3rd cars are a no no for me, unless they're only to be used for practice, and then only for teams out of the top 3 in the WCC. I'd prefer to see customer teams, no contracts the top 3 chassis designs from the previous years WCC are available via the FIA, the teams build their own cars from that, with 1/3rd of the estimated costs of it's devopment as the price given to the team whose design is used. I doubt it's workable though "it cost about $1billion"
Neat thinking there, Miggs. Like you, I'm not sure how workable it would be but it's this sort of creativity that moves F1 forward. Some other interesting ideas earlier in the thread too. For now, I'd like to focus on the three car proposal: In a cash restricted environment where all concerned are trying to limit expenditure (apart from Red Bull, Ferrari and perhaps McLaren) I'm yet to be convinced for allowing three cars. For teams toward the boggy end of the playing field, it would seem to make their task even steeper. In particular, I fail to see how it might have helped HRT, or any of those swamped before them. We should also consider the spectacle and the aspect of competition, both of which could be compromised. It raises the importance of team orders and their contribution to the result. For example, we might face the prospect of three dominant cars holding station at the front of the field, or tactical blocking of others through strategy, or a combination of both ideas â perhaps throughout an entire season! To better illustrate the point above about team orders, contrast it with a one car per team scenario⦠Ultimately, all grids have limited capacity. Never is this truer than for F1, which currently has a practical limit of between 24 and 26 cars. It should be obvious that competitions benefit from more competitors rather than fewer. As always, logic suggests taking the idea to both extremes in order to clarify the relative merits. This leaves us with a simple question: would we rather have 24 different teams or just one?! Too extreme? Perhaps. OK, how about 12 teams compared with 2?, or 8 compared against 3? And actually, the last example is where the three car proposal really does leadâ¦
I really don't like the idea of customer cars, it's one step away from having a control chassis. Teams like Williams and Sauber probably wouldn't be able to compete with the likes of Marussia and Caterham running old RB10s, forcing them to either join them as customer teams or quit the sport. A team designing and building their own chassis shouldn't be allowed to be beaten by a customer team. Also, the customer teams would have no ambition, they'd just be billboards for their sponsors, expensive advertising space not race teams. Any idiot could run an F1 team if they bought everything, they wouldn't be earning their place at all, they'd just be one of the lucky few granted a place on the grid.
I can see both sides of the argument on customer teams, the main problem for me is that it definitely creates a two-tier system. As AG said, it's unfair for customer teams to be better than the weaker constructors, so either you accept only having maybe 5 actual constructors, and the rest being customers, or you make sure that the customer teams are getting a chassis weaker than the smaller constructors build, but then you've just got two classes of racing. My solution (of sorts) would be to allow teams to come in as a customer team, but not to get a chassis every year after they begin to get established. For example, the first season they'd get the chassis and any CFD, or wind-tunnel data generated by a leading constructor team, and an engineer/aerodynamicist provided by the constructor team to help point them in the right direction. Year two they get the chassis, the data, but not the same level of technical support, then year three it's just the chassis. From that point forward, you expect the team to have built up the technical capabilities to develop the chassis unsupported, so they effectively become a constructor in their own right. If they feel they've slipped too far behind and want to buy a more recent chassis in, they can, but it'll be a chassis deliberately picked to be slower than any constructors, but perhaps just not as far back as they'd slipped. I'm happy to see more teams though as it helps to get more drivers into decent seats, and getting a chance to see pre-qualifying would be interesting. That way, the customer teams can either stay as solely customers and not develop the cars their given and accept they're not going to often get out of pre-qualifying, or try and develop their car to get them into the race proper.
Yes. I deliberately avoided mention of outright 'customers' in my previous post and I agree with this part of what you've said, AG. Yes. Again, I agree with this, DHC. I think this thread serves to show that what we have at present is a pretty good compromise (although I feel the Red Bull/Toro Rosso situation is an unfortunate blemish).
Is it possible for F1 to do the same as Moto GP with the CRT bikes? Would restricting the electronics in Formula 1 cars have the same effect as they do on Moto GP bikes?
