Vettel Adds Brazil to His Winning Streak

SÃO PAULO — The ear-shattering, screaming orchestra of 22 of the world’s most powerful normally-aspirated, 2.4 liter, V8 engines howled around a Formula One racetrack for the last time in competition on Sunday.

The Brazilian Grand Prix was not only the last race of yet another Formula One season dominated by Sebastian Vettel, who took his fourth title at the wheel of a Red Bull. It was the end of an eight-year era in which his Red Bull, and all the other 21 cars, were powered by the same kind of engine.

Vettel once again dominated the race — this time from the second lap to the finish, after being briefly passed by Nico Rosberg in a Mercedes — to take his ninth victory in a row this season, and to equal the all-time record of consecutive victories, which Alberto Ascari set in 1952-53 over two seasons. He also equaled the record set by Michael Schumacher in 2004 for the most victories in a single season, with 13 victories.

“Yes! We did it! This is unbelievable,” Vettel shouted over his team radio after the race.

“I am actually quite sad that this season has come to an end,” he said a few minutes later, on the victory podium. “To win every race was unbelievable.”

Mark Webber, Vettel’s teammate at Red Bull, finished the race in second, 10.4 seconds behind, while Fernando Alonso finished third in a Ferrari, 18.9 seconds behind Vettel.

Again on the victory podium, Vettel was very quick to thank the people that made his victories possible: “A big thank you to the team, and a thank you to Renault.”

Vettel was driving a car powered by the most successful engine in the current era, the Renault.

Next season begins a new era of turbo-charged, 1.6 liter, six-cylinder hybrid engines using complex energy recuperation devices for both kinetic and heat engines.

Paradoxically, while some critics fear that the next generation of engines will not produce a similar deafening, but exciting assault on eardrums to that of the V8s, the engines that have powered these cars for the past eight seasons have attracted very little attention.

As a cost-cutting measure in the series, the International Automobile Federation, the series’ governing body, outlawed almost all modification of the engines during that period, and most of the focus of the winning cars was spent on the aerodynamics and other technological innovations.

In fact, the most victorious engine of them all during that period was also one of probably the least talked about. The Renault not only dominated the last four seasons in the Red Bull, it won the title 2006 powering the Renault chassis driven by Fernando Alonso.

During those eight years, the Renault engine won five constructors’ and drivers’ titles (2006-2010-2011-2012-2013). It won 60 races scored 56 pole positions.

“The V8 was the era of how to make a car faster using everything except the pure power of an engine,” said Rémi Taffin, the head of track operations for Renault sport. “So we’ve learned a lot of different skills, such as better integration, greater fuel economy and how to use the auxiliary facets such as the exhausts to a much greater extent.”

But its competitors included the engine manufacturers Ferrari and Mercedes, which built both chassis and engine, and thus ensured the best integration possible of the engine to the chassis.

Also on the grid during that time was the much less noticeable Cosworth engine that powered some of the smaller teams, like Marussia this season, and failed to win a race during that time. The race in Brazil on Sunday also marked the end of the Cosworth engine in Formula One, as it will not be providing any teams with the new engine next year.

Although Cosworth’s most recent foray into the series was far from successful, it has a long history of racing in the series, back to the 1960s, and it remains the second most victorious engine provider in the series — behind Ferrari – with 176 victories. Unfortunately, the last Cosworth victory dates to the lucky victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix of 2003, when it powered Giancarlo Fisichella to victory in a race cut short by dangerous rains. It scored its last lucky pole position in 2010, when it powered Nico Hülkenberg to pole position at the track in Brazil in the rain and powering a Williams car.

“The race will bring the curtain down on the sport’s current set of technical regulations, and will immediately send us busily into the winter as we start to prepare for a new era of turbocharging and energy recovery,” said Martin Whitmarsh, the director of the McLaren Mercedes team.

“It’s an exciting time for the sport — but also a nerve-wracking period for every team as we come to terms with a daunting array of new variables and permutations.”

Rob White, the director of the Renault racing engine program, assured, however, that while the V8 has a distinctive howl that cannot be repeated by the smaller turbo engine, the new engines will continue to have the distinctive sound of their lightning fast gears changing.

The sound will hearken back to an earlier time of the series, in the 1980s of the previous turbo era.