Originally Posted by Woodentop:
“This isn't DTM where Mercedes can show whoever may be interested, all their development skill for saloon cars. This is F1 and shouldn't be so concerned with appeasing the green lobby at the detriment of the main purpose of its interest. The manufacturers should not be hand tied and if it continues to become more about a procession with screen shots of economy and energy collection then the continued decline in audience will hasten.”
Trouble is, people are far more aware these days.
In the old days, the saying "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" probably held a lot of water.
It didn't really matter if you were racing with 5 litre overhead cam V12s engines and selling cars fitted with 20 year old 1.4l pushrod engines. The halo effect, alone, was enough to convince people to buy.
These days, companies are spending millions developing new technology for the road every year so it seems a little optimistic to expect them to
also spend even more money developing totally irrelevant technology to compete in motorsport which
can't be applied to their road cars, especially when they know customers are likely to make their buying decision on the basis of the technology that
is present in their road cars rather than simply cos Vettel or Hamilton won in a car with a particular badge on the nose.
Let's face it, it's not the engines that are preventing F1 cars from racing with each other closely. It's the aero'.
Seems like these engines are just a convenient scapegoat for a problem that's existed in F1 for the best part of 30-odd years, at least.