07/03/2025
FEATURE BY MAX NOBLE
Engines. What's not to love? Steam, external combustion, internal combustion, Jet... Electric?
I've previously written on Pitpass of my lasting affection for my Series III RX-7. A car of simple beauty with a colossal amount of under-bonnet wonders, thanks to the original owner (a Qantas pilot) who spent the cost of a small light aircraft on some perfectly selected modifications. Nitros injection was the only "bridge too far" (that's a rotary pun as bridge-porting is a thing...) improvement he resisted. Yes, dear European readers (and our former-colonial American chums), Nitros injection is legal in some Australian states! A thing of beauty where the national open road speed limit is moving towards 10 mph... My RX-7 was a joy to punt briskly down a country road. That rotary spinning forever towards an 8,500rpm redline, while throwing spent gases down the over-sized stainless steel exhaust with all the fury of Hercules on his latest errand. Happy times.
The cost? Ah... driven 'briskly' one would reach the eye-watering point of 26 litres per 100km (how we measure fuel use down under), being around 9 miles per gallon! Ouch! Today my wife's EV is faster, handles in a safer manner and can carry five adults... rather than two adults and a small cat on the book shelf called a 'rear seat'. Tears ran down my face as the RX-7 trundled into the sunset. There will be no tears when the EV goes, well, wherever.
What makes that character? What gives one car such as the RX-7 lashings of it, while another, say the Nissan Leaf, that remarkable attribute of zero-character? Handling? For me, yes. Looks? Sorry, but that shallow part of me loves how a car looks. The Leaf gets 1/10 for handling - it does not instantly kill you, and 0.5/10 for looks - it does not turn you to stone the second you lay eyes on it like Medusa. The engine? Well after us car types waffle on about flowing body lines and perfect styling, we usually move to the engine before we consider suspension, brakes, cooling, the interior, and, as Niki Lauda noted, the most important parts of a road car, a great in-car phone and hi-fi. Nope after looks, engine always comes second.
Which brings us to F1. We have the cars looking purposeful then we have the liveries which just got their own launch party... so plenty of shallow surface stuff right there. Then us fans moan on about current engines, while the FIA and Liberty endlessly go on about them from the other side of the hedge... being usually, design constraints, fuel use and sound.
Season 2026 retains 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrid as the ICE. Fuel moves from 10% sustainable ethanol fuel to "100% fully sustainable". No idea what that really means, but as Saudi Aramco are behind it I'm sure it is designed to continue our addiction to fuel in our road cars. To achieve a fuel use drop from 100 litres per race to 70 litres the ICE power output drops from 840bhp to 535bhp. That's around a 37% power drop! Do you think the engine manufacturers that can produce 840bhp now are going to find it awkward to achieve around 535bhp from the same general engine concepts?
The 2025 MGU-K produces around 160bhp for a total output of around 1,000bhp. The goal for 2026 is to drop the MGU-H and up MGU-K output to around 470bhp, more or less double, to get back around the 1,000bhp level.
Is that lots of power for an ICE unit? Consider back in 1987 incoming F1 entrant Audi provided Walter Rohrl with the Audi S1 Quattro. He promptly scampered up Pikes Peak in a new record time of 10 mins, 47.85 seconds. This was back in the day when much of the road was dirt. Due to tourists falling off it on a regular basis, more and more of Pikes Peak is now tarmac meaning today's times cannot be compared with those of yesteryear. The inline five (such character!) turbocharged engine produced 441kW, being 591 bhp. So Audi could drag 56 bhp more from an inline five back in 1987 than F1 is asking from the ICE in 2026! No wonder Audi think they can succeed in F1! 39 years of progress to produce less power from a turbocharged ICE!? Save me. Granted the Audi engine at 2.1L gains 500cc on the season 2026 F1 1.6L engine... but seriously... it was based off the engine in a road car...!
