Two or three car teams?

[Jen]

What difference would three cars make? We have 2 car teams where more often than not one driver is 'preferred'.

We now have 3 or 4 teams who can produce the goods with 3 or 4 teams who can very occasionally The minnows have sunk already.

Would it make any difference if there was a 3 car team? How would team orders work?

I understand that more teams are better but am not sure that too many of the paying public care.

 

[Chad Stewarthill]

Abandon the smaller teams and we abandon hope and dreams. 3 car teams are a step in that direction.

Football is going the same way. The league was founded on a structure which gave teams in the lower divisions the ability to fight their way up (or at least to dream that they could). Now, it's becoming more and more difficult with the huge sack loads of cash that the top teams get, while the minnows are starved of funds and have to scrap for their very survival. Even the gulf just between the Premier League and the Championship continues to widen to the point where the three promoted teams are now strong favourites to go straight back down.

If F1 follows this model, as it seems determined to do, how long before the eight teams become six, then five... what then, 4 car teams?

 

[Jen]

I have no idea about football except that there are infinitely more teams than F1.

As for hopes and dreams, they are exactly that. Although I'm not sure what the smaller teams could do to help the sorrow.

I hate change more than most but try, sometimes, to be pragmatic - if 3 cars keep some teams and the sport going, then OK.

It is all so far away from when I was a kid that it doesn't really matter anymore.

 

[Tuscan1969]

Football does not compare to F1 ; it is layers and layers of regional / social clubs overlaid with a thin veneer of vanity projects dressed up as international business....

Jen I truly do sympathise. I have in my mind the Tyrells, March's, Lotus and the Brawns. Those teams that, looking back, had something magical but at that time were thought to be outsiders.....there seems to be precious little chance for their successors to even line up with the big boys far less compete today.

Big question though...is this actually the sport that we want to keep going??

What do we want from F1 ; New green tech / or old "no driver aids" Technology, close racing or FAST racing, new drivers fed in with no "time served" or wiley old gents who can use all the tricks to finish ahead of a young gun, lots of new teams and new ideas / only old teams with history and traditions...?

For me the trouble is that F1 has had all of these at one time or another so what is best or most pure hardly matters....

What we need to do is capture the imagination of possible future fans - the playstation generation. For then history is one or two years ago. What they want is tension, excitement and the thrill of change ; what they do NOT want is the same champ / car for 4 years in a row. By that time they have left to run stockbrokers or to search for the perfect wave in Hawaii....

If we want what we had then we've got historic racing series already in place.

 

[teabagyokel]

Marussia and Caterham are weird teams to signal the deathknell for Formula One when you compare them to Jordan in the mid-00s, and even moreso to Lotus and Brabham in the 1990s.

F1 itself going the same way as Brabham, methinks.

 

[cider_and_toast]

What, you mean the ringmaster general has got bored with his play thing now and can't be arsed to do anythig other than let it wither on the vine while he goes off to find something else to do?

 

[Tuscan1969]

We he still seems to have a few ideas....

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/116734

 

[cider_and_toast]

Also, Lotus and Brabham died at a time when teams were falling down every 5 minutes. They went when no one really noticed.

Look at a list of teams that left the sport in the those years (this is from memory so may not be 100 percent accurate), Eurobrun, Onyx, Rial, Lotus, Brabham, March (Leyton House), Osella, Dallara, Pacific, Simtek, Zakspeed, AGS, Andrea Moda and Life (both never really counted anyway), Colloni, Lola Beatrice, Lola again, Larousse, Forti. I think every single one of those teams folded between 1988 and 1996.

 

[cider_and_toast]

As far as bringing in GP2 cars, so the solution would be to take the sport back to the 1950s and 60s where combined F1 / F2 races were the norm. Interesting idea.

 

[teabagyokel]

He'll have to go further than that to beat his qualifying record in Monaco.

 

[cider_and_toast]

What would be the point of that Super GP2 idea if the 5 customer teams had no incentive or ability to progress or beat the Big 5 teams. It would make no difference if they raced or not. There would be 10 fast cars going around and 10 slower cars going around. On a bad day one of the faster cars may have a power issue which meant that it got beaten by a super gp car but that's not likely to happen too often.

 

[Tuscan1969]

Bernies idea seems strange for all kinds of reasons ; if you have two grades of car ( F1 and Super GP) then you have the F1 engine manufacturers costs unchanged but their revenues down as they have less teams to sell to. Also the Super GP2 cars need at least one engine supplier (possibly more) so who is going to want to build and supply engines for them when they be seen as slow and second rate versus the F1 cars....not good advertising and again hardly likely to be using limited cash to good effect if you know your car has no chance of winning.

Its all smoke and mirrors I feel at the moment - lies and more lies to destabilise the smaller teams and to make them eventually fall into line with whatever Bernie wants as he'll just pull the rug from under them.

