Depending on what your expectations were heading in to the 2010 season, Cosworth has ably supplied several teams in F1 with efficient reliability. Arguably the company has produced a competitive engine for teams such as Lotus, Racing, Virgin Racing, HRT and veterans Williams F1.
If you’ve been staying apprised of the regulations changes for 2011, you’ll be aware that Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) is making its infamous return to F1. The opportunity to re-deploy the controversial system has been embraced by the teams after a lengthy discussion surrounding the details of just how it should return in F1’s desire to appear “green”.
Most of the teams have a history with KERS, good or bad, and the redeployment of the system will be expensive but not quite as difficult as it could be for Cosworth. The engine manufacturer has committed to fitting the KERS unit to their engine and the details that come with that task can’t be easy to manage. AUTOSPORT has the story:
“Our plans for 2011 are flat out,” Cosworth’s head of F1 operations Mark Gallagher told AUTOSPORT. “We want to make sure that we are well prepared for the return of KERS.
“Getting that done is a great deal more complicated than just letting the teams simply attach the systems. We need to reconfigure the engine, plus change the ancillaries – but that is what we are ready to do to ensure our teams can run KERS if they wish.”
I have not heard the rumors or speculation AUTOSPORT mentions in this article about Williams F1 considering a switch to Renault engines but it does seem to resonate at some level. Williams F1 is experiencing one of the worst years in the teams history and perhaps a change is desperately needed.
We had speculated that Williams F1 would be the litmus test for just how effective the Cosworth lump is in 2010. Difficult to judge the engine based upon the performance of the new teams but Williams F1 should have been a perfectly good test of how the Cosworth performs.
Regardless of Williams F1’s use of the Cosworth or not, the task of marrying the KERS to the engine is no easy task and it could take a while for the engine maker to fully gel the reality of a two-year old engine with a first year KERS unit. The possibility for success or failure are certainly present for the taking.