The manufacturers are returning to F1 because Liberty have made it a profitable franchise. It has nothing to do with 'road relevance' or "sport for art's sake'. It is zero heart and all mind, well, bank balance actually. The 'road relevance' fog is to placate company boards and get money for the racing team, while also making fans buy into the halo effect of an F1 car when they go buy their four-door hatch for shopping runs to Aldi. These days when the FIA and Liberty talk about F1 as "The Pinnacle of Motorsport" they are referring to the remarkable height of the vast mountains of cash to be made. Not the quality of the racing, or the engineering.
It used to be said that Mercedes engineers built a new, improved car and then marketing worked out the price required to sell it at a profit. Then Mercedes went all capitalist on us, and started building cars to match a competitor's price point. That is engineer the car down to a specified price level. This is exactly what Liberty and the FIA are now doing. They are engineering cars down to a price point (the cost cap) so teams make a profit. Nothing to do with state of the art, or close racing and all that rot.
Do I love the current engines? No. Do I respect them? Yes. Good job of building to a price point while still trying to win. A 1.6L V6 is a tiny unit. Drivers are allocated four engines per season before they take a penalty. Ok. At 300km per race, with 24 races, that's a total distance of 7,200Km. Or a racing distance of 1,800Km per engine. That's a modest 1,125 miles. How many readers would like to purchase a new engine every 1,000 miles? How in the name of Ascari is that road relevant!? Noting multiple drivers take penalties and move to a fifth, or sixth engine, so they did not even get to the 1,000 mile point with some engines!
The beloved Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer had a flat-twelve engine back in the days when Ferrari were using flat twelves in their F1 cars. Stunning engines, amazing character, and what a sound! Until the 1994 season Ferrari ran a V12 F1 engine. It produced approximately 850 bhp (630kW) at 15,800 rpm. What a screamer! And it was naturally aspirated, none of this turbo-bananas for this V for victory! So our current V6 1.6L engine produces 840bhp to the 1994 Ferrari V12 producing 850bhp. The V12 was 3.5L. So the current engine has used 31 years of engineering genius to improve power per litre from 242.9bhp/L to 525bhp/L. That's a 282.1bhp/L increase! That is mighty impressive. Next year's V6 at 535bhp brings this back down to 334.4bhp/L being a modest 38% increase... Yes, still an increase but I'm sure this is a figure that beautiful V12 Ferrari engine could match if it had 31 years worth of engineering applied to it!
The entire field have run V8s at some point in their histories. Then what joy! The mighty 3.0L V10's which are stirring the storm within the tea cup right now. What an age of racing! 1,000bhp at 20,000rpm from another naturally aspirated engine! Dear Lord, imagine if we popped twin-turbos on one of those babies!
So a rotary (a concept which Mazda used to win Le Mans), and lots of V's for victory. Yet not all with character. The art and spirit which gets into our hearts and makes us smile when we recall special moments, including that crazy inline five from Audi. Yes, all well engineered, but all on the limit and filled with passion. The season 2026 hybrid? Well, not so much. Yes it is still a V6, for anyone who cares to check. Spirit, soul, heart, character, sheer awesomeness...? Possibly not. Far less powerful than the season 2025? Indeed... by design! For cost and profit, not engineering beauty.
It is an engine formula designed for low cost, reduced engineering skill and a fake link to road cars, in order to generate a halo effect, and continue to get money from the corporation to go racing. Then at all costs... turn a profit. No wonder Cadillac and Audi think they have a chance. They are both deluded, but Cadillac more so.
Is passion in F1 dead? Of course not. Are the drivers only in it for the money? No. Does Ferrari care if it never wins again? You can bet the house on it! Spirit, soul and passion are alive and kicking in F1. Just not in Liberty or the FIA.
V. Max and others that care are quietly flicking them a V. They have accepted the challenge and will win under the current rules, which does not mean they like the current rules. V for victory still? Well it might be a 1.6L V6, but it still manages a touch more spirit than a full charged battery pack. Heck. I'll take it.
Max Noble
Learn more about Max and check out his previous features, here