JANUARY 17, 2008

A free engine failure?

We hear that the F1 teams have all been granted one free engine failure per car this year after the recent meeting in Paris. This will mean that they will not to have to suffer a drop of 10 places on the grid. This could be important as most of the teams are very reliable these days and engine changes are rare. If a team manages to survive all year without a blow-up this would give them some flexibility at the final race where they might, for example, be able to blow up an engine in qualifying and then run a new one in the race. However, for most of the teams it is simply a way to avoid having too many penalties that will affect the results as a 10-place penalty these days pretty much dictates that a car will not be able to score points.