Originally Posted by
wingracer
Because people always want the latest and greatest. Also, Nova just loves to keep coming out with specialized bearings so you have to buy their super expensive ones instead of some cheap aftermarket ones. I bet they make more money selling one bearing than they do two engines.
All manufacturers do this. They will make some very minor changes, slap a new name on it and market it as the latest, greatest, bestest thing the world has ever seen despite the fact that it is at best only marginally better than the previous one. Eventually someone in the R&D comes up with something good and we get an all new product, which will then be marginally developed over the next few years.
The bottom line is that there is very little performance difference between a top of the line motor today and one from twelve years ago. An original P5 or WS7 or comparable motor is just as capable of winning today as anything else on the market.
I agree and disagree with you, twelve years ago a race engine was over powerful compared to today engines, they used way more fuel and this magical ten minutes pit stops was unreachable. today engines are in a way more civilized have a easier tune and are more of a power under control way of use.
Innovation are not always a big step at a time or otherwise we would already be driving nuclear powered rc cars with a 2 years autonomy.sometimes it might take a bearing, an another passage for fuel just modified and so on to make an average engine better! Still OS will name it speed 2 and novarossi will give it a new name from 4btt to keepoff. This is the way we go forward and company's stay alive.
On the other hand their rear bearings costing 45€ in steal and up to 75€ in ceramic That is limit scandalous, when you know how much they do in fact pay them, the margin is really high, also a engine bought in spare parts would cost 3 times what it does cost in the box and assembled.
As you talk about the famous ws7 from rb the very one Kanai won his world title with, at That istime he was pitting around 7 minutes and today in a race like a world championship where they drive an hour he would have done 8 stops where today engine would only do 6 stops, and That to me is an evolution.