Red Bull welcomes V8 return as FIA forces engine shake-up timeline

Red Bull would welcome a return to V8 engines in Formula 1, with its Ford partnership offering a natural link to the iconic power units.

Formula 1 will, according to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, return to V8 engines no later than 2031, although he’d ideally like it to be a year earlier.

Red Bull back FIA V8 return plan as Ford link boosts optimism

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Formula 1 switched from V10 to V8 engines in 2007, only to drop the V8s in 2014 for turbocharged V6 engines.

The sounds that defined F1 for a generation were silenced.

Both drivers and fans decried the lack of guttural volume coming from the new power units, and their complaints grew this season when Formula 1 again changed the engine formula.

The sport adopted a 50/50 split between combustion and electrical power, with the engine running on fully sustainable fuel.

But as Sebastian Vettel showed in 2023 when he put a modified Red Bull RB7 through its paces at the Nürburgring, a Formula 1 car can run a V8 engine with E-fuel and still produce the noise that fans want. He also drove the 1993 McLaren MP4/8 using sustainable fuel at the 2023 Goodwood Festival of Speed, as well as doing other demo runs.

V8 engines could make a comeback in 2030, or 2031, as FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has vowed to make a change, whether the power unit manufacturers agree or not.

“It’s coming,” Ben Sulayem said as per RacingNews365.

“In 2031, the FIA will have the power to do it, without any votes from the PUMs [power unit manufacturers]. That’s the regulations.

“But we want to bring it one year earlier, which everyone [externally] now is asking for. When you try to tell them [the PUMs] they say no, but what will come, will come, and it [the power] will come back to the FIA.”

However, he says Formula 1’s PUMs are in favour as they “want it to happen.”

More on the FIA’s V8 promise

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V8 engines will return to Formula 1 by 2030 declares FIA president

“But,” he added, “let’s say the manufacturers don’t [vote for it], then one more year and it will be done. It’s not a matter of, ‘Do I need their support?’ No, it will be done.

“V8 is coming.”

The news has been welcomed by Red Bull team principal Mekies.

This season Red Bull, under its Red Bull Powertrains division, is racing its first in-house built engine in conjunction with Ford.

Mekies says the newness of Red Bull’s engine division means it’s more open to changes in the formula, and then, of course, there’s the Ford-V8 know-how.

“As Red Bull Powertrains, we are pretty cool with it,” he told PlanetF1.com and other media in Miami.

“We feel we had to start from zero to go and try to deal with this power unit. And I think the starting point is decent.

“We are still lacking some PU performance compared to Mercedes, but we feel that the guys did a phenomenal job to put us in a fight.

“So we are quite excited to have another challenge.

“We are probably a bit more flexible and independent. We don’t have some background history, but we are quite excited about going about a new challenge.”

“Indeed,” he added, “there is a V8 in the Ford Mustang that I’m lucky to drive every day in Milton Keynes.

“So,” he continued, “we may have an early start.”

Ben Sulayem also claimed there would be minimal battery power involved in the next engine formula, saying: “It will be with a very, very minor electrification, but the main one will be the engine.

“It will not be something like now, which is a 46-54 split. There will be very minimal [electric] power.”

However, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff ruled that out as he says that’s not in line with today’s world and the drive to be more eco friendly.

“How do we give it enough energy from the battery side to not lose connection to the real world? Because if we swing 100 per cent combustion, we might be looking a bit ridiculous in 2030 or 2031. So we need to consider that, make it simpler, and make it a mega-engine,” he said.

“Maybe we can extract 800 horsepower off the ICE and put 400 on top of it, or more in terms of electric energy, we’re absolutely up for it.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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