47 replies to this topic

[vowcartaGP]

With all the debate about the current generation of engines in F1 being too expensive for the small teams and the awful sound they produce, vs the apparent need to be relevant to the car industry etc etc, why not use modified versions of production engines?

No I am not talking about your 3 cylinder job in the front of your Ford Fiesta, but rather the high end of production scale. Of all people to give me this idea it was that entertaining oaf Jeremy clarkson whilst watching an old episode of top gear the other day. He was driving the McLaren P1, which produces 900 HP between the petrol and electric motors. The petrol motor is a twin-turbocharged V8 and sounds better than the noise your mother made when you were concieved. With a bit of F1 modifications and tweaking McLaren could easily get this to produce 1000BHP and make Bernie give Ron Dennis a high five.

Producing a good number of these modified versions could then be economical for McLaren, who could then supply a vast number of teams who otherwise wouldn't be there, for a capped price like Bernie wants. (A 21st century cosworth DFV, anyone?). Of course other manufacturers could build their own versions to spec but the rules could be based around a production engine. Perhaps Ferrari could do the same with their V12 hybrid in the back of their La'Ferrari. The same goes for the Porsche 918 engine. (although this is a normally aspirated V8 alongside electric unit).

Obviously there would be some claims of bias towards McLaren (and Ferrari if their production engine was used/allowed) but this is Formula One and it's never stopped the FIA before. (Ah the days of Ferrari's International Assistance!) besides as long as Mercedes, Honda, Renault and whoever else wants to join the party (by which I wishfully think of Porsche) can produce their engines to the same set of rules with the same testing rules, maybe it can be done reasonably fairly.

As for the McLaren-Honda partnership, maybe McLaren don't use their own engines (as mad as that sounds, this is F1. *cough* 2 lotus teams 2011 *cough*) or they could be rebadged by any manufacturer willing to pay for the privilege. At the moment, I think Honda might jump at such a chance! If not its a cheap way for someone like Chevrolet to be seen in F1 in a competitive manner.

The reference to the DFV is no mistake. Given the current financial mess F1 faces, a cheap competitive engine that could supply half the grid or more again would certainly help, but it has to be right up to date too.

Now this is the internet. So discuss.

[PAGATRON]

Didn't BMW do this back in the old turbo era? They took an engine from a 5-series pee on it and literally shoved it in the back of a Brabham.

Thing is it blew up a lot, I wonder if that's what Renault are doing now.

[uffen]

F1 prefers the illusion of road relevance, I'm afraid.

[SR388]

Didn't BMW do this back in the old turbo era? They took an engine from a 5-series pee on it and literally shoved it in the back of a Brabham.
Thing is it blew up a lot, I wonder if that's what Renault are doing now.

I thought that was what Renault did back in the day.

Edit: looks like it was BMW

http://m.gtspirit.co...ul-f1-car-ever/

Edited by SR388, 30 May 2015 - 17:58.

[Beamer]

You do realise that it would make an f1 car Some 100kg heavier and you can forget about a neat tight rear and the car balance would be very rear heavy...

Edited by Beamer, 30 May 2015 - 17:53.

[Rasputin]

This is were the IRL took off, thinking that 4 litre production NA V8s was the way to go, but nothing happened.

[Gilles4Ever]

I thought that was what Renault did back in the day.
Edit: looks like it was BMW http://m.gtspirit.co...ul-f1-car-ever/

Some of you might wonder how did the engine block resist to such immense detonation inside the combustion chamber. This may not be the answer you were looking for – and most of you might not believe it – but it seems BMW was in fact using seasoned inline 4 cylinder blocks – picked up from several junkyards – for their F1 operations. The interesting part about it was that the blocks were kept out in the cold and urinated upon in order to strengthen their composition.

http://www.autoevolu...-one-18108.html

Edit: SR388 sure can time his edits

[ray b]

but the IRL motors were 3/4 scale pure race motors

that just sort of look like the street motors

 

I tryed to track down the motors to use in a street car after they were no longer used

or at least bits like intakes and cams

but as they were 3/4 size nothing would work on the real motors

[Lotus53B]

I thought that was what Renault did back in the day.

Edit: looks like it was BMW

http://m.gtspirit.co...ul-f1-car-ever/

Chris Barrie, aka Rimmer from Red Dwarf, has done a wonderful pair of videos about the BMW turbo engine in the Brabham

 

[MNader]

F1 prefers the illusion of road relevance, I'm afraid.

