During Sky's practice coverage, Ted Kravitz did an extended bit about the current state of Caterham. He said the current prevailing attitude within the team reminded him of the final death throes of Hispania. My patience with Caterham ran out a while ago. When you can't close a two second gap to the rest of the field despite multiple regulation changes something is fundamentally wrong with your strategy. Not helped by their being run by business people with extremely unrealistic expectations and their poor treatment of drivers. Hispania were kind of likable in the Minardi way, but not these guys. The continued failure of new entries to F1 is something of great interest to me, though. The last team not to need a buyout to stabilise was Sauber... and that's probably because they had the backing of someone else.
I honestly think they are finished. The evidence is pretty damning. Fernandes got fed up at lack of progress and sold. Kolles came on.... he only joins dying teams. He has rotated the "expensive" seat about (see his previous history for this too).[ Mechanics have been paid off Kravitz says without the takeover, they'd have folded at Silverstone. They have no realistic sign of prize money coming in, points are needed and they aren't near them. Smacks of them just seeing the season out and praying for a buyer tbh or some miracle race where they score a couple of points to get the FIA prize money.
If Fernandez didn't screw about and try to steal the Lotus name then we wouldn't be at this stage. On the flip side we wouldn't have kept the enstone team with Lotus trying to save their name.I know what team I would rather keep biased or not.
BE said at the weekend that if 3 teams fold the remaining teams can field 3 cars automatically without having to get a unanimous vote. Caterham look gone, Sauber on the brink and I have no faith in Lotus whatsoever. You then have Marussia who are just taking part. Add to this that RB are running 2 teams and could feasibly drop TR and field 3 X RB's.
If that happens. F1 is just about dead for me. All the money that exists in the sport, and teams can't even afford to compete. It's ridiculous and absolutely short sighted by the people (Bernie) at the top. F1 can't survive without fans, teams and tracks, yet all 3 are being priced out of the sport. It makes me incredibly mad. All the teams should have left F1 when they had the chance.
Sauber look on the brink but there are rumours of a buyout by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll. I wouldn't lose hope just yet.
I don't think there's 8 teams that could run 3 cars though. Red Bull, Mercedes, Mclaren and Ferrari could, but it'd stretch Williams. Lotus, Caterham, Marussia, Sauber don't have the funding, and Force India would be touch and go. And as you say, can Red Bull really justify running 6 cars? You might have 12-14 decent cars, but anything beyond that is going to be akin to the current performances from Sauber, Lotus and below, and we'd certainly struggle to have a 20 car+ grid. It's what Bernie wants so it'll no doubt happen, but I think redistributing funding would make things better, and also stop the bar to new teams from rising further.
I'm pretty sure when this has been brought up before the usual problem has been that Ferrari get special provisions of funding, which is frustrating but given their worldwide appeal a very sad reality (plus, it's not like they're doing anything with it). In fact I think the major issue of the last Concorde Agreement was Red Bull wanted a slice of the pie for themselves but not everyone else. The best thing is even Ferrari don't want 3-car teams... it seems to just be Ecclestone. Possibly to try and scaremonger the remaining teams into accepting the current VERY GENEROUS* terms. *Currently Bernie gives them all a couple of Halfords vouchers to help the teams cover their costs. He might even stretch it to three if you ask nicely, but don't push your luck.
I never understand F1 politics, the teams hold all the cards yet let themselves get screwed over all the time. If they all walked away from F1 the fans would follow, its not like everyones a FOM or FIA fan?
The problem is the teams can't agree on anything much less unionise. There's too much self-interest for the teams ever to present a significant united front, especially now FOTA has failed. It's a shame because when the grid got shaken up in 2009 I think there was some real hope but it just never seems to quite happen. That said, I still think in the post-Bernie power struggle we might get a more united front at last.
F1 is supposed to full of clever people, but these people seem to chase an extra few million from bernie rather than realising they'd all get about $100m extra without him. Maybe the big teams are just afraid of being on a equal playing field so just take getting used.
In my opinion, F1 needs to stop changing the rules for a clean decade. Every year there's more and more regulations, more stuff engineers can and can't do, and possibly can do if you bend a poorly worded regulation... That's not helping anybody. Having to design a completely new car year on year is going to hit the teams at the back hard, and of course they're never going to be competitive when that happens. They already don't have the resources of big-teams, are playing catch-up financially because they've scored no points the season before, and then they're landed with scrapping all their designs and starting from scratch year on year. I liked the idea of budgets, but the problem with that is it lessens technological innovation, and that's a key component of F1. I really don't favour the extra car idea, and I already hate that Toro Rosso exist. There should not be a team on the grid with a conflict of interest. When Vettel comes to lap or overtake a Toro Rosso, easy, or someone's losing their seat next year. When championship rivals come to overtake, they actually have to overtake. Personally, I believe the field should be open to entries. Each year, the reigning world champion's car is taken around say Monza, and if any new entries can get within 2 seconds of that time (whilst adhering to the rules), they get a spot on the grid guaranteed, and a financial package akin to football's parachute payments, only they get it for the duration of the season to help them compete. They can run one car or two cars, and can be a big car company, or an independent. Probably being massively optimistic, because it seems teams need the green light to race in F1 before they even bother designing or building a car, because otherwise they'd go into financial meltdown, but there's so much money in the sport, I think there's a duty there to fund variety. At the moment, we just have Bernie deciding whether teams are allowed in or not, based on his own subjective criteria. I remember one year, when Hispania got in, a company had bought the rights to Toyota's last F1 design before they withdrew from the sport. Funding was there, but Bernie said no, let's go with Hispania?!?!
It's the minimum width restriction, if the teams envelope containing $1000 notes isn't at least 102mm thick (4" for the elderly) it doesn't meet with Bernie's current regulations
