End of an Era

Posted by Motorista on November 23, 2013 in Motorsports, News | Leave a comment

The  Brazilian Grand Prix, the final race of the F1 season, takes place tomorrow. With the end of the season comes the end of an era. Two eras, actually. Mark Webber, of Red Bull Racing, is retiring from F1 after twelve seasons. A native Australian, Webber deserves a lot of credit for his accomplished F1 career and stellar reputation as both an excellent driver and an excellent human. He moves on to the World Endurance Championship next year, and I am excited to see what he does in that series. For a nice summary of Webber’s impact on F1, here is an article from the Sydney Morning Herald.

The other era that ends tomorrow is the V8 engine. Beginning in the 2014 season, all F1 cars will have 1.6 liter turbocharged V6s, in place of the current 2.4 liter V8s. Here is an overview from some of the team engineers on all the technical changes for 2014. And here is a look back at the V8 era in Formula 1.

Read more about both Webber and the V8 on F1’s website here.

Maybe it’s appropriate that Webber and the V8 engine are leaving together. Formula 1 won’t be quite the same without them. May they both have an excellent race in Sao Paulo tomorrow.