Sauber Surprise

SAUBER SURPRISE

Swiss specialist-firm Sauber, together with Malaysian sponsor/partner Petronas, revealed its contribution to the dawning new era of four-stroke 500cc Grand Prix roadracing the day before the Japanese GP at Suzuka. Costing $2.3 million to date, the engine, described as either having been designed by the peripatetic Osamu Goto or a team of Malaysian engineers, is a 989cc inline-Three with pneumatic valves, likely derived from the Sauber-Petronas Formula One autoracing engine. First firing was in December of last year, and the engine is now said to be at the 200-horsepower level. Evenfiring Triples rock severely, so the engine surely has a primaryspeed balancer to cancel this. Such an engine with a moderate (in F-1 terms) bore and stroke of 96 x 45.5mm, revving to more or less 15,000 rpm, would reach the stated 200 bhp even with less-than-ultimate stroke-averaged combustion pressure. Fully developed, it might make 40-50 bhp more.

Kevin Cameron