I get the feeling it could head towards 5 big 3 car teams teams (Ferrari, Merc, Red Bull, McLaren and Williams) and then smaller privateer teams running "Customer cars" i.e. one or two of last years Ferrari / Merc / Williams - that way he's only dealing with 5 big boys to set the rules and dispense the cash and privateers would only get appearance / prize money / their own sponsorship to fund the purchase and support of a year old car. As long as the rules were kept stable (ha ha) then the development and running costs for the big 5 are contained and defrayed by the extra income from selling packages to support last years cars. It would also mean 15 "fast" cars and you could compare times for privateers running in 2016 with factory cars in 2015 to see if their drivers were on a par with last years factory guys and thus justified a full F1 race seat....

Whichever way it goes though the wrangling is unprofessional, unseemly and highly unlikely to attract new entrants or sponsors ; what the heck must Haas be thinking right now??????

 

[F1Yorkshire]

The reason for Haas delaying till 2016 could be because they are expecting to come in with a Ferrari customer chassis.

 

[cider_and_toast]

I don't think any team would mind building Super GP cars because after all, business is business and that's money at the end of the day. Ferrari for example, built A1GP cars and aren't Williams involved in the electrical systems used in Formula E ?

 

[rufus_mcdufus]

And McLaren supply the motors used in Formula E.

 

[Tuscan1969]

I don't follow it but how do manufacturers and customer teams work together in Endurance racing esp wrt the different classes for racing???? Would that or maybe DTM with only three Manufacturers be a model for F1????

 

[Galahad]

DTM is riven with team orders and manufacturers routinely sacrifice delayed or off-the-pace cars to stupid pit strategies in order to block their rivals out of sequence. Unseemly.

In endurance racing manufacturers seldom sell current cars to customers to compete against them directly. Whenever they do, the difference in resource means there's very little chance of an upset - and team orders would be employed to reverse the order in any event.

I love that in F1, it is possible for a Force India to beat a McLaren, even in these days when Chapman-esque technical breakthroughs are, apparently, a thing of the past. So while it would amuse me greatly to see Nico Hulkenberg beat three of the Woking Wonders, rather than just the two, over the longer term losing the diversity of constructors would be a major loss for me, and a symptom of a sport in poor health.

 

[cider_and_toast]

Absolutely 100% agree with the above post.

 

[Chad Stewarthill]

Thanks @ Galahad for putting it much more eloquently than I could, that's exactly what I was trying to say. It's not about nostalgia for some lost 'Golden Age', more an unease about the loss of diversity with more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer teams. It's not that I'm against the idea of 3 car teams per se, but what it would signify.

 

[ATL11]

So first asking the question why do you watch F1, personally I'd have to say - 1 routine, I've been watching the sport for over 30 years, but it's not just that, 2 it's wheel to wheel racing (Alonso Vettle Silverstone), 3 it the sheer development & initiative used to gain fractions of seconds and the diversity this creates, 4 the underdog bloodying the nose of the big teams & of course 5 the crashes.

But if we have a season like this year with 3 car teams, how many times in this example would Mercedes have locked out the Podium? From the 18 races, 12 or 13 of the races maybe?

My fear for 2015, if RBR get there way and get the engine freeze removed, Merc will just add the x number of BHP to their engine and we could again see a 2 horse Mercedes race for next season. Costs are increased as the other teams chase their tail and the small teams go to the wall with the costs needed to gain an extra 10 BHP.

So we go to 2016 with 5 teams with 3 Cars, and maybe a few customer cars who in essence will just be Marrusia & Caterham in disguise. So F1 gets what it wants in the big 5 teams get to share the money as they please, but then what happens to the sport?

Say in 2016 & 2017 Mercedes continue to dominate the sport as RBR did the 4 years previous to Mercedes dominace, but their dominance is with a background of just 4 other teams and a continuing pressence of Lewis, Nico and A N Other on the Podium for example the 7th GP running.

So back to why I watch F1, I'd still have my routine, their would still be wheel to wheel action, of course the crashes would continue and of course we'd still see the development but the final point, I don't believe we'd see the underdog anymore.

So is this a big enough loss for me to stop me from watching the sport, probabkly not.

Will I be happy, probably not, but I'd continue to watch F1.

Like when BBC lost the UK rights to F1 & anger brewed due to Sky taking the sport on, I've never watched a GP on BBC since, I just keep watching.

I don't think the level of Boredom will get that great be it 2 car teams, 3 car teams or Customer cars to make me stop like I did in Schuey's hey days of 2000 to 2003. But I'm going to continue to watch.

As a side thought, say if Williams had bought Infiniti engines instead and had a 2nd poor season, would they have been a small team and Force India be 1 of the choosen 5? #curious