MUNICH (dpa) – The combination of a Williams chassis, Ralf Schumacher in fine form and a set of Michelin tyres were enough for a sensational win in Imola – but the real driving force behind this Formula One project is the BMW engine.
Instead of buying in a power unit from an outside source and stamping the firm’s badge on it – like rival car giant Mercedes – BMW assembled a team of experts at its Munich factory and built a new engine from scratch.It was a risky endeavour after a long absence from the sport, yet after just 21 races the strategy paid off. BMW has the strongest engine in Formula One and the team has emerged as a serious challenger to Ferrari and the McLaren Silver Arrows.Reigning champion Michael Schumacher could be seen peering at the Williams-BMW in the park fermé after his brother’s maiden triumph but he won’t have glimpsed much more than the words “BMW Power” on the cylinder head.The vital statistics of the new P 80 are as secret as the recipe for Coca-Cola. Technical chief Mario Thiessen will not say exactly how much horsepower is being generated, and even the length and breadth of the engine are classified.Keeping things under wraps is normal in a sport where a few snapshots of a competitor’s car are worth a thousand words to a trained engineer.Let’s just say that with some judicious guesswork it’s possible to work out why this V 10 unit is a key element in Frank Williams’s bid to “throttle the Reds and Greys” as he was heard to remark last year.The BMW engine is the pacesetter. It’s the fastest on the straights and sound checks show it revving up to 18,000 rpm or at least 200 more than its rivals. Insiders say there’s 850 bhp inside or enough to make the car gallop of the grid with the force of 850 horses.Consider than the average saloon car engine manages about 130 horses at between 4,000 and 5,000 revs and it becomes clear why the blue and white car from southern Germany is one of the fastest on the planet.A decent engine is only one factor in winning a Formula One race yet experience has shown that provided the most powerful unit can be tamed and kept reliable, the team that has it will inevitably come out on top.A BMW with more horsepower certainly causes sleepness nights in Stuttgart where marketplace rivals Mercedes have been used to a two- car F1 field for the past few seasons, with only Ferrari to beat. Losing to BMW on the track is a boardroom nightmare for Mercedes.Back in Munich the makers will reveal only that the V10 has a capacity of just under three litres, not surprising since the regulations stipulate it, and that the block and cylinder head are made of aluminium – just like all the others in the formula.It may sound like voodoo but Theissen does not believe in the supernatural: “There’s not a lot of magic in there. Ten per cent is inspiration and the rest perspiration,” the dapper engineer told Germany’s respected auto motor und sport journal.Theissen says the V10 is truly a team effort by the 220 staff at the motorsport headquarters, fewer than 10 of whom were recruited from outside the company. Chief among those is the most senior constructor Heinz Paschen who used to work for Toyota.This is a homegrown engine not like the Mercedes motors of the last decade which were all designed by former Indycar guru Mario Illien. The BMW motor was born in the FIZ, the company’s engineering think-tank.“Our engine doesn’t have one father, it has ten of them,” said Theissen. “This team worked together to turn a vision of the optimum engine into reality” as part of a process which began back in 1997.The new unit inherited just a few components from its middling predecessor and only a few weeks after its first tests runs last September, its potential was recognized.Williams designer Patrick Head still has some aerodynamic twiddling to do before the blue and white car sits on the track properly and the Michelin tyres lack grip in the wet but BMW power may be enough to put the team on the rostrum in Barcelona.Yet despite the powerful package, Gerhard Berger – the veteran racer turned BMW motorsport chief – is down to earth about the team’s prospects for this season.“The BMW Williams team does not have a real chance of taking the championship like McLaren or Ferrari. Even with a grand prix victory we’re still on the learning curve and that’s what we need, since the aim is to provide a car that can regularly win GPs,” Berger told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.Perhaps the last word should go to Williams technical director Head, who is clearly savouring the constructor’s first triumph since Jacques Villeneuve’s championship year of 1997.Head said he can’t believe the progress BMW have made in such a short space of time. “I don’t think I expected BMW to be in such a strong position so early in their involvement in F1,” Head told the Formula 1 Online website.
