Mercedes megaphone exhaust fails

Mercedes tested a new ‘megaphone’ exhaust in Spain on Wednesday.

Since the new 2014 Formula One World Championship began there has been a lot of talk about the sports new sound.

This is all down to the change in engine regulations for this season.

The old engines used up until the end of the 2013 Formula One season were 2.4-litre naturally aspirated V8s and they may a very high pitched scream.

This season they were replaced by the new 1.6-litre turbo-charged V6 engines supported by energy recovery systems. The new engines are a lot quieter, with the old scream replaced with a lower gruntier noise.

The change has received a mixed response, initially the teams and fans appeared to not like the change. But as the Grand Prix tick by, you hear less and less complaints.

However the race circuit promoters are still very much in favour of turning up the volume.

It might miss the point of a greener Formula One, with noise, basically being lost energy, but Formula One is also a showcase and if improving the noise is needed then it seems Formula One will look at the options.

The first attempt at this was Mercedes ‘megaphone’ exhaust, which was a very crude attempt at fixing the problem.

If you are yet to see the images, just picture the bell part of a trumpet attached to the exhaust, sticking out through the rear wing.

The results are yet to be analysed by the FIA, however no-one at the track seemed overly convinced.

‘It didn’t make it much louder so we will just have to look for another solution.’ Mercedes Nico Rosberg told the BBC.

‘We tried the new exhaust [because] as a team we want to do good for the sport, but it wasn’t a great solution. It just didn’t work.’

Sky Sports reporter Rachel Brookes who was trackside on Wednesday said there was: ‘not an audible difference as far as I can tell’