I look back wistfully to the days when there were enough teams that they needed a pre-pre-qualifying session.
There were some very poor and shoddy outfits though back then. Was quantity before quality. These guys would be anywhere between 6 and 10 secs a lap slower. Caterham and Maurussia would actually be mid-grid of they were racing back then, being 3 secs off the pace.
IF F1 comes to 3 car teams before it can set up a sport where two car teams can thrive without going bankrupt, we are in a really, really ****, corporate place. F1 doesn't have to be so expensive- the people in charge make sure it is. It is ridiculous. F1 can sustainably set paramaters for two car teams to compete closely with one another. Sadly, it's the $$$ that gets in the way.
If we move to three cars and another team crumbles... how the hell will any new team be able to afford to even think about entering F1? With teams like Marussia and Caterham gone, we'll just have a new bottom of the deck who'll struggle financially. It'll only be a matter of time before Lotus and Sauber are closing their doors.
I don't see why smaller teams should have to run even 2 cars, why not 1? It would open the door to new teams and be more affordable for them to run, though they obviously would get less sponsorship as well as less data from running 2 cars, also less chances of points, tv money etc so they'd have drawbacks too. In short, no team would gain a competitive advantage only running 1 car, however it could help open the grid up to smaller teams and more seats for younger drivers at them. No big team would go down that route for the simple reason of points in the constructors championship. That brings me onto my second (but main) point, rather than 3 car top teams, why not combine that with the 1 car team idea and let the top teams run 2 cars as now, plus basically a 1 (or 2) car junior satellite outfit?. (sort of like Toro Rosso is to Red Bull, but allowed to share certain components with the senior team). The idea being that a team can have their main team with 2 "top" drivers, and race a junior team for a young drivers with less than 2 years F1 Experience. After which they would become inelligible for the Junior team.
That's not a bad idea. Though I'd still prefer the smaller teams got some money from the sport so we don't have to have to go down a route like that.
