AndreaModa wrote:One thing I have remembered, is where does Force India's supposed partnership with McLaren lie in all of this? If they plump for Bianchi and move to Ferrari engines they're going to loose the benefits of sharing data with McLaren and they'll have to manufacture their own gearbox for the Ferrari engines as currently they use McLaren ones. I can't see that as being much benefit when arguably the Mercedes engine is probably better anyway.
The rumours suggest that they would get the entire drivetrain from Ferrari (i.e. engine, energy recovery systems and gearbox) as part of the deal, so that would remove the need to manufacture a gearbox in house (bear in mind that they currently use McLaren's transmission, so they only have limited in house capabilities in that regard). They would presumably have a similar arrangement to Sauber, so in some ways it would not be entirely dissimilar to their research agreement with McLaren (which, one would assume, would either be scaled back in scope or terminated altogether - without having either a common drivetrain, there would be less that they could co-operate over).
As for the issue of the engines, yes, the current Ferrari V8 could be a slightly worse deal - it is rumoured to have slightly higher cooling demands and fuel consumption than the Mercedes engine, although it is not clear if that is compensated for through higher peak power (Mercedes may still retain a slight advantage in that area, which would probably make their engine the slightly better choice).
However, it isn't 2013 but 2014 that the teams will be looking to, and the drastic change in the regulations could see the field of competition change (recall that, on the switch from the V10's to V8's, Mercedes, amongst other engine manufacturers, was slightly off the pace to begin with and had to claw its way back). Ferrari are likely to pour a lot of their resources into drivetrain development - being able to develop a better engine, along with better energy recovery systems, which will now be much more significant, could give them a competitive advantage (that has consistently been a weak point for Red Bull - consider that Newey's always hated KERS because of the packaging and cooling problems, hence why Red Bull have used an undersized system (Kravitz suggested that it was limited to 40kW)).
Given that Mercedes did take a little bit of time to adapt to the last engine rule change, whereas Ferrari were more competitive from the start, might be one reason why Force India might also find a Ferrari engine deal more attractive, apart from the more obvious possibility of saving money by striking a deal with Ferrari for free engines in return for signing Bianchi.
) and agree to said technical partnership from 2014 onwards on a mere guarantee that Bianchi will get a contract for 2014 onwards.
