There is one reason why people do not build their own F1 engines. Money. It takes horse-choking wedges of wonga to invest in facilities, machinery, people and research and development projects. Gone are the days when a couple of chaps in cloth caps draw an engine on the back of an envelope and find the £100,000 needed to put that into production. These days a serious long-term F1 engine project has a price tag of about a quarter of a billon dollars. So the news that Marussia Motors’s Nikolai Fomenko is going around telling people that Marussia wants to build its own V6 Formula 1 engine, should be taken with a fairly hefty pinch of salt. The company has yet to actually put a road car into production and so such ambitious talk may be just a tad premature.
There seems to be little doubt that Marussia owner Andrey Cheglakov has money. The F1 team’s latest accounts show that he has recently written off the team’s debts of $220 million. It takes a man with v-e-r-y deep pockets to do that sort of thing. To do it twice would be impressive. Still, Marussia Motors needs to find a suitable engine for its road car project and so there may be an argument that the same engine design could be used for F1 and for the road cars. Thus far the Marussia team has bought engines from Cosworth and will be doing the same with Ferrari for the next three years. In a perfect world this may be the path down which all racing teams should go, but looking at F1 at the moment one sees that even the mighty McLaren does not have the stomach for a proprietary F1 engine. If it was a plausible project then McLaren would have done it already.
It would be good for F1 to have more engine manufacturers. Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault will be joined next year by Honda but as yet there is no word on anyone else. Telling the world that Marussia wants to build its own F1 engines may not be smartest thing that Fomenko ever did. This will make engine manufacturers wary of the team, lest an engine disappear (even for a few days) in order to become the model for future Russian power units…
joeblogsf1 
‘It takes horse-choking wedges of wonga to invest in facilities, machinery, people and research and development projects.’
And by those words, this is why we all follow you.
Absolutely brilliant.
Thank you very much in kind…
I imagine this is why he writes his blog in English..
I can imagine the expression on the locals if he used a phrase “comme ça”.. 🙂
indeed, i almost spat my dinner out when i read horse-choking wedges of wonga!! i don’t even know what that means! Lmfao, as they say
Ah yes, all engine manufacturers have read the story “V8 Italian Vacation”, about the adventures of an Ilmor Indy V8 that went on a long weekend trip to the Alfa Romeo engine facility in Italy…
I don’t see money as an issue as has been previously shown, Russian Oligarchs are not frightened to through a bit of money around. Even though under Putin they lost considerable influence there are some that carry his favour and would be willing and able to mount such a campaign. Putin himself could be a player, he is already involved in several ventures making him arguably the wealthiest man in the world, unofficially.
Wasn’t he a main player in attaining the F1 For Russia?
The political argy bargy of F1 would not be a challenge for him as he has shown he gets what he wants. A steep learning curve would be needed but a Suzuki style R&D plan would not look good these days.
industrial espionage and gaining classified information through other means is alive and well, Interesting times indeed. Your security clearance may need to be upgraded in the future Joe.
Cheglakov is not an oligarch.
The last real ‘Indy’ F1 engine manufacturer must have been good old Brian Hart back in the mid-90s with Jordan and Arrows, eh? I remember visiting the Minardi factory sometime when they were using “Asiatech” engines (ex-Peugeot, as I recall) and speculating on where Asiatech actually got the money to be messing around in the F1 engine business, even if only rebranding old engines made by someone else. The Minardi guy shrugged, winked and said “ah, we don’t ask, if we get an engine we are ‘appy”.
Yeah, I immediately thought of Brian Hart also. He did a fantastic job on a VERY low budget, with very few people. The Monobloc 4 cylinder he built had real potential; it’s too bad he never had the support he deserved. One problem with the 4 cylinder engine was that it wasn’t stressed, so the car had to have a supporting subframe to the rear suspension. IIRC Brian developed a lot of his own electronics, with a very small company, just a couple of guys, doing the electronics work. I believe he tried a twin turbo setup, but it was too complex, so he went back to the single turbo. I think he also was at the tail end of the suppliers chain and didn’t get the good bits; he had trouble with fuel injectors delivering enough petrol, and other problems. Anyway, possibly there is still room for the small guy, although the PURE attempt ground to a shuddering halt.
