Mercedes ready to pump up engine noise

F1 outfit to test new ‘megaphone’ type exhaust in Barcelona.

BARCELONA:

Mercedes may have the answer for Formula One fans longing for more engine noise in the new V6 era and they are ready to sound off about it.

The season’s dominant team, runaway winners of all five races so far, will try a new ‘megaphone’ type exhaust at a test in Barcelona this week as the sport seeks a solution to a problem of its own making.

“I’m sure everybody is looking forward to hearing what the ‘megaphone’ is going to be like,” Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff told reporters at the Spanish Grand Prix won by Lewis Hamilton – his fourth successive victory – on Sunday.

“We’re pretty clear — if the fans want to have more noise, and if it’s making the car not only sound better but it’s perceived to be in a better and more attractive way, then we’ll go for it.”

The sound of the new V6 turbo hybrid engines, which have replaced the screaming old V8s this year, provided an immediate controversy when the season started in Australia in March and has divided the paddock.

Some of the race promoters, who flew in from around the world to meet in Barcelona on Saturday, have called for more noise and fear ticket sales could fall off if fans are alienated by the lack of decibels.

While Formula One’s 83-year-old commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone agrees with them, the quieter turbos also have their supporters in the paddock — particularly among the technical boffins.

“Some of what we are experiencing with respect to the noise is that it [the new power unit] does what it says on the tin: It uses less energy, and it does so more efficiently so there’s less falling out of the back as noise,” said Renault Formula One deputy managing director Rob White.

“I don’t sign up to the opinion that they sound horrible. I feel there is a positive message that has kind of got drowned out,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 13^th, 2014.

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