Porsche F1
 

Just watched the Australian GP. Will be interesting season with the new regs.
Ferrari, Mercedes, Maclaren, Lotus all present. So why not Porsche?
Will they ever get involved ?

funny. I once asked the very same question to a senior Porsche official at one of those Carrera Cup race. The guy answered "we have nothing to prove, we've done that long ago already".

Loved it

Not sure I would agree with his summary. Built some engines for TAG (successfully in 83/4 and a brief appearance in the sixties).
Wouldn't it be great to see a factory Porsche F1 team?

More importantly i would love to see them get involved in rally again. Just for racing in general i would love for the GT1 class to return to le mans, GT1 means some amazing homologation models.

Two words: NO.

Just sayin'.............

TO

One word: NO.

F1 is a collosal waste of money. They could have just as many fans while spending a 1/3.
It's retarded. It's stupid. It's illogical. And more importantly, it affects the driver selection process heavily. Which in turn makes it very, very predictable podiums (same six guys, with only 2 or 3 with a shot at the title...every yea). Even the top teams have been reduced to side-stepping the best talent available in order to secure some extra money to run the wind tunnel or whatever..

And Porsche, their kind of limited in their racing. The rear engine thing works in endurance races on circuits with very long straights like Cicuit de la Sarthe. But as far as sprint racing, on technical circuits, they need a mid-engine car like the (R8, F458) ages ago.

Apparently you missed seeing Daniel Riccairdo and Kevin Magnussen on the podium today (or was that yesterday) along with Nico Rosberg. The new rules have really shaken things up for now.

Too bad Riccairdo was later DQ'd due to a fuel flow meter issue. This pushed Button up on the podium wheer he has not been in a long long time. However, it looked like Valtteri Bottas would have been in P2 or P3 if he had not touched the wall and had to come in for a wheel/tire.

It was an interesting race, lots of overtaking on a good circuit with lots of corners. The new regs require turbo v6 engines limited to 1.6 litres. Produce lots of power and also fuel efficient. A technical challenge that interests Mercedes, Ferrari, Maclaren etc.
Obviously a business case that stacks up for their operation....

The only surprising podium of the F1 season is usually the first. Also, that podium was a lucky fluke for those rookies/new to the team drivers. Hamilton and Vettel both had car issues that essentially reduced the top two teams to one car that weekend.
Save for attrition of 2 of the 3 best drivers in F1, we'd a had the same old faces up on steps 1-2-3.

btw, the fact that Ricci man was running that well tells me the RedBull has the pace to make it 8 in a row or however many WCC's RB has by now.
I predict Vettel will win the next race with Hamilton 2nd and Redbull #2 driver in 3rd.

I sure do miss the 8 cylinders turning 18K rpms it was always music to me. The new engines don't sound as good as my 986! New regs will at least have the effect ofmaking the pódiums a Little more interesting.

This is why F1 is ridiculous and Porsche like to keep their big profits in their accounts and not Bernie's.
F1 spends more on fancy sushi than what it costs 1/2 dozens Indy teams to race every tire, spark plug and driver pay check.
$130 million engines? That's a lot Cayennes...

per car:
Top F1 team: $125 million; Top IndyCar team: $3 million

The largest single cost for most F1 teams is the design, development and construction of a bespoke chassis. F1 teams must construct their own chassis and although the manufacturing costs of an F1 car are a relatively small $15 million per year, top teams can spend well over $100 million on research and development.

All IndyCar teams must buy their chassis from series provider Dallara. The price is $345,000 per chassis, but the purchase of aerodynamic packages designed for different circuits can add another $150,000-$200,000. A team typically gets through three chassis per driver each year.

THE ENGINES
Top F1 team: $130 million; Top IndyCar team: $2 million

F1 manufacturers such as Ferrari and Mercedes spend more than $100 million annually on engine development. This is principally to supply their own teams, but they are required to also supply other teams with engines and typically charge $13 million per season to do so.