 

Cannot begin to describe how good this post is

[Bloggsworth]

Some of you might wonder how did the engine block resist to such immense detonation inside the combustion chamber. This may not be the answer you were looking for – and most of you might not believe it – but it seems BMW was in fact using seasoned inline 4 cylinder blocks – picked up from several junkyards – for their F1 operations. The interesting part about it was that the blocks were kept out in the cold and urinated upon in order to strengthen their composition.

http://www.autoevolu...-one-18108.html

Edit: SR388 sure can time his edits

 

Urban myth I'm afraid.

[Nemo1965]

Some of you might wonder how did the engine block resist to such immense detonation inside the combustion chamber. This may not be the answer you were looking for – and most of you might not believe it – but it seems BMW was in fact using seasoned inline 4 cylinder blocks – picked up from several junkyards – for their F1 operations. The interesting part about it was that the blocks were kept out in the cold and urinated upon in order to strengthen their composition.

http://www.autoevolu...-one-18108.html

Edit: SR388 sure can time his edits

 

Urban myth I'm afraid.

 

Well, I've read the same story in a quite reliable sources... namely in a BMW-leaflet that was produced after Piquet won the world-title with a BMW-turbo. Not about the urine, I might add, but about using old, seasoned blocks. How I've always remembered is, however, that the engineers picked up OLD 4 cylinder blocks because they had survived - apparently - millions of miles, and hence, by Darwinian selection, these old blocks were the best of the hundred of thousands of blocks that were once built in BMW cars.

 

Very recently I read the story about the piss also, in RTL GP Magazine, which usually is rather reliable...

Edited by Nemo1965, 30 May 2015 - 20:57.

[johnmhinds]

Why would you take a worn out engine from a junk yard and stick it in an F1 car? How is that the best engine BMW can produce?

 

And what the heck do people think peeing on some metal is going to do to it?

[KnucklesAgain]

Why would you take a worn out engine from a junk yard and stick it in an F1 car? How is that the best engine BMW can produce?

 

And what the heck do people think peeing on some metal is going to do to it?

 

Block, not engine.

[chipmcdonald]

I've been suggesting this as an alternative for real "road car relevance" for awhile now.  Except...

 

Using high-end engines serves no "real road car relevance".  That's only relevant to the unreal.

 

They should use engines from production lines of road cars that meet an "average" criteria of MPG.  Give credits for how much of the original internals they use, emphasis on the timing chain and rods.  In that way you'd have a ton of money being spent making a ROAD CAR engine last longer, stronger and lighter. 

 

Can you get 850 hp out of a Civic or Corolla block?  I don't know.  That's real "road car relevance", otherwise having Ferrari or Mercedes one off "homologated" engines designed specifically to race serves no purpose.

 

/ not that ROAD CAR RELEVANCE HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH RACING WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE purpose built MACHINES!

[BlinkyMcSquinty]

It is a wonderful concept, for a simple rule that requires a bottom end to be part from a production run with a minimum limit. But unfortunately, that regulation change will never be allowed to happen.

 

What complicates this whole mess (and distinctly separates today's turbos from the ones of the '80's) is the management for the energy recovery systems. Right now Mercedes are doing the better job, and it shows in the performance. And that ain't cheap or easy.

 

All the engine manufacturers know how to build a fundamental internal combustion engine, and get it competitive within two or three years. They can all do that. But what separates each engine type is how the energy recovery systems are built in, the software, and associated plumbing. Build the internal combustion engine from a stock block, that only drives the cost down a small fraction. And even then, a lot of the assembly costs remain the same, the careful balancing of each component, using only the best components, with highly skilled technicians.

 

And then we get to the politics of actually forcing such a rule change. It would be easier to find Bernie guilty of tax evasion in a court of law.

[Wuzak]

Can you get 850 hp out of a Civic or Corolla block?

 

I'm sure you can.

 

Just how long it will last is another question.

[vowcartaGP]

I should point out that personally I don't give a stuff about relevance to road cars, but Mercedes, Renault and Honda disagree with me. Hence why I suggest a high end hybrid concept like that of the McLaren P1 as this is still formula one, not stock car or touring car racing. The suggestion came about on cost grounds.

