No Room for Cosworth

[Wizzo]

The future of legendary Formula One engine maker Cosworth remains anybody's guess after last weekend's season finale in Brazil, due mostly to a controversial ruling by the FIA.

While the motor supplier failed to find a team for next season, the new rules for the following year seemed to leave the door open for Cosworth's return in 2008. But, along came FIA, which gave the storied F1 power plant a forceful shove from the sport last week when its World Motor Sport Council voted to allow Ferrari to continue to supply more than one other team with engines when the new rules come into effect in 2008.

Ferrari needed special dispensation from the sport's governing body because the rules for 2008 only allow a manufacturer to supply engines — directly or indirectly — to two teams. That meant Ferrari could only power its factory team and one other outfit, unless it could get the consent of the FIA to add another.

Cosworth's fate was summed up succinctly in an Oct. 18 statement from the WMSC after it met to discuss the 2008 rules: “Ferrari's request to supply two teams with engines in the 2008 championship has been accepted.” The vote effectively pushed Cosworth out of F1.

So, after 39 years, 176 wins and 12 driver's championships, F1 will lose Cosworth because the FIA seems to have a very short memory and a pro-Ferrari inclination.

While safety has been the stated impetus behind many recent rule changes, the FIA also spent the past few years strong-arming teams and manufacturers in a relentless campaign to reduce costs. The idea behind the 2008 rules was to make F1 cheaper for smaller teams and suppliers.

But, after putting the tools in place to keep the smaller fish in the big pond, the FIA then decides to give a flush manufacturer the means to steal scarce customers from an independent outfit.

The decision to let Ferrari have an extra team only serves to solidify the continuing feeling that FIA continues to apply the “red car rule” liberally, even as it desperately needs to demonstrate impartiality.

With testing curtailed and Friday practice no longer being part of the two-race-per-engine rule beginning in 2008, having six cars with Ferrari motors will give the scarlet team the possibility of getting 50 per cent more engine data than the other teams.

The advantage served up to Ferrari by this decision serves to polarize the paddock and does nothing to raise the confidence of fans. Almost half the fans polled in a pair of on-line surveys last month felt FIA was conspiring with Ferrari to ensure Michael Schumacher retired with an eighth championship.

But none of this seems to affect FIA decision making, which left Cosworth to watch things fall apart, first at the WMSC and then in its final race in Sao Paolo, Brazil, last weekend.

Its Williams drivers collided on the first lap and immediately dropped out of the race, eliminating any legitimate shot Cosworth had at scoring points in its final appearance in F1.

“Not quite the way that we had envisaged our current involvement in Formula One to draw to a close,” Cosworth principal engineer Chris Jilbert said after the Brazilian Grand Prix.

“It really does not seem possible that there will be no Cosworth-powered cars in the F1 paddock in 2007. Let's hope that Cosworth can return to its rightful place on the grid in the future.”

Its last F1 result was exactly opposite to Cosworth's debut 39 years ago, when its three-litre V-8, double four-valve (DFV) engine hit the track in Holland at the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix as the motor to beat.

After putting Lotus driver Graham Hill on the pole at Zandvoort, the DFV powered Hill's teammate Jim Clark to a 23-second victory over his nearest challenger Jack Brabham. Clark went on to win three more times in 1967, but it was only good enough to deliver third in the championship.

The next season, Hill drove the DFV to its first of seven consecutive F1 titles and the Cosworth motor became the stable of the sport. The engine and its successors won an incredible 155 races in 15 years.

Cosworth's win total is second only to Ferrari, which surpassed the English company in 2004, one year after Cosworth scored what will probably be its last F1 win when Jordan driver Giancarlo Fisichella took the checkered flag at a rain-soaked 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix.

There's no doubt that today's F1 has come a long way since a small English engine workshop founded by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth signed a deal with Ford and began producing power plants capable of winning in the pinnacle of motorsport.

Forty years later, sportsmanship and camaraderie in F1 has been replaced by money, politics, and pragmatism, and that meant there was no room left for names like Cosworth.