15/11/2017
NEWS STORY
Ross Brawn admits to being surprised at the engine manufacturers reaction to the proposals for the 2021 engine regulations announced a fortnight ago.
While the proposals were just that, an initial outline of where Liberty Media and the FIA want to take the sport from 2021, the manufacturers were aghast.
While Honda has essentially kept schtum, no doubt wishing it had never got involved in the first place, Mercedes, Renault and Ferrari were quick to make their displeasure felt, the Italian company even threatening to leave the sport.
As part of its grand plant to make the sport more competitive and reduce costs, it is intended that the 2021 engines be less complicated and cheaper, among other things.
While Mercedes and Renault believe the new engines will increase spending, especially as until 2021 the manufacturers will need to run two programmes, Ferrari was aghast at the mention of standard parts, the Maranello company saying this compromised its DNA.
F1 technical boss Ross Brawn admits to being surprised by the reaction, especially as it was merely an initial proposal with nothing set in stone.
"Reflecting on it, maybe we could have presented it differently," he admitted, according to BBC Sport. "But I didn't anticipate the response to be as strong as it was.
"We've had another meeting since then and I made that comment," he revealed. "If that is the thing people are most upset about, then I apologise. But let's not lose sight of what we are trying to do. If they were uncomfortable with the way it was presented, it wasn't intended that way.
"The current engine is an incredible piece of engineering but it's not a great racing engine," he said. "It is very expensive, it doesn't make any noise, it has componentry that in order to control the number of uses is creating grid penalties that make a farce of F1, there are big differentials of performance between the competitors and we are never going to get anyone else to come in and make engines."
Confirming that the plans outlines at the original meeting were merely a starting point, he called on the teams to bring their own proposals to the table, as long as they abide by the aim of making the engines, cheaper, less complicated, more noisy, hybrid, road relevant, able to be used by the driver at their full potential all the time and use certain standard components.
Insisting that he is willing to listen to the teams' own proposals, "as long as those principles that we've set out are achieved", he said: "If a manufacturer can demonstrate that there is a better way of doing it than what has been proposed, i.e. it is cheaper, it is more appealing to the fans, it is something that a new supplier could engage with; any of those factors, then why not?
"We are not wedded to specific solutions. We think with the expertise that we've got and the work we've done, these are the solutions that can work. If somebody suggests another solution that they think will achieve the same objective, we are not going to say no."