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Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer has admitted that the British company will spend the next twelve months evaluating entering Formula 1 in 2021 as an engine manufacturer. Its name will be back on the grid this season, after it signed a title sponsorship deal with Red Bull Racing.
F1's engine regulations are set to be shaken up in 2021, as Liberty Media presented its plans to manufacturers in 2017. Despite current manufacturers Renault, Mercedes and Ferrari voicing their disapproval, Aston Martin remain interested.
Palmer says that the complexity and cost of the engines need to decrease in order for Aston Martin to consider returning to the grid. With the MGU-H being scrapped in the regulation change plans, Palmer remains firm on simpler engines needed to sprout a return.
"The big cost, the big complexity, it really comes around the H. That’s where you’re seeing unreliability, it’s where you’re seeing costs, and for what level of return? The problem is teams allegedly now have 80 to 100 people working on a bloody turbocharger. That level of cost is nuts, and also takes it out of our reach. I don’t have that many people to work on a turbocharger.”
"What I will do now is go through the options of partners, talk to shareholders as much as anything to test and challenge me," he added. "Get into some form of single-cylinder development. Ultimately I would think early ’19 make a decision of go [or] no-go. So you’ve got the regulations laid out in front of you, you know what the limitations are, you know what your technology is broadly capable of, and then you start spending."
Fergal Walsh
Grand Prix of Belgium
G. Zhou
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Barron
Posts: 625
Well his big thing is the ‘bottom end’. Whoa easy there! He suggests standardisation of the bottom end ie same crank/rod/piston assy. In one context I agree, but I am overall against any inter team uniformity of the engineering/tech of F1. Spec series anyone? No, that’s not a pinnacle of an... [Read more]