Ferrari: the new engine will use exhausts made with 3D printers and steel pistons could finally appear. Steel pistons could finally appear on engine 1.

Corrado Iotti, head of the motorists, and Guido di Paola, head designer, have developed the engine that will be used the Maranello team’s 2019 Formula One car. And Scuderia Ferrari is confident that this season it will have a series of jokers to play in the evolution of the three specifications granted by the FIA ​​regulation.

In fact, on engine 1, steel pistons could finally appear and have completed the long run-in phase that began last year. The solution is not ideal in terms of weight (almost one extra kilo!), but ensures an extraordinary life to a 6-cylinder that will have to live 7 races ensuring a performance in the room significantly higher than last year’s version, also able to withstand the greater stress that there will be in the combustion chamber as a result of the increased availability of fuel (110 kg against 105 kg in 2018), according to a recent report from motorsport.

The goal will be to increase the pressure in the room, using a map that th degreasese fuel air mixture in search of performance, without having to deal with the dangerous detonations. These pistons, in fact, should allow the use of a Shell fuel more efficiently especially now that the control of the oil as a fuel additive by the FIA ​​commissioners will be even more strict than in the past, mainly in qualifying.

At Ferrari, at least for now, they have not deliberated on the new cylinder head created with additive production systems that use metal powder to build components directly from the CAD file thanks to bed-fusion technology. Thanks to this innovative technique it is possible to create parts that have increasingly complex geometries and very thin walls that could hardly be obtained with more traditional methods. This solution will be one of the cards to play during the 2019 F1 season.

But if the cylinder heads are still traditional without recourse to the new aluminum alloys, we can anticipate that the complex group of the exhausts with the three vertical elements were made with the highly sophisticated “3D printers” of the AM Renishaw.

In addition to ensuring a more extreme design, functional to the recovery of energy of the turbo, the technicians of Ferrari have managed to save weight.