Should F1 borrow some ideas from other series?

marksawatsky

Podium Finisher
Contributor
I started watching MotoGP this year and find it very interesting that some teams are declared "Open" which allows them to use more fuel and more engines per season. This is done to allow smaller teams to compete and if I understand it correctly, once they achieve certain results, they are no longer allowed to declare themselves as "Open". I think this could be very effective in Formula 1 and Alonso agrees with me: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/114518
 
Back in the day teams used to be able to negotiate their own tyre contracts, bring in new engine suppliers and generally have quite a lot of technical freedom. They gave all this up at the last round of negotiations with FOM for a bigger slice of the pot so for the teams to now be complaining about it does seem a bit rich. They have also agreed to caps on wind tunnel testing, in-season testing and various other things which limit the ability of the cars to move up the grid during the course of a season but, again, they signed the contracts.

I'm sure the likes of Marussia and Caterham would love more freedom but when they start to move ahead of Sauber and Lotus these teams will cry foul and what then? Should the criteria be based on the positions in the last Constructors standings ar results during the season? Do teams get demoted into the Open class when they finish last in two or more races? If a team is given, say, 10 engines rather than the 5 they are currently allowed do you take the other 5 off them when they are promoted out of the Open class?

I can understand the desire to allow teams to better themselves during a season but if they then start to beat the big(ger) boys who have been in F1 for many years (remember Williams had quite a few very bad seasons recently) I'm not sure how it will work.
 
FB's salient points are why the third cars for some constructors was binned in the mid-2000s. In particular, McLaren getting a third car on Fridays was a huge advantage in the 2005 title race, and allowed them to out-develop (pace-wise) Renault, although this wasn't enough to take the honours.
 
I wonder if that rule could have been changed so that the ability to use 3rd cars would be checked several times during the season.

Taking 2005 as an example, at the start of the season 3rd cars would have been for McLaren, Sauber, Red Bull, Toyota, Jordan, Minardi. This continues until San Marino GP.
Second part from Spain to USA: McLaren and Toyota lose their ability to have three cars, Williams and BAR get one (the latter was banned for two races though)
Third part goes from France to Turkey: Williams lose chance again and Toyota gets 3rd car back.
Fourth part goes from Italy to China: Toyota and Williams swap positions once more.
 
I suggest anything to help the new teams would be a good thing, let's face it they were totally screwed. "Yes, join up, everyone's going to have a budget limit the same as yours. Oh wait, no they're not, unlucky."
 
F1 will borrow ideas from other series if it benefits the spectators like safety cars and this year double points but making newcomers more competitive in F1 not a chance in hell

This is a dog eat dog environment as Bernie would like and say you should not compete in F1 if you cannot afford it
 
Keep in mind that the there are only benefits to Open class bikes until they get good results, then they have to run the same equipment as everybody else. Think how this could benefit Ferrari, Marussia gets to use more motors and run higher fuel flow and maybe is allowed to make tweeks to the Ferrari engine and Ferrari gets to take all this data to help their own program. It doesn't just help the backmarkers
 
I'm not convinced the "new" teams would be any better off when they move back to the same rules as everyone else though. For example, the key issue for Caterham and Marussia is probably aerodynamics, it's not reliability or fuel consumption. Maybe rules for CFD/wind tunnel usage could be relaxed for these teams instead, which is a good idea on the face of it, but could they afford it (without heavily restricting the amount that the rest of the teams use)?
 
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