Formula 1 and other stuff

The reaction to the FIA’s press release today highlights the danger of rushing to digital print:

The WMSC approved the introduction of a new specification engine from 2013, underlining the FIA’s commitment to improving sustainability and addressing the needs of the automotive industry.

Following dialogue with the engine manufacturers and experts in this field, the power units will be four cylinders, 1.6 litre with high pressure gasoline injection up to 500 bar with a maximum of 12,000 rpm.

Many people have alighted on the magic number ‘500 bar’ and rushed to announce that turbo engines will return to F1 with, like, ker-ay-zee boost pressures. Sorry, but that’s not what the sentence says. Look again: high pressure gasoline injection up to 500 bar. That’s not the same as turbocharging.

The introduction of high-pressure common rail fuel injection on diesel cars in recent years has yielded huge improvements in performance, refinement and efficiency. Most road car diesels now run around 1000 bar of injection pressure, but their petrol equivalents are lagging – 200 bar is about as high as it goes at present.

Using Formula 1 as a laboratory for performance and efficiency development makes sense on a number of levels. The sport has to be more relevant to the public at large. It also needs to attract investment from the automotive industry rather than hoping for a financial white knight to charge in from the ether to replace the departed tobacco money and the departing bank money.

Leading research into high-pressure gasoline injection systems could engage not only the established automotive industry, but also the breakthrough car makers in the far east. Turbocharging? It’s been done, luv…

Turbos will be part of the package, but my snouts suggest that the boost pressure will be more modest – in the region of 1.5 bar or lower, around where they were capped last time around. Longevity is more important than before, now that drivers face greater limits on the number of engines they can use over the course of the season.

Ferrari’s little strategic error last weekend may have cost Fernando Alonso his shot at the drivers’ title, but the team’s sponsors are still laughing all the way to the bank – so to speak.

Banco Santander, the multinational financial group which sponsors both Ferrari and McLaren (although in the latter team its branding appears only on the drivers’ overalls), has released figures from the Media Sports Marketing and Havas Sport consultants estimating the bank’s return on investment (ROI) from its F1 sponsorships at €270million in 2010, up from a previous estimate of €250million.

The bank also takes title sponsorship of the British, German and Italian Grands Prix.

Meanwhile, back in Abu Dhabi, Mubadala – an investment company run by one of the members of the royal family – is selling its five per cent stake in Ferrari back to the FIAT group. Mubadala reportedly paid €114million in 2005 for the stake, originally held by the Italian bank Mediobanca. The figure mooted for the current sale is €122million, which is a tidy sum given the travails of the automotive industry in recent years. The sale has come about because FIAT exercised an option to buy back the shares – an option it has deferred several times.

Mubadala is part of Abu Dhabi’s strategy to diversify away from fossil fuels and into tourism and technology by making key investments. We can expect to see the name return before long – indeed, the rumour mill is already linking it to a possible acquisition of the Formula One Group from CVC Capital Partners. That may be a little far-fetched, though…