Former Scuderia Ferrari car designer and current FIA head of single seaters Nikolas Tombazis has confirmed that the performance of the power unit across the grid is largely similar, as the power unit development freeze has come into effect. The F1 engine manufacturers (Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault and Red Bull Powertrains) have all designed their brand new 2022 power units being aware that the engine rules and regulations will remain the same until the proposed arrival of Formula 1’s new engine specification which should take place in 2026.
This inevitably means there is little room for teams to improve their engine performance, so anyone who is behind at this stage will not be able to recover the deficit for the next few years. However, FIA’s single seater boss Nikolas Tombazis explained that the teams would not allow one manufacturer to be cut adrift if their power had a significant deficit to their opponents, as the idea is to see the constructors able to compete on a relatively even level of power:
“None of the four manufacturers have problems at the moment, the performance is similar,” Nikolas Tombazis said in a recent interview for Italian daily newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport – “When we discussed introducing the freeze, we determined that, if one was in difficulty, everyone would engage in good faith to discuss how to solve the problem, perhaps allowing for some development. There is no interest in sentencing someone to be left behind for four years.” – he added.
The statements of the FIA technical director should remove any concerns regarding the Mercedes power units, considering the relative lack of straight-line speed the factory and customer teams (McLaren, Williams and Aston Martin) have had in the first two races of the 2022 Formula One season, as Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said in Bahrain that his team was ‘over-winged’, which led to more drag than needed.
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Nikolas Tombazis also confirmed that the FIA did not want to freeze the regulations for such an extended period, but admitted it was a necessary measure for the teams while a new engine formula is evaluated, which should also determine brands like Volkswagen join the sport hrough Audi and Porsche: “It’s not ideal to freeze engines for a long time, but we had to do it because it would have been unsustainable for the manufacturers to develop these units and the ones that will be introduced in 2026,” Tombazis concluded.
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