F1 will push ahead with trying to make the sport’s new turbo V6 engines louder.
In an interview with the British broadcaster Sky on Sunday, chief executive Bernie Ecclestone was told by former driver Martin Brundle that changing the sound would surely require a total engine “redesign”. But Ecclestone hit back: “The noise comes from where? “All the air exits in the end out of what we call the exhaust pipe. So they can maybe do something there to make it sound a lot better,” he revealed.
Also on Sunday in Bahrain, McLaren supremo Ron Dennis rebuked world champion Sebastian Vettel for being “disrespectful” when recently he described the sound of 2014 as “shit”. But that doesn’t mean the teams are necessarily opposed to change, he added. “The fact the cars aren’t a bit (more) noisy just doesn’t matter,” Dennis told Brundle on the grid, as he defended the revolutionarily modern new rules, and hit back at the outspoken critics. “We can fix that (the sound) easily, but what we should be focused on is what’s good for the generations to come.”
FIA president Jean Todt on Sunday revealed that the sound ‘fix’ will begin shortly. A working group will be set up to ‘explore ways to improve the turbo noise’, according to the Telegraph correspondent Daniel Johnson. “Todt told reporters that possible solutions to the quieter sound will be tested after the race in Barcelona next month,” he added.
