Future of the "new" teams?

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marcush.
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Re: Future of the "new" teams?

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Marussia should have kept things developping step by step not bang change .It´s rather obvious the changes have not done much good to last years campaign and now with the crashtest fail it´s worse than ever for them as in the current state the new car is not even allowed to race.
a dedicated windtunnel programme and an injection of fresh ideas in the aero department was all that was needed ,but they chose to reinvent the whole team on the technical side .

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WhiteBlue
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Re: Future of the "new" teams?

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New teams have a hard time under the financial circumstances. Very few companies will increase sponsorship or will start up a new scheme. But the new teams are needed to train up new drivers and give more nationalities a chance to have a driver or a team in F1. The FiA, FOM and FOTA should remember that and help the small teams by adequate measures.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

bhall
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Re: Future of the "new" teams?

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WhiteBlue wrote:But the new teams are needed to train up new drivers and give more nationalities a chance to have a driver or a team in F1.
I know you and I don't always see eye-to-eye, but I want you to know that I'm not just picking this out for the sake of picking this out (this time). I started thinking about this after reading Patrese's comments, along with others, asserting a need for Italian drivers in Formula 1.

Why? What part of F1 demands that a wide cross section of nationalities, or any one in particular, be represented? And if so, why on Earth is there not one representative of the most dominant economy in history?

Just_a_fan
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Look at Minardi. 20 years in F1. Three 4th-place finishes with a couple of handfuls of other points positions over the years. Run on a very short shoe-string from day 1. Amazing how competitive they were when one considers that they ran the entire team for less than a certain M. Schumacher was paid per season during his Ferrari years... Hell Minardi didn't even use a wind tunnel. Well, I know they used Lola's tunnel a few times in their last season or two but compared to the guys aroudn them on the grid? They were making it up as they went along. And they did bloody well all things considered.

Oh, they did do one important thing though: they brought on young talent. Couple of guys you might have heard of: Alonso and Webber both started in F1 with them.

I guess the best chance for one of the minnow teams is to find, and sign, a young driver with obvious talent that has been missed by the big boys. Bring them on, hope for a couple of good finishes to attract some sponsors and then sell their contracts upwards to the bigger teams. Difficult? Hell yes! But easier than beating a $300million team with a $30million budget...

It easy to have a go at the minnow teams but the reality is that they are doing an amazing job when one considers the very real differences in funding etc. In Brazil last year, the slowest car was less than 3.5 seconds behind the RedBull in qualifying. To be that close when working with probably 10-20% of RedBull's budget is outstanding.

Lots of people, even on here, take the piss out of the little guys at the back. But the reality is that they are the heroes of the sport and really show up the perennial midfielders who have bigger budgets and often don't do nearly so much with that budget...
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.

bhall
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Re: Future of the "new" teams?

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Just_a_fan wrote:In Brazil last year, the slowest car was less than 3.5 seconds behind the RedBull in qualifying. To be that close when working with probably 10-20% of RedBull's budget is outstanding.
That's not bargain heroism; it's circumstance. The current regulations are so restrictive that they don't really allow for a car to be much slower. Even so, HRT managed to fall afoul of the 107% rule once last year anyway.

HRT and ManorVirginMarussia are no Minardi, and I'd rather see their spots opened up to teams who might be.

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WhiteBlue
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bhallg2k wrote:...why on Earth is there not one representative of the most dominant economy in history?
I reckon you are talking of the US of A then. The answer is simple. Hybris and insular thinking at USF1. Had they employed a single person who was familiar with managing a contemporary F1 project they would have been on the grid in time. Few people thought that Kolin Kolles could do it in the short time he had and the meagre resources. But he knew all the suppliers in Europe and England and how to run a team on a shoestring budget. If USF1 had had just one man like him the USA would have a team in F1 now. But Ken Anderson blew their chance with the silly concept of re-inventing everything the American way that should have been bought from qualified suppliers. When you have a car on the grid and running you can Americanize everything, but not when you start from scratch and have six months.

But perhaps an American group will buy a European struggling team some time and carefully Americanize it. It certainly would be good for F1.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

xpensive
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WhiteBlue wrote:New teams have a hard time under the financial circumstances. Very few companies will increase sponsorship or will start up a new scheme. But the new teams are needed to train up new drivers and give more nationalities a chance to have a driver or a team in F1. The FiA, FOM and FOTA should remember that and help the small teams by adequate measures.
Agreed, I'm afraid that we might lose a couple of teams over the next few years.
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"

bhall
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WhiteBlue wrote:I reckon you are talking of the US of A then. The answer is simple. [Hubris] and insular thinking [...]
Exactly. So if Formula 1 is a meritocracy when it comes to the one place where it would be defensible to allow a special dispensation simply for direct access to the world's largest economy, why should it be any different for anyone else?

That's the part about opening up F1 to other nationalities that I don't understand and why I don't understand lately how F1 suddenly needs an Italian driver. F1 is far from a game that should ever cater to that sort of entitlement.

