Caterham reveal first real sound of a 2014 F1 engine

2014 F1 season

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The first real audio recording of a 2014 F1 engine has been revealed by Caterham.

The team recorded the sound of its Renault Energy F1 engine being fired up for the first time at its factory.

The sound of Formula One’s new engines has been a major point of discussion since the switch from normally aspirated 2.4-litre V8s to turbocharged 1.6-litre V6s was announced.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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23 comments on “Caterham reveal first real sound of a 2014 F1 engine”

  1. Sounds very loud to me :P Roll on the season and gentlemen’s sausages!

    1. and cameltoes…

  2. The Blade Runner (@)
    24th January 2014, 17:08

    None the wiser!

  3. That sounds…….kinda………good but we still need to hear it on track though to be sure.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      26th January 2014, 2:04

      @force-maikel – This gives a slightly better idea

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQEBjMydOhk

  4. I don’t know why people are bashing the noise of the Turbocharged V6. It sounds really good in my opinion.

  5. I mean.. This moment is what we’ve all been waiting for… And they present us with THIS!? …I hope it’s the audio quality

    1. It’s a fire up. Not much to hear. But within that context, it’s very informative.

  6. To be honest, if you would have told me that was a V8 I probably would have believed you. Not much to learn from this video, apart from that it doesn’t sound like a vacuum cleaner perhaps.

    1. To start with it sounded like a frog in a waterfall.

  7. Not bad. Not bad at all. Now add some discernable turbo whistling in low revs and I might start to overlook the nosecone atrocities.

  8. I like it. Lower pitch, i like it.

  9. Well, that was a waste of a perfectly fine minute. :(

  10. The issue is that they didn’t rev it at all, so we are still pretty much entirely left guessing. However, what little we did hear was promising so I’m looking forward to decent sounding engines (contrary to what Bernie “Burn all the oil” Ecclestone predicted).

  11. To me that sounds fantastic! I’ll miss the sound of the high revving V8’s, of course, but if this is the replacement I’m perfectly fine with that.

  12. Sounds nice, but that was mostly the noise at idle.

    The sound at full chat will be the real moment.

  13. Let’s not forget you won’t hear the true sound till it’s on boost. Then it will sound epic, the turbos are huge, it’s going to make some awesome boost and some serious Tourane and hopefully serious flam age out the back!!!

  14. Mercedes uploaded this on youtube, from their shakedown at Silverstone.
    Does’t sound too shabby!

    1. …and the Ferrari in this clip sounds awesome too. I don’t where the F14 T was recorded, but someone commented that it had a louder non-FIA approved exhaust, so it will probably bee a bit less loud.
      Anyways… a huge sigh of relief from me – hope you feel that way too :)

  15. The echo masked it somewhat, but even so, my first reaction is that the sound will be nothing to worry about this year.

  16. years ago on the BBC martin brundle & DC harped on about exhaust burble on the over-run(just like my Morris Minor!) .It does not matter what they sound like so long as they are LOUD & more importantly,reliable

  17. I’ve never watched an f1 race for how it sounds, and i think for most of us, f1 tv viewers, the engine loudness makes hardly any difference, right? As an argentinian, the closest i get to F1 is Sao Paulo GP, and it’s like 2500km away, so i guess i’ll always get f1 in a tv set… doesn’t make any difference to me.

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