Just the idea of a Russian F1 engine makes one scratch one’s head to begin with. It’s not as though the Russian automotive industry is at the apex of automotive technology. I mean, picture the engine being made by Zil. Seriously? Or perhaps Lada? Okay stop laughing. Lets face it, if the Russians are actually serious about producing an F1 engine, their only route is do as Ford did with Cosworth and Mercedes-Benz originally did with Ilmor; contract an outside firm to do so and put their name on the cam covers.
Well you have forgotten Moskvitch and Lada. GAZ, VAZ and UAZ
But we should not decry Russian design ability. It was not until they got a Russian solution that the US got it’s space program sorted (it was about utilising the fuel pump turbine exhaust if I remember rightly) and the ekranoplan the ultimate use of ground effect is the reverse of it’s use in F1. The abandoned toroidal installations also give a good clue as to their forward thinking, not to mention the basics of electrostatic lift. I would guess that a good deal of that forward tech is now residing in a certain missile test range south-east of Salt Lake City.
At least, the Lada WTCC engine isn´t that bad.
Depends on how they want to do it. If it’s just a prestige project, then sure. But keep in mind that Russia has produced a steady supply of some of the world’s finest physicists and mathematicians. They’ve also cranked out a lot of excellent (and available!) aerospace engineers, whose skills would come in handy here. Having said that, Russia’s problem has never been the talents of its people, the problem has been its political and bureaucratic structure. But who knows — if a private investor wants to convene a meeting of a bunch of Russia’s academic and engineering elite, it could happen.
Joe, any closure to the PURE engine story? I know it fizzled out as a project but anything remaining? I seem to recall reports that the ‘failure’ was due to a financial backer withdrawing – so here is a man with deep pockets and a desire to build an F1 engine …
As far as I know there is nothing left.
I don’t know, but I suspect that the reason PURE failed is that they started developing a straight 4 engine and then the rules were changed to a V6. My guess is they didn’t have the money to start again.
Honda aren’t coming into F1 until 2015 Joe. McLaren still have a year with Merc.
I am aware of that.
Since the days of the Tupolev Tu-144 Russian engineers have had an uncanny talent for designing things that end up remarkably similar to other designs. So I’m sure if a russian F1 engine turned up with a prancing russian horse logo, it would just be a coincidence.
Many years ago, we use to say this about the Japanese, that they “re-engineered” or “reversed Engineered” something that the West had originally developed, and in most cases made it better & cheaper. One can therefore imagine that the Russians can do the same, and have done over the years.
I would be surprised if they haven’t already done so, or are working on it now, and this is just a early warning to something appearing in the near future.
The running joke inside the U.S. aerospace industry attributed the similarity to the Russians buying the Revell kits.
Chris D, the TU-144 was there first and was then followed by the Concorde, which lasted longer. It is not like Russians copied the west, it’s rather the other way aroundin this case.
I do not believe this is right. It is true that the Tu-144 flew before Concorde (December 31 1968 compared to March 2 1969) but there is no doubt that much of the design had been stolen by Russian secret agents, particularly from France’s Aérospatiale company. There were two significant arrests by the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) – the French secret service – in relation to Concorde. In 1965 they caught Sergei Pavlov — officially Aeroflot’s representative in Paris — in possession of detailed plans of the Concorde airframe, landing gear and braking systems. At the same time another agent called Sergei Fabiew was also sending back thousands of drawings to Russia, unknown to the DST. He was finally arrested in 1977 after his cover was blown by a Soviet defector. He cooperated with the DST and admitted sending back the entire blueprint of Concorde. This was confirmed when he gave the French his secret transmission key which enabled the decoding of messages that had previously been intercepted but not deciphered. These included a message from Moscow congratulating Fabiew for getting the Concorde plans, which confirmed his story. There is also a suggestion that the DST arranged for some of the information sent to Moscow to be false which, it is said, was the cause of the Tu-144 crash at the Paris Air Show in 1973. This has not been proven, as far as I know.
Didn’t NASA acquire a TU-144 for testing in its space program due to the TU-144’s technical superiority.
