One of the many interesting cars you can see in action during one of the BOSS GP (Big Open Single Seaters) championship’s rounds is for sure the Benetton B197 F1 car from the 1997 season.

Actually there are two of them, but generally only one is fielded in the various weekends.

Why a so low revving engine compared to the original Renault V10? Well, first of all you have to understand this Judd V10 derives from an engine developed for endurance racing use, so it must have more reliability and less maintenance compared to the 16,000 rpm Renault.

Regarding the case of these B197s, they are now privately owned and they are raced constantly during the year so having lower running costs and easily use the same engine for the whole season without rebuilding it means a lot.

Plus there’s the fact that probably Renault don’t want you to have one of their engines or drive a car with their engine in it (have you ever seen F1 cars from the last 25 years being used privately with their original Honda, Renault or Mercedes engines? Only Ferrari, right? But that’s a whole different story..).

They allow you to own the car but if you want to actually use it your main and only options is to fit a different engine that can allow you to also have low running costs and ease of finding components (Judd or Cosworth). Follow us also on Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram.