Red Bull boss, Christian Horner, has advised that F1 could lose its engine suppliers if the engine freeze rule is maintained.
Last year, Mercedes was considered the most powerful engine of the grid. The main teams urged the FIA to allow them to update their engines during a given period of time, consenting on minor relevance enhancements and readjustments. As a result, “the ‘touches to the engine’ are quite limited.”
Even though, in the Regulation there isn’t a stipulation for engine equality, the fall of Honda, Toyota and BMW means that there are only four engine manufacturers left: Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault and Cosworth. On this regard, Horner seems worried because, if the engine freeze rule hinders the manufacturers to enhance the engines they sale, everybody will choose the most powerful to this date, and this would force the others out. In other words, there’s the possibility that there would only be two brands left.
“FIA has all the information at hand to decide upon an adjustment to the engines,” Horner said from Germany to the Auto Bild Motorsport magazine. “It would be a disaster to lose another engine manufacturer at the end of the year, because they cannot compete with the others. The chassis development rules are so strict that the engine plays an ever more important role everyday.”
This year’s refueling ban means that fuel consumption will become a critical factor in the races. Renault, which supplies its engines to Red Bull, as well as the factory team, believe they have more efficient engines regarding fuel consumption, even though they have slightly less horse power.
An engine with better consumption will allow the team to refill less fuel at the beginning of the race, which is a factor that will have a value of tenths of lapping time during the first laps of a Grand Prix. Fuel levels will no longer have an incidence on the scoring times, because the first ten will not have to perform the Q3, with enough fuel to start the race.
For this reason, the single-seaters with Renault engine, could get a worse scoring in the Q3 but make significant progress during the first laps, thanks to their weight/load ratio.

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