net-zero carbon by 2030, even if the racing is a tiny percentage of the sport’s overall footprint.
Naturally aspirated engines would also be extremely loud – which would put at risk races such as Miami and Las Vegas close to or in population centres.
And then there’s road relevance. The manufacturers are not in F1 for fun. They’re in it for marketing reasons. Most road-car engines these days are turbos, and have some degree of hybridisation.
The upshot of all that is that it looks like F1 is heading to a new engine formula – for either 2030 or 2031 – that features V8 turbos with in the region of 15-25% electrical power, mainly to be used as a push-to-pass system.
Bosses are aware of the mistakes with energy starvation that have been caused with the latest rules, and the idea will be to allow the drivers to operate with maximum power all the time, with the electrical elements used to facilitate overtaking.
