What's happened to Ferrari's engines?

[Brogan]

The FIA has granted Ferrari permission to make some changes to the engine.

Ferrari has been given the green light by the FIA to make modifications to its engine on reliability grounds following the problems it has had in the early stages of the season.
[..]
With customer team Sauber having also encountered its share of engine issues, Ferrari conducted a detailed investigation into the matter after the Chinese Grand Prix.

And after finding out that there was an intrinsic problem with the design of the engine, Ferrari applied to the governing body to be able to make some improvements to the power units on reliability grounds.

The Maranello outfit was duly given approval and the modifications will be ready in time to be fitted to the F10 cars at this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.

Although Ferrari has not outlined exactly what the issues were with the engine, they are believed to relate to air consumption, which could have been caused by leaking pneumatic valves.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/83320

 

[sobriety]

Either homoglate it properly so that if you screw up your engine design you're stuck with it for a season, or allow freedom to develop the engines, not the current halfway house. I like unreliability in F1, it makes it more interesting...

 

[snowy]

This current interpretation of the rules certainly penalises the teams and engine manufacturers that got their calculations right. I notice in the new FIA statement there is no mention of fuel efficiency and Ferrari's initial request included something about wanting to improve that too. So what happened to that or will this alteration just happen to fix that too?

Perhaps they even went to all the trouble of creating or agrovating a problem with their valves, so they could get in there and fix the fuel consumption!?!?!

 

[Muddytalker]

Perhaps they even went to all the trouble of creating or agrovating a problem with their valves, so they could get in there and fix the fuel consumption!?!?!

Even if they haven't, I bet other suppliers will now be looking at ways to "downplay reliability" in order to persuade the FIA that they need to effect changes. Changes that may of course, as a consequential but handy bi-product, improve performance.

 

[RickD]

This is a joke surely? So, Renault and Ferrari have been allowed to change their engines however they want, yet all the others have to deal with the power and fuel consumption they have..