I don’t believe so.
They used at least one Tu144 for testing (I seem to recall that thay it might have been in conjunction with the Central Hydrodynamics Institute,TSAGI) *
but this wasn’t due to any technical superiority to Concorde, it was due to them being cheap and available.
There was a perhaps far fetched story of an operation by HM Intelligence services to “modify” the copies of the Concorde plans before they fell into the hands of the Soviets.
TU144 was deinitely a poor copy of Concorde, it lacked some of the important Aerodynamic innovations that Concorde had.
*(I was going to check my facts on NASA Dryden flight test centre website, but this is currently shut down due to Fed funding shutdown.)
Sorry but this is way off F1…
Please, if it happens, let it be a Cosworth. Just to see if they can still be competitive. However, if the new engine were to come along in 3 years, where would they have to fit into the development rules which allow fewer and fewer parts to be developed as the the formula goes on?
Pinch of salt? I’d say more like spoonful, if not the proverbial horse-choking wedge of salt! This is Fomenko we’re talking about. Read the same announcement and replace his name with Jeremy Clarkson and you’ll get the rough idea. Although coming from the latter it would be both more entertaining and yet more believable.
A quarter of a Billion Dollars U$ to develop.
If we assume it covers production, materials, storage and transport as well and the manufacture is allowed to supply a maximum of four teams with ten engines each then its $6.25M each if the development is amortised over only one year.
You could go for longer, but there will be more cost each year as changes are made. True, parts will get frozen as each year goes by, but you don’t really want leave your money tied up there.
Quantitative easing is devaluing money, so the value of the investment decays each year, you need your money back asap. You need it to earn 5% to stand still.
Very interesting Joe. As ever!
Are there very strict controls over what an F1 team can do to and with an engine that is supplied to them? I would have thought the large amount of £€$ spent obtaining and using an engine from any given supplier would entitle the user to certain proprietory information. i.e knowledge of how it works (intimately) .
Or is that incredibly naive of me?
Assuming the quarter of a billion dollar engine project is transferable elsewhere i.e. to road cars for the manufacturer or their subsidiaries perhaps all well and good – otherwise it is part of the insane inflated cost base of F1 that currently prevails. I know you’ve commented on this a lot Joe.
McLaren seem to be struggling to make their road car project work at all let a lone build an engine for their road cars and or F1 cars so I’m not sure what hope Marussia has.
With a Ferrari engine in the back next year you’d think the smart investment would be in developing a chassis that’s better than last.
I thought Honda is coming back in 2015, not next year…
Yes
“Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault will be joined next year by Honda”
Care to explain, Joe?
It is easy to explain. I was talking as if we were already in 2014 and Honda will join in 2015.
perhaps Craig Pollack of departed Pure is lurking behind the scenes……
Would it not be great if we did actually have a Russian designed F1 V6 turbo engine. From an engineering aspect, how did they do it? How different is it to the German, the French, the Italian, the Japanese? How does a country’s culture affect approach to design? Do they use the Ford 7 step problem solving or the simpler 4 step? Or something completely different?
They should just buy the Cosworth facility, if their pockets are this full of money, plus hire a top engine designer (or two).
This reminds me of something which you as the unofficial F1 historian might be able to shed light on. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere about a vague idea for a Soviet F1 team at some point in the 80s. Anything in it, Joe?
Nothing serious that I can recall.
The guys writes off $220m yet they still need to take Chilton family money (c$15m??) rather than talent?
Something doesn’t make sense there to me.
Why would they pay for a driver? Not even Hamilton could score points in that car.
Off to Cosworth next Tuesday for a presentation on the defence sector. Just imagine if it was announced that a deal had been struck between Cosworth’s owners and the Russians for the Northampton based company to supply the Russian military with a powertrain control system along with an F1 engine deal for Marussia. PURE fantasy of course.
Cosworth have just announced a new plant and 70 new jobs.
“This will make engine manufacturers wary of the team, lest an engine disappear (even for a few days) in order to become the model for future Russian power units…” Hehehe.
Russian-Soviet spycraft has been far and away superior to any other country, going back to the Czarist regimes, and I suspect is still very capable including industrial espionage.