MOTORSPORT: F1's 'megaphone' exhaust trial fails

Formula One's new top team Mercedes has trialed a "megaphone” exhaust tailpipe in the sport's first attempt to appease critics of the quiet new-era hybrid power units, but driver Nico Rosberg declared it a failure.

Rosberg said the device with a flared exit fitted to the rear of his W05 Hybrid at the Barcelona circuit, where he lost the drivers' world championship lead to teammate Lewis Hamilton in last Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix, had made no difference to the turbocharged V6 car's sound.

"As a team, we want to – for the sport – make things louder, so we need to try some other solutions, because this was not the right solution,” Rosberg said. "Unfortunately it didn't change anything, so we need to keep pushing.”

Autosport.com reported that "indications from trackside suggested there was little change in sound”.

The trial came just days after 17 of F1's 19 circuit promoters met in Barcelona, chaired by Australian Grand Prix Corporation chairman Ron Walker, to discuss the noise issue. Walker has led protests since the Australian GP in Melbourne in mid-March that the loss of the screeching sounds for which F1 was renowned over more than 60 years would keep fans away and ruin the sport.

"The sound is a disgrace,” Walker said that weekend.

However, despite some empty seats, Sunday's race at the Circuit de Catalunya – the first GP in F1's European heartland with the huskier-sounding new "green” cars – still had a massive crowd.

Absent from the meeting of promoters was a representative of the Monaco GP, the next race in the world championship and the sport's "crown jewel”, because of a clashing historic racing event in the rich Mediterranean principality.

"Without Monaco leading them, the promoters have no real voice,” veteran F1 correspondent and Ron Walker fan Joe Saward wrote on his blog.

While many fans remain unhappy at the sound – or lack of it – from the hybrid cars, they are gaining acceptance.

Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff has estimated that balance at 60-40. Wolff said Mercedes was happy to try to give fans more noise if that's what they wanted, but said that perhaps the tide was turning in favour of technology more relevant to modern road cars.

"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,” Wolff said. "We're not talking about a loudspeaker on the back of the car. It's a change to the exhaust, which you see in road cars.

"Why are we making loud AMG [road] cars? Because they sound spectacular, and it somehow means power, [but] maybe that's changing. [But] It's an interesting moment in time for F1. Traditionally you would have said that F1 needs to be loud to be spectacular. Maybe now that's changing.

"I had a discussion with a race insider the other day and he said: 'I couldn't take my family to F1 before – now I can'. Maybe the future is going to be the most powerful cars are not going to be the noisiest  ones. It's about technology.”

Renault, engine supplier to the Red Bull Racing team that has won the past four world championships but has been massively outperformed by Mercedes this season, supported the Barcelona trial but was wary of any impact on car performance.

Rosberg declared the flared exit on the tailpipe had made no difference to the WO5's performance.

Ferrari, the other engine builder in F1 and unhappy with this year's regulations, also is believed to have been represented at last night's trial.

Bob Fearnley, deputy team principal of Force India, a team that uses Mercedes engines and is fourth in the constructors' world championship ahead of rivals including Williams, McLaren and Lotus, has said F1 should embrace its new sound rather than artificially change it.

"The engine manufacturers have done a wonderful job and we're putting on a hell of a show,” Fearnley said. "If we're judging F1 on noise alone we're probably using the wrong criteria.

"What you'll identify is this different sound of being the most advanced technology. After a few races we've become accustomed to this incredible efficiency and the V8s [of the previous seven years] sound old.

"We don't need to address the sound artificially. We're in a different world and I think we have to embrace that world, not try to stay in the past.”