Engine Freeze for 07.

[vanquish89]

Formula 1 will impose a freeze on engine development a year earlier than planned after the FIA and the GPMA agreed terms to introduce homologation after this year’s Chinese Grand Prix.

In a statement issued by the sport’s governing body, following a meeting between FIA president Max Mosley, out-going BMW director Professor Dr Burkhard Goeschel and Dr Juergen Reul of the GPMA, it has been agreed to bring forward the engine-freeze in the interests of saving costs in Formula 1.

This means that teams will freeze all development of their 2.4-litre V8 engines as of October 23, 2006.

The engine homologation is likely to save the manufacturers a significant proportion of their development budgets - estimated to be as much as US$1bn on essentially lame-duck engine programmes - instead of facing a year’s intensive development only to return to 2006 specifications anyway.

The freeze is set to last until 2009 whence the FIA plans to introduce revolutionary technical regulations.

These will be designed to promote energy-saving techniques into Formula 1 – which the governing body intends to outline in December of this year.

During the period between 2006 and ’09 no changes will be allowed to the homologated specifications, except where the FIA deems it ‘fair and equitable’, or to retune the units down to an imposed rev-limit of 19,000rpm.

The FIA also announced that the GPMA plans to set-up a working group to assess a future blueprint for technical regulations with a view to finding more efficient to use available energy which may lead to a change in the lay-out of future engine formats.

Monday’s news brings to an end months of wrangling over the details of the engine freeze between the FIA and the GPMA.

“As a result of the above the FIA and GPMA are now in full agreement about the future of the FIA Formula One World Championship,” read the statement.

The news follows the FIA’s announcement last week that it would press ahead with its plans for the engine freeze, which is believed to have angered some manufacturers who wanted less restrictive regulations in the interests of engine development.

This came after the GPMA’s failure to reach agreement with the FIA last month, over the so-called Indianapolis proposal, which would have involved setting up a central fund to offset development costs for independent engine builders in exchange for less restrictive technical regulations.