As for the size and weight of the engine, I'm not sure about that but it's gonna be less compact than a normal F1 engine. How much of this can be changed economically I don't know.

[Bloggsworth]

Well, I've read the same story in a quite reliable sources... namely in a BMW-leaflet that was produced after Piquet won the world-title with a BMW-turbo. Not about the urine, I might add, but about using old, seasoned blocks. How I've always remembered is, however, that the engineers picked up OLD 4 cylinder blocks because they had survived - apparently - millions of miles, and hence, by Darwinian selection, these old blocks were the best of the hundred of thousands of blocks that were once built in BMW cars.

 

Very recently I read the story about the piss also, in RTL GP Magazine, which usually is rather reliable...

 

The reason, we were told, was that the old blocks had been through thousands of heat cycles and were therefore as thermodynamically stable as they were ever going to be - Sounded and sounds pretty reasonable to me, but I was assured that this was not the case.

[chr1s]

Urban myth I'm afraid.

This is taken from Brabham- The Grand Prix Cars by Alan Henry, page 243-

 

It did not take long for the BMW  Motorsports engineers to discover that the standard production blocks performed at there best when they were two or three years old, perhaps with as much as 100,000 road kilometers to there credit. Apparently the mileage and ageing helped remove inherent tensions and stresses from the blocks, but apart from the fact that about 5 kg of superfluous metal was machined away they remained unmodified blocks....

[KingTiger]

Few reasons why it won't happen:

1. Manufacturers spent a ton of money on the current engines and have no interest in changing them.

2. Whenever there's production parts in racing, there's eventually cheating where a manufacturer designs a "production part" for racing only. Eventually it becomes a pointless exercise of finding loopholes in the rules to cheat better than the rest.

3. Production engines are not made to rev to high rpm's for extended periods of time, that McLaren V8 would give up the ghost within a few sessions of racing.

4. Producing cheap F1 engines will not be economical, even the ancient V8 had to be subsidized by the manufacturers. 

[V8 Fireworks]

Road engines are heavy.

 

The Ferrari A1 GP cars had an engine from a 430... They weren't very fast.

[Nathan]

Doesn't sound very F1 to me.  I like purpose built engines.

Then there is the issue with being a stressed member of the structure.

 

 

 

Well, I've read the same story in a quite reliable sources... namely in a BMW-leaflet that was produced after Piquet won the world-title with a BMW-turbo.

 

I can't imagine why BMW would like to promote such a story...  Reliable source in this regard??

 

According to Ulrich Baretzky the BMW block thing is a myth.  This came out in an interview with Race Car Engineering magazine.

Edited by Nathan, 01 June 2015 - 00:39.

[CoolBreeze]

The day people stop thinking that F1 has road relevance, that's the day everyone becomes happier. 

[maverick69]

Wasn't the cylinder head on the Ford BDA pretty much the same as those on the DFV?

 

Kinda going in reverse here......

[Ferrari2183]

The day people stop thinking that F1 has road relevance, that's the day everyone becomes happier. 

As well as realise that F1 is not cheap...

[Nemo1965]

Doesn't sound very F1 to me.  I like purpose built engines.

Then there is the issue with being a stressed member of the structure.

 

 

 

 

I can't imagine why BMW would like to promote such a story...  Reliable source in this regard??

 

According to Ulrich Baretzky the BMW block thing is a myth.  This came out in an interview with Race Car Engineering magazine.

 

I don't have the leaflet any more... nor do I have the countless articles in Grand Prix International or Autosport where BMW-officials themselves gloat about the subject (of beating Renault with basically streetblocks)... so if it is a myth, it was the horse's mouth that spread them (if you understand my figurative line of reasoning). But I can drop a line here and there.

[KingTiger]

As well as realise that F1 is not cheap...

F1 needs to be cheap, or every team needs to be given an equally competitive budget by the promoter.

[CountDooku]

F1 engines are air cooled and have very small displacements. Even the time McLaren V8 is double the displacement of the F1 V6s. The battery is also massive at like 140kgs if I remember correctly.

It would be interesting to compare the engine weight and fuel consumption of the whole F1 power unit vs the McLaren power unit though (it's the lightest of the 3 hypercars).

[chr1s]

Doesn't sound very F1 to me.  I like purpose built engines.

Then there is the issue with being a stressed member of the structure.

 

 

 

 

I can't imagine why BMW would like to promote such a story...  Reliable source in this regard??