Honda and Chevrolet typically charge IndyCar teams around $1 million per year per driver for an engine package which will allow the use of eight engines.

TESTING
Top F1 team: $15 million; Top IndyCar team: $1 million

Restrictions on F1 testing in recent years have seen budgets slashed from $35 million to $15 million annually in order to cut costs. This is still far larger than the IndyCar teams’ $1 million annual spending.

DRIVERS
Top F1 team: $47 million; Top IndyCar team: $3 million

Two times world champion Fernando Alonso is one of the highest paid sports stars in the world, receiving an annual salary of $40 million from Ferrari. In contrast leading IndyCar drivers receive $1-2 million per year. Unlike F1 drivers they also receive prize money – $2.5 million for Dario Franchitti when he won last year’s Indy 500 – but are usually expected to give at least half of this to their team.

ENTRY FEE
Top F1 team: $3.3 million; Top IndyCar team: $456,000

F1’s governing body, the FIA, operates a complex system for entry fees where each team is charged a basic fee of $500,000, plus $6,000 per point scored in the previous season for the constructors’ champion and $5,000 per point for everyone else. This has left 2012 champion Red Bull Racing with a bill of $3,260,000 this year. In contrast, IndyCar teams pay $12,000 per car per race.

HOSPITALITY
Top F1 team: $13 million; Top IndyCar team: $1 million

Hospitality may seem like a frivolous extra but it is a crucial part of how an F1 team operates. Sponsors spend up to $100 million annually so expect to receive silver service treatment when they visit a Grand Prix. A top F1 team can spend more on hospitality in a season than an IndyCar team spends on its entire budget. In contrast leading IndyCar teams may spend up to $200,000 at a showpiece event like the Indy 500, but far less at other races.

I agree with Perfectlap. Porsche has nothing to gain by racing F1. Sports car racing is where they belong to represent the brand.

I've heard F1 budget exceed $1 Billion annual budget for top teams.

If anything Porsche should look at developing the Cayman and Boxster to run the Continental series in Tudor. We already can see they will not develop these cars to run in GTLms. Why not Continental series?

F1 is officially dead, it truly was an awful spectacle with cars that sounded like a vacuum truck mixed with a hair dryer. I would rather spend that time on a Sunday out enjoying a real car.

I felt the same way. As I watched something was missing. It was that high pitch sound that was missing. Without this the cars looked like they were just rolling along instead of racing.

I thought the new cars sounded amazing. It was great to see the new guys on the podium. Was even better to see Vettel fail to make Q1, almost as sweet as Maldonado and Grosjean having to drop out. And Kamui - what the hell was that, anyway?

I must be the only one that wasn't missing those old kitchen blender engines.

Even a bad turbo engine sound still sounds better to me. I just with they more like the F1 Turbos of 70's and early 80's.

So we've established that F1 is a lot more costly than Indycar racing.
Question is if Porsche had a F1 team, would you be interested & watching?

Yes, absolutely. I've been following F1 since Denny Hulme won at Monaco in 1967. I've been to GPs in three countries, and now the USGP is in my back yard.

I'd watch it no matter who competed and what the rules are, even if they go all electric. IMHO, F1 is, and always will be, the pinnacle of motorsport.

And yes, it would be great if Porsche threw it's hat in the ring, but it just doesn't make sense to them to do so.

Just sayin'.............

TO

You still gotta love F1, rule changes only make for more exciting developments and issues in this sport. Give a team a rule book, tell them the minimum and maximums and then turn the engineers loose, really how all racing should be. I can't stand to watch NECKCAR with every car and engine just made with cookie cutters, BORING!

I do wish that F1 would bring back refueling during the race and drop the required tire change. Let them use whatever tire compound they want but limit the fuel storage so that they must refuel twice during a race. Yeah I know safety concerns over fuel, but really compared to all the other dangers in F1, refueling has got to be one of lowest.

The rules in F1 are actually quite constrained. The key differences between F1 and Indycar or NASCAR is the materials and level of electronic control that is allowed. For example, an F1 ECU now controls the engine/clutch/gearbox/differential/fuel system/KERS/DRS.

