Incubus
Champion Elect
It seems to me for the past 25 years or so the pattern has been one of long-term domination of the sport by one team and car.
There were a few hiccups in that period when the leading cars were a bit more more even such as the 2005-2009 period but otherwise F1's been notable for long periods of uninterrupted periods of unbroken dominance lasting several years within which others are reduced to grabbing the odd win here and there.
Looking back it seems to me 1988 was something of a turning point. The year where only Senna's collision with Schlesser with three laps in to go combined with Prost's earlier engine failure in the Italian GP prevented McLaren from completing a clean sweep of race wins that year.
Ever since then multiple-year team domination has been the norm. The McLaren era preceeded the Williams-Renault, Beneton, McLaren-Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, with each era seemingly lasting ever-longer.
This is of course an over-simplification. There has over the years been many opportunities to witness on-track battles between two or more similarly-competitive cars. But these a becoming fewer ad fewer whereas they were once the norm. If you look at the past 15 years it's quite clear that long-period supremacy by one car is the norm. It is only really apparent when you look at it from the perspective of the entire history of the WDC since 1950.
I'm not sure what or if anything should be done about it. It seems as though in recent history wherever the sport is punctuated by one of those periodic complete rule overhaul that takes place every few years, one team get a major headstart on the rest, and that advantage carries through for several years. Can't blame them for doing a better job than everyone else to begin with but the problem is that the progressive increase of various limitations concerning testing, engines, gearboxes etc which were originally intended to reduce costs possibly:
1) Achieved precisely the opposite. Do you see any more teams coming into the sport on a regular basis? Are any of the smaller teams on a sound financial basis? And how can they hope to grow and attract substantial partners/sponsors when lack of testing and engine freeze means they have no chance of getting any closer to the top-half? Ah, but I hear you say, won't the bigger teams with their bigger budgets increase the gap even further if testing was unrestricted? Well yes they would initially, but they would also reach their car's optimum development sooner. There's only so much development scope you can have on one car. After that evolution margins and gains to be had become smaller and smaller.
The smaller teams at present simply have NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of catching up. Testing costs money. Not as much as going out of business altogether after failing to attract investors though...
2 ) The second and third best teams can never make up for lost ground to the top team.
I hadn't even intended to make of an article of this post now I'm getting into I thought it merited a discussion. I don't even think I'm making any one point in particular, just the fact that for whatever reason modern F1 when you compare its entire history has had over the past 15 years or so, been almost exclusively the theatre for multiple-year single-team domination. You can't move for all sorts of records being beaten these days.
Any opinions or why that is?
There were a few hiccups in that period when the leading cars were a bit more more even such as the 2005-2009 period but otherwise F1's been notable for long periods of uninterrupted periods of unbroken dominance lasting several years within which others are reduced to grabbing the odd win here and there.
Looking back it seems to me 1988 was something of a turning point. The year where only Senna's collision with Schlesser with three laps in to go combined with Prost's earlier engine failure in the Italian GP prevented McLaren from completing a clean sweep of race wins that year.
Ever since then multiple-year team domination has been the norm. The McLaren era preceeded the Williams-Renault, Beneton, McLaren-Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, with each era seemingly lasting ever-longer.
This is of course an over-simplification. There has over the years been many opportunities to witness on-track battles between two or more similarly-competitive cars. But these a becoming fewer ad fewer whereas they were once the norm. If you look at the past 15 years it's quite clear that long-period supremacy by one car is the norm. It is only really apparent when you look at it from the perspective of the entire history of the WDC since 1950.
I'm not sure what or if anything should be done about it. It seems as though in recent history wherever the sport is punctuated by one of those periodic complete rule overhaul that takes place every few years, one team get a major headstart on the rest, and that advantage carries through for several years. Can't blame them for doing a better job than everyone else to begin with but the problem is that the progressive increase of various limitations concerning testing, engines, gearboxes etc which were originally intended to reduce costs possibly:
1) Achieved precisely the opposite. Do you see any more teams coming into the sport on a regular basis? Are any of the smaller teams on a sound financial basis? And how can they hope to grow and attract substantial partners/sponsors when lack of testing and engine freeze means they have no chance of getting any closer to the top-half? Ah, but I hear you say, won't the bigger teams with their bigger budgets increase the gap even further if testing was unrestricted? Well yes they would initially, but they would also reach their car's optimum development sooner. There's only so much development scope you can have on one car. After that evolution margins and gains to be had become smaller and smaller.
The smaller teams at present simply have NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of catching up. Testing costs money. Not as much as going out of business altogether after failing to attract investors though...
2 ) The second and third best teams can never make up for lost ground to the top team.
I hadn't even intended to make of an article of this post now I'm getting into I thought it merited a discussion. I don't even think I'm making any one point in particular, just the fact that for whatever reason modern F1 when you compare its entire history has had over the past 15 years or so, been almost exclusively the theatre for multiple-year single-team domination. You can't move for all sorts of records being beaten these days.
Any opinions or why that is?
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