Turbocharged Engines to Make F1 Return?

Max Mosley's plan to bring costs in Formula 1 down to a minimum in the years to come is far from finalization. While visiting the World Rally Championship caravan in Portugal the past weekend, the FIA president presented the media with an early-stage plan to replace the existing power plants from all major motor racing series worldwide with a unique “world engine”.

As announced by Mosley, the new unit would work differently depending on the racing series – F1, WRC and soon-to-be-launched F2 – but will be open for development. As far as Formula 1 is concerned, it seemed the main change will be the return of turbocharged power plants.

“It would work in turbocharged form for F1 and then all the way down to naturally aspirated form for the lesser categories and in a turbocharged or naturally aspirated form for the world rally championship,” said Mosley during a media meeting in Portugal, as reported by GMM news agency.

In addition, the new engines will benefit from other forms of “energy collection”, complementary to the newly-developed Kinetic Energy Recovery System. As revealed by the 78-year old Englishman, the FIA technicals are already considering several systems aimed to extract energy “from exhausts and even from the cooling system”.

It is yet not clear what the F1 manufacturers will think of Mosley's latest idea, as the Formula One Teams Association – benefiting from manufacturers' majority – has been in continuos disagreement with the FIA on the famous “single engine supplier” discussion in the past months. Mosley did reveal, however, that he is looking on a way to attract all manufacturers to be part of the new “world engine” project.

“If we can - and I'm not sure we can - find a way of combining all forms of motor sport in that system then this would be useful because of the huge sums spent on motor sport,” insisted Mosley, who also admitted the project is in a very early stage. If developed properly, it could make the FIA rule book by 2013.