This is hardly a min/max formula (like an open GT racing class where anything is allowed and the only criteria is horsepower to weight ratio), instead it is a formula that promotes the development of certain technologies (primarily electronic) to gain every 0.001 of a second per lap. Otherwise, the spec's are just as tight as Indy and NASCAR.

marginally. They had a LMP with Penske. That was interesting.
But some people really are die-hard Porsche fan boys the way the tifosi are.
I suppose having Merc, Ferrari and Porsche in it would rile up the fans.
But would that make for more interesting races? Highly doubtful. What's another billion spent atop the already spent billion going to add? These costs are insane.

What F1 shoud do, and people have been saying this for ages, is put those billions into a formula that brings back the emphasis on mechanical grip instead of aero. Get rid of the ez shift and bring back engines and transmissions that highlight driver skill.
Watching Nelson Piquet or Senna drive one-handed through Monaco with 1000 HP at their finger tips is why qualifying was standing room only. Those onboards make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
Now its like watching an Xbox game.

But having an aero grip formula makes for predictable races where 1 or 2 teams wins most weekends and that makes it easier to price sponsorship up and down the price chart. The last thing F1 wants is for the human element to be deciding race outcomes, that migh actually produce races where you're not falling asleep by lap 30.

Porsche stated had it not been allowed to develop an LMP1 car to compete against Audi, they would have considered F1 as an alternative; but their first priority was going back to LeMans.

Sadly, there's no place in the states for P1 cars to race and we get Daytona Prototypes (really wanted EMS to win Sebring, but the Nascrap fix was on in the end).

6 Hours of circuit of the Americas
WEC is scheduled to be in Austin on Sept 20.

TUDOR Championship is scheduled to be there the same weekend.
IMSA | TUDOR United SportsCar Championship | Circuit of The Americas

As soon as event schedules are finalized I'll be going. I think this is the only chance we get to see all three Factory teams from Porsche in the same weekend.
LMP1
Team Mathey
Porsche North America

Porsche races to win and the experience of new (or returning) marques in F1 highlights how difficult, if not impossible, that is out of the box. While Mercedes eventually came to have considerable success as an engine manufacturer, it is has taken years for them to become successful as the builder of an entire car. BMW also found that their efforts at producing both chassis and engine were unsuccessful and bowed out, albeit after expending countless millions, if not billions of dollars.

If Porsche had been interested in a return to F1, the time would have been 3 years ago when the new formula was announced for this year. Their experience in developing high-performance hybrid systems with engine mapping and energy regenerative braking for the new 918 would likely have helped to defray at least some of the development costs of a new power plant for a Formua 1 car. In addition, they would have been starting with a fresh piece of paper at the same time as Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault and they would not have had the distraction of having to field competitive power plants running to a very different formula during the intervening three years. IMO, the time and place for a return to Formula 1 by Porsche has truly come and gone.

Make no mistake - Formula 1 is still relevant and I suspect that the worldwide audience will increase under this new formula. I also suspect that over time, the advantage now being shown by the Mercedes powerplants will be overcome by the other engine manufactuers (although I am not convinced that it will occur this year - especially if the disadvantage is in the gasoline engines, as I believe their design is effectively frozen for the year). Will Renault/Red Bull bounce back as quickly as some here are predicting? Although their chassis/aerodynamics seem first rate, that is something which can be changed/improved over the season by other builders.

The performance of the Renault at Melboune is still suspect, IMO, to the extent that they were not running in accordance with the specified fuel-flow limitations in the formula. We must remember that overall fuel consumption was not a problem for any of the engines (and if that was ever in doubt, it was ensured by the number of laps under full-course yellows). By exceeding the maximum fuel flow there can be no doubt that Red Bull were able to improve the output of the engine. How competitive the powerplant will be when running to specs remains to be seem (although their may be some evidence of that in the car driven by Vettel, which apparently ran with the approved metering device). If so, they are not out of the woods yet.

Brad