 

According to Ulrich Baretzky the BMW block thing is a myth.  This came out in an interview with Race Car Engineering magazineI

It might not sound very F1 to you now, but you have to look at this in the context of the time. Formula one was very different in 1980, the technical revolution it has become was still a long way away then, budgets were tiny and manufacturer involvement was in its infancy.

 

The engine was not a stressed member of the structure, it was mounted in a steel sub frame.

 

And the reason BMW would promote a such a story is this- (taken from Brabham The Grand Prix Cars by Alan Henry, page 243) 

 

Dieter Stappert, (BMW motorsport competition boss in 1980 ) makes it clear that there was never any question of the BMW Formula 1 engine ever being anything else but a production-based in-line four cylinder unit.

" It had to be that from the word go. We never thought about anything else, bearing in mind all the experience we had accumulated with the various four-cylinder engines up to that time.  It was also VERY IMPORTANT, from the promotional point of view, that BMW's Grand Prix involvement was seen to stem from an essentially production-based engine"

[Rob]

I don't have the leaflet any more... nor do I have the countless articles in Grand Prix International or Autosport where BMW-officials themselves gloat about the subject (of beating Renault with basically streetblocks)... so if it is a myth, it was the horse's mouth that spread them (if you understand my figurative line of reasoning). But I can drop a line here and there.

 

Mercedes-Benz still promote the paint scraping story as gospel every now and again...

[thiscocks]

 

 

The engine was not a stressed member of the structure, it was mounted in a steel sub frame.

Pretty sure it was still a stressed member, just 'supported' by a small steel frame. Semi stressed member? No that sounds weird...

[kevinracefan]

F1 needs to be cheap, or every team needs to be given an equally competitive budget by the promoter.

welcome to communist F1...

no

[kevinracefan]

F1 engines are air cooled

really?? show me 1 (modern era)
#Idon'tthinksoTim #hashtagsPOfullthrottle

[alfsboy]

I had a similar  1.8 engine in my E30 318 i.It had done 130 ,000 miles and ran and looked like a new engine.I gather BMW later went on to use ex  F2 engine blocks for their F1 engines.

[chipmcdonald]

Doesn't sound very F1 to me.  I like purpose built engines.

Then there is the issue with being a stressed member of the structure.

 

 

 I agree, but then, I don't think "road car relevance" has anything to do with Formula One racing, either....

[V8 Fireworks]

F1 engines are air cooled

 

No they aren't   That's why they have big radiators on both sides, the silver thing... 

 

[Boing 2]

F1 engines are very light, or were certainly. Yamaha used to have a sub 100kg unit in 98 but it was unreliable due to flex, Ford were the first to break under the 100kg limit with a powerful and reliable unit in 99, it put out about 770bhp at 16500rpm. By 2003 BMW's 3L engines were under 90kg's and were putting out over 900bbhp at 19500rpm, there's nothing in the road car market that comes anywhere near that performance level.

 

To give you some comparison, a Ferrari Enzo released around 2002 had a 6 litre V12 producing 660bhp at 8000rpm and weighed 225kgs.....

 

On the subject of road car relevance, F1's biggest period of recent manufacturer involvement was the noughties, during this era Ferrari, Renault, Mercedes, BMW, Honda and Toyota all competed with 19k + rpm V10's yet to the best of my knowledge only one of them produced a V10 engine in their road cars. That was BMW who had never used the format before and it was more of a marketing deal to squeeze some mileage put of F1, the engine option was removed after their withdrawl from the sport.

 

At the end of the day F1 is a massive, centralised TV audience of people who are largely into cars, getting your brand on the top step will sell cars, road car relevance is meaningless.

[CountDooku]

No they aren't   That's why they have big radiators on both sides, the silver thing... 

 

 

 

My bad!

 

They don't have cooling fans is what I was thinking!

[Bob Riebe]

but the IRL motors were 3/4 scale pure race motors

that just sort of look like the street motors

 

I tryed to track down the motors to use in a street car after they were no longer used

or at least bits like intakes and cams

but as they were 3/4 size nothing would work on the real motors

The Japanese engine was built off of the production engine; the U.S. engine was a pure race engine farce.

The Japanese did win at least one race with the prod. based engine before they realized they had been screwed by IRL rules.

 

George and the IRL had a good idea which they destroyed before they even started by making the prod. based part a farce.

