German Car Zone

By Jonathan Noble
Monday, October 19th 2009, 10:09 GMT

Williams will switch to Cosworth engines next season, AUTOSPORT has learned, after believing its prospects for success in 2010 are best served with the independent engine maker.

Although the Grove-based outfit came close to a deal with Renault, high level sources at the French car manufacturer have revealed that Williams has now informed the company that it is no longer interested in a tie-up for next year.

With Toyota already having confirmed that it is ending its customer supply deal at the end of this year, it means that Williams has now settled on a switch to Cosworth.

Williams is refusing to confirm its engine plans until after the end of the season, but its engineering director Patrick Head praised Cosworth's efforts in preparing for its return to Formula 1.

"They are certainly very committed to it and working hard," he said. "They have been one of the options but we are not stating where we cast our final hook in terms of what is available to us until after the final race of the season. But I think our design office know what they are designing for."

Sources claim that one of the key attractions for Cosworth is the fact that the engine supplier will be able to re-tune its power unit until early next year - something no other manufacturer is able to do because of F1's engine freeze.
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A step back, IMO. 2006 Williams used that same engine, and guess what happened? They should have tried to get Renault.

I'd say they had a highly competitive performance this year using the Renault engine, and so has have Red Bull despite the engine failures. It's quite a gamble to take on an engine without a track record, quite risky move on William's side. But the engine was announced late last year and since then, Coworth have had more than ample time to test and tune the engine to perfection.

They used toys not renault as for the cosy engine, lots of contradictive rumours surround it, some say it will be very competitive because Cosworth isn't under the freeze regime and others say it will be heavy and then hugely penalise the car next year when refueling will be banned.

But at least the Renault is fast. The Cosworth, IMO, is slow and worse off, unreliable.

I thought Cosworth went out of business? I think it isn't necessary a backward step because of the freeze on engine development, the guys at Cosworth shouldn't have much problem to develop a competitive engine.

4 F1 fans most interesting:

"ams" got some secret numbers from Merc. V8: last season - 774 PS max. ; this season - 755 PS max.

and Norbert Haug tells: 2000km is standard - on dyno they proof till 4700km

And according to amus or Motorsport aktuell, that comes to a very very hig cost, mercedes is spending as much as in the unfreezd engines area, engines + kers costed them 120-150 Me, but that's the price of the excellency.