Red Bull's Helmut Marko has questioned the FIA's recent claims on the performance convergence of Formula One's power units.
As part of an agreement to continue with the current engine regulations until 2020, F1's manufacturers agreed, among other targets, to encourage performance convergence this year. In order to help rival manufacturers catch up with the benchmark Mercedes power unit, the token system -- which was designed to keep costs down by limiting the amount of performance upgrades a team could bring to its engine -- was scrapped.
To help gauge whether the removal of the token system was having the desired effect, the manufacturers and the FIA agreed on a formula -- to be calculated by the FIA -- that would assess the level of convergence after three rounds of the 2017 season. Although the details of the formula have not been made public -- nor the exact results (which were based on manufacturers' confidential data) -- the FIA's results confirmed that the performance differentiation between Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault was covered by 0.3s around a lap of the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain.
The announcement immediately raised eyebrows among drivers of Renault-powered cars and Marko believes last weekend's race in Russia, in which Red Bull qualified 1.7s off the front row and finished over a minute behind the race leader, is proof the FIA's index is irrelevant in terms of real performance.
"The bulk of [Red Bull's gap to the front in Russia] is the engine, most certainly," Marko told Motorsport-Magazin.com. "This makes the FIA measurement look absurd."
Marko believes about a second of Red Bull's gap to pole position came from the power unit and 0.5s or 0.6s was from Red Bull's chassis. When it was put to Marko that the FIA's 0.3s figure was around Barcelona, a circuit that rewards chassis performance as opposed to Sochi that rewards engine performance, he added: "That does not matter because this is also a race track. So there is at least five per cent, which we are still missing on Mercedes and Ferrari."
Marko believes the barometer for performance convergence should be qualifying times and not a formula agreed between the manufacturers and FIA.
"Why do we need such a complicated method? If Charlie Whiting says he doesn't understand, then we need only to look at qualifying pace, because in qualifying everyone drives with the maximum power and the minimum weight. I do not understand why we have to simulate [the performance gap]."
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