 

CART inherited USAC's true prod. based equivalency rules but when Dan Gurney, and few others, started showing up and threatening with a true prod. based engines, they made sure with the rules that, that stopped quickly.

Edited by Bob Riebe, 02 June 2015 - 16:08.

[Fatgadget]

 <snip>On the subject of road car relevance, F1's biggest period of recent manufacturer involvement was the noughties, during this era Ferrari, Renault, Mercedes, BMW, Honda and Toyota all competed with 19k + rpm V10's yet to the best of my knowledge only one of them produced a V10 engine in their road cars. That was BMW who had never used the format before and it was more of a marketing deal to squeeze some mileage put of F1, the engine option was removed after their withdrawl from the sport

 

At the end of the day F1 is a massive, centralised TV audience of people who are largely into cars, getting your brand on the top step will sell cars, road car relevance is meaningless.

That was then.Things move on.Now we have engine-maps under software control,hybrid technology,semi automatic transmission etc...very much road relevant.

[Boing 2]

That was then.Things move on.Now we have engine-maps under software control,hybrid technology,semi automatic transmission etc...very much road relevant.

 

 

Hmmmm. The Prius has been on sale since 97, that predates F1 by 15 years. Even if youcount the experimental hybrid stuff Newey was working on at McLaren in the late 90's which was banned before use F1 was still a few years behind.

 

Take a look at some road car R&D budgets, those numbers are billions of US dollars, even an F1 giant like Ferrari can't scratch the surface of those numbers.

http://www.toyota.co...top-r-d-spender

 

 

The study said five of the top 20 global R&D spenders were automotive companies with Toyota ahead of General Motors fifth (previous year 2nd), Ford eighth (6th), Honda 16th (16th) and Volkswagen 17th (19th).

 

1 Toyota $8.994

2 Nokia $8.733

3 Roche Holding $8.168

4 Microsoft $8.164

5 General Motors $8.000

6 Pfizer $7.945

7 Johnson & Johnson $7.577

8 Ford $7.300

9 Novartis $7.217

10 Sanofi-Aventis $6.695

OTHER AUTO COMPANIES IN THE TOP 20

16 Honda $5.603

17 Volkswagen $5.429

 

 

Honda's attitude made the most sense to me, they didn't claim to borrow tech directly, instead they rotated engineers through the F1 program to infuse them with the F1 culture. The incredibly short lead times and means engineers get to build ideas and track test them within months of conception rather than years in the road car market, allowing a much steeper learning curve for staff.

[chr1s]

Pretty sure it was still a stressed member, just 'supported' by a small steel frame. Semi stressed member? No that sounds weird...

I think your right, semi stressed is how Gordon Murray described the engine installation in the earlier Brabham Alfas.

[Seano]

From experience it would be pretty simple to make a FI 2.0l Civic ICE run for a couple of hours at about 600 BHP revving to 10 maybe 11K RPM if you ripped all the VTEC components off for around £10K. It could generally be rebuilt for pretty little assuming no catastrophic failure. Neil Brown can build an NA K20 one at 300 BHP for three times the price.

 

But lets not kid ourselves, it wouldn't be an F1 motor.

 

The curious thing about the BMW is the piston speed in qualifying trim - I can only assume that the piston rings/skirts must have been pretty special - .IIRC a lot of beryllium was used which is not a good idea even if the basic block was stock.

 

If you are interested I have a melted piston and ring souvenir in the garage that I could photograph that shows the catastrophic effect of detonation and the metal erosion it causes - it ran so hot we couldn't get a plug out for 5 hours.

 

Seano

 

[Nathan]

It might not sound very F1 to you now, but you have to look at this in the context of the time. Formula one was very different in 1980, the technical revolution it has become was still a long way away then, budgets were tiny and manufacturer involvement was in its infancy.

 

The engine was not a stressed member of the structure, it was mounted in a steel sub frame.

 

And the reason BMW would promote a such a story is this- (taken from Brabham The Grand Prix Cars by Alan Henry, page 243) 

 

Dieter Stappert, (BMW motorsport competition boss in 1980 ) makes it clear that there was never any question of the BMW Formula 1 engine ever being anything else but a production-based in-line four cylinder unit.

