After seeing his Renault-powered car lapped by Mercedes in Melbourne and soundly beaten by a Ferrari-powered Sauber, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner reiterated his call for the FIA to introduce engine-equalising measures in F1.
“The FIA have a torque sensor on every engine,” he said. “They can see how much every power unit is producing. They have the facts and could quite easily come up with a way of some form of equalisation.”
This is not the first time Horner has made this call; following the disappointing performance of the Renault power units in the first season of the new formula in 2014, he argued that F1 was suffering because of the Mercedes dominance and that moves were needed to level the playing field. But this time, with the Mercedes advantage apparently increased since last year, Bernie Ecclestone appears to be getting behind the idea. On Monday, the commercial rights representative said: "There is a rule that I think Max [Mosley] put in when he was there that in the event... that a particular team or engine supplier did something magic – which Mercedes have done – the FIA can level up things.”
The regulation he is referring to is not immediately apparent in either the sporting or the technical regulations. However, it would not be the first time that an existing piece of regulatory wording has been contrived to be applied to something for which it was not intended. The governing body can reinterpret its own rules to achieve a desired end and in the past has done so.
“When we were winning we never had this [size of] advantage,” said Horner, “but double diffusers were banned, exhausts moved, flexible bodywork prohibited, mid-season engine mapping changes. And that wasn’t unique to us. It happened in previous years to Williams and McLaren…The FIA have within the rules an equalisation mechanism, something they perhaps need to look at.”
It raises the question of sporting purity versus entertainment, a conflict that F1 has long struggled with. Mercedes has achieved what it has through doing a better job under regulations that gave the other engine manufacturers exactly the same opportunity. If F1 applies a penalty to a competitor for having achieved an advantage, could it really call itself a sport? On the other hand, such a one-sided competition as looks in prospect for the season on the evidence of Melbourne would be very bad commercial news for F1 – which is facing very real concerns about declining viewing numbers in certain territories.
What has triggered the latest call for some brake to be put on Mercedes is the under-performance of the Renault engines in the Red Bull. Last year, with an engine around 60bhp down on that in the works Mercedes, Red Bull was semi-competitive and able to win three races (albeit only those in which both Mercedes had problems). With a year’s worth of development it was expected that Renault could reduce that deficit, but the version of the engine delivered for Melbourne, which was expected to have 50bhp more than that used in Barcelona testing, actually had less power and much worse driveability. In Melbourne it was as much as 100bhp down on the Mercedes, which has gained an extra 50bhp since 2014.
Had Renault delivered what its simulation had promised, the Red Bull’s pace would likely have been somewhere between Mercedes and the much improved Ferrari and the competitive picture would not have looked so dire.
Ecclestone’s apparent agreement with Horner’s stance suggests that something may be about to change. But it should also be borne in mind that the commercial rights holder and the governing body are not in full accord on a variety of subjects in F1 at the moment – three-car teams being one. So, unlike in the days when Ecclestone and former FIA President Max Mosley acted as one, re-interpreting the regulations on a whim may not be so simple this time around.
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