07/02/2016
NEWS STORY
One of the main reasons for the controversial token system, that we now know is going to be scrapped next year, was to slow down the inevitable 'spending war' as the engine manufacturers sought to make up ground on the leaders and the leaders sought to extend their dominance.
With upgrades strictly limited by a system that few really understood, far less liked, there were understandable fears that the status quo would be maintained and that Mercedes would continue to dominate, leading to an era of dominance that would have fans and sponsors switching off in their droves. Indeed it was already happening.
However, as Cyril Abiteboul revealed this week, the token system is to be scrapped, and whilst this is surely reason to celebrate, Red Bull design guru Adrian Newey fears that the move will see the return of an 'arms race' that will cause its own problems. Again.
"More spending, simple as that," was his response when asked about the plan to scrap the token system and allow unrestricted development.
"If you look back on the original technical working group meetings and minutes from 2012-13, the agreement at that point was that the engines would be frozen but teams that were behind would still be allowed to keep developing. That's not happened," he told Reuters.
"So it becomes a spending frenzy, the numbers being spent by the big manufacturers are eye-watering and so I think potentially for companies such as Renault who are not prepared to spend that sort of money, it means actually the gaps get bigger not smaller."
The Briton also poo-pooed the deal that will see manufacturers reducing the prices they charge customers teams, a move aimed (supposedly) at not only reducing spending by the smaller teams but levelling the playing field.
"It's very curious to me that we have this set of regulations where the manufacturer has to supply the same hardware to other teams but is under no obligation to supply the same software and therefore the same performance," he said. "Nobody is complaining about this because the customer teams can't complain because their contract doesn't allow them to."
The exception to the rule, he insisted, being Renault.
"They have always given the same power units in every sense of the word, including software, to their customer teams as their works teams.
"It's an option for Red Bull and it's an option for Renault to continue together," he added, looking at the situation at his own team which effectively kick-started the current saga. "The problem of course is that if Renault are not able to compete with the spend and development race then we are put in a position where neither they nor us can be fully competitive."
Whilst Max Mosley is concerned that the engine manufacturers now wield the power (no pun intended) in F1, Newey fears that it is the engines which will continue to dictate the outcome of the championship.
"You can't photograph an engine, not the internals anyway. So if you have an advantage, you can lock it in for some time. That happened with Ferrari last season where some Mercedes engineers left and joined Ferrari and were able through their knowledge to bring a very considerable jump in the performance of the Ferrari engine.
"These engines are still relatively infant technology," he continued. "We have already seen the steps that can be made, there's no reason to suspect they've suddenly reached a plateau."