" It had to be that from the word go. We never thought about anything else, bearing in mind all the experience we had accumulated with the various four-cylinder engines up to that time.  It was also VERY IMPORTANT, from the promotional point of view, that BMW's Grand Prix involvement was seen to stem from an essentially production-based engine"

 

I think you misunderstand me, what doesn't seem F1 to me is forming a rule where grand Prix engines must be derived from production engines.  If an outfit can do it, great.  I was answering the original question..

 

"With all the debate about the current generation of engines in F1 being too expensive for the small teams and the awful sound they produce, vs the apparent need to be relevant to the car industry etc etc, why not use modified versions of production engines?"

 

 

From experience it would be pretty simple to make a FI 2.0l Civic ICE run for a couple of hours at about 600 BHP revving to 10 maybe 11K RPM if you ripped all the VTEC components off for around £10K. It could generally be rebuilt for pretty little assuming no catastrophic failure. Neil Brown can build an NA K20 one at 300 BHP for three times the price.

 

Let's it last in a F1 environment of 4-5g, constant R&D etc.  The ceiling of what is capable is much lower than a purpose designed engine, so eventually it will turn to mush.

Edited by Nathan, 03 June 2015 - 03:40.

[taran]

It's never going to happen.

 

The FIA has often tried to enforce 'longevity' of parts in the hope that it will lead to cheaper, stock materials being used instead of purpose built, one-use, prototype stuff. Instead, teams build even more expensive stuff to meet the longevity requirement while still providing high(er) performance.

 

A few examples: FIA demand production runs of at least 100 cars built to enter their GT series, hoping to get production GT cars....result: Ferrari lies about their production numbers and fields purpose assembled GTO.

 

FIA demands production run of 200 cars for Group B hoping for modestly uprated cars based on sporty models. Instead, manufacturers start building purpose built race monsters while selling the special production to satellite teams or taking the financial loss for unsold models.

 

FIA demands production run of 5,000 cars for Group A hoping to get go-fast versions of family saloons. Instead, manufacturers start building cost be damned group A specials which have little to do with the family saloon.

 

So if the FIA were to regulate for 'production' sportscar engines, we'd suddenly see limited production sportscar models with super engines which would be impossible to drive on the streets but would be very good in a race car......

[Bob Riebe]

It's never going to happen.

 

The FIA has often tried to enforce 'longevity' of parts in the hope that it will lead to cheaper, stock materials being used instead of purpose built, one-use, prototype stuff. Instead, teams build even more expensive stuff to meet the longevity requirement while still providing high(er) performance.

 

A few examples: FIA demand production runs of at least 100 cars built to enter their GT series, hoping to get production GT cars....result: Ferrari lies about their production numbers and fields purpose assembled GTO.

 

FIA demands production run of 200 cars for Group B hoping for modestly uprated cars based on sporty models. Instead, manufacturers start building purpose built race monsters while selling the special production to satellite teams or taking the financial loss for unsold models.

 

FIA demands production run of 5,000 cars for Group A hoping to get go-fast versions of family saloons. Instead, manufacturers start building cost be damned group A specials which have little to do with the family saloon.

 

So if the FIA were to regulate for 'production' sportscar engines, we'd suddenly see limited production sportscar models with super engines which would be impossible to drive on the streets but would be very good in a race car......

LOL, so true.

 

Back when NASCAR was not full-tube frame farce cars, Ford had just introduced the new very aerodynamic Lincoln model.

It had an obvious advantage over any competition.

A Ford team asked the head honcho at NASCAR what they would do if they switched to that car, he said, "Go ahead, we will ban it the day after it is done."

 

Sanctions no longer want to put on a show with what ever is available from Detroit or Stuttgart or Maranello, they want total control to the point they can control what auto companies buiild.

[chr1s]

I think you misunderstand me, what doesn't seem F1 to me is forming a rule where grand Prix engines must be derived from production engines.  If an outfit can do it, great.  I was answering the original question..

 

"With all the debate about the current generation of engines in F1 being too expensive for the small teams and the awful sound they produce, vs the apparent need to be relevant to the car industry etc etc, why not use modified versions of production engines?"

 

 

 

Let's it last in a F1 environment of 4-5g, constant R&D etc.  The ceiling of what is capable is much lower than a purpose designed engine, so eventually it will turn to mush.

Sorry, I did misunderstand you!  Please accept my apology.  For what its worth I do agree with you, it doesn't seem very F1 to have such a rule.