If anything, I'd love to see the standards for admission raised a bit, because I'm tired of seeing the likes of Narain Karthikeyan show up with a check year after year that somehow justifies them being allowed to participate in their own parade of personal failure. (And with him specifically, you'd think his dignity would kick in at some point and nudge him toward the door.)

I'm not directing this at you, WB, or anyone else here. It's just been on my mind since I read Patrese's comments to Autosport.
Last edited by bhall on 29 Feb 2012, 03:14, edited 1 time in total.

xpensive
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Re: Future of the "new" teams?

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WhiteBlue wrote:
bhallg2k wrote:...why on Earth is there not one representative of the most dominant economy in history?
I reckon you are talking of the US of A then. The answer is simple. Hybris and insular thinking at USF1. Had they employed a single person who was familiar with managing a contemporary F1 project they would have been on the grid in time. Few people thought that Kolin Kolles could do it in the short time he had and the meagre resources. But he knew all the suppliers in Europe and England and how to run a team on a shoestring budget. If USF1 had had just one man like him the USA would have a team in F1 now. But Ken Anderson blew their chance with the silly concept of re-inventing everything the American way that should have been bought from qualified suppliers. When you have a car on the grid and running you can Americanize everything, but not when you start from scratch and have six months.

But perhaps an American group will buy a European struggling team some time and carefully Americanize it. It certainly would be good for F1.
But when you think about it, all of the "American" F1 teams have always been located in the UK, why the entire idea of a base in Charlotte rather silly really, why an US-owned F1 team should best be to buy one of the minnows and take it from there?

Moreover, I cannot recall many American-built CART-racer either, Truesport and Dan Gurney's Toyotas perhaps?
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"

bhall
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xpensive wrote:Moreover, I cannot recall many American-built CART-racer either, Truesport and Dan Gurney's Toyotas perhaps?
Panoz and Swift come to mind.

xpensive
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Re: Future of the "new" teams?

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bhallg2k wrote:
xpensive wrote:Moreover, I cannot recall many American-built CART-racer either, Truesport and Dan Gurney's Toyotas perhaps?
Panoz and Swift come to mind.
True, but then we are talking a racing series based in North America, I believe it would be pretty difficult to run an F1 operation out of the US, logistics and all.
I would still suggest that a USF1-MkII to be based on one of the minnows in the UK.
Last edited by xpensive on 29 Feb 2012, 04:01, edited 2 times in total.
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"

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WhiteBlue
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Re: Future of the "new" teams?

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Ferrari, Minardi, Sauber and Toyota have shown that you can run a team outside the UK, but you will have to employ a certain amount of UK expat talent. That has also been shown by the operations that were successful for some time. It is generally dearer to lure the people abroad and for some rare talent like Adrian Newey it will not work at all. That is the disadvantage you have as long as 80% of the industry is in England. Americans have to understand it as Ferrari and Toyota had to. Even a country with vast automotive knowledge and technology as Germany, Italy and the USA cannot run a team without the resources of the F1 cluster in England. I'm curious how HRT will develop shortly. They are attempting a similar thing as USF1. They could have used Epsilon Euskadi but they choose to set up in Madrid from scratch. My guess is their entry will be on the market shortly unless a miracle occurs. And Force India could be close behind them in terms of change of ownership. With Kingfisher airline in terminal dive the financial basis for the team might switch to another nation picking up the Silverstone squad.

Why not a US group if they have the money? But contrary to some people's believe it is cheaper to run it from England than it would be from the US. But if the people have the extra money you could carefully transplant parts of it to the US given the time.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

xpensive
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There's obviously similar technology-clusters in Germany and northern Italy as in the UK, but I just believe that the latter alternative would perhaps make more sense for an American team, when language and culture would be a little more compatible?

I re-read some of the old USF1 thread, where the entire idea and approach now seems utterly propostreus, imagine when they where machining components like uprights from solid aluminium, while Ken Anderson's son was appointed design-manager?
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"

bhall
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xpensive wrote:True, but then we are talking a racing series based in North America, I believe it would be pretty difficult to run an F1 operation out of the US, logistics and all.
I have no doubt in my mind that an American company with a pedigree in racing - Penske anyone? - could compete in F1 and be successful doing it and with eventually doing it in exactly their own way. But, like you, I think they'd simply have to start out with a significant presence in Europe, if for no other reason than the logistics alone.

It's the pedigree in racing that's the most important ingredient. To succeed in F1 by any metric, you must either have it, like those with the "established" F1 teams, or have the common sense to hire people who do and then stay the ____ out of the way, like Mallya with Force India or Fernandes with Caterham.

Otherwise, you end up with fiascos-in-the-making like HRT and Marussia, run by, respectively, a "businessman," whatever that means, and a "comic actor" who are doing little more than embarrassing themselves and wasting other people's money and everyone's time.

I know that's a bit harsh, but reality tends to be that way.

bill shoe
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Re: Future of the "new" teams?

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I naturally root for underdogs and backmarkers, so the three new teams have been easy for me to like. However...

It's now their third season and I think they've run out of "we're new" excuses. They need to start taking the fight to the other teams instead of screwing around near the 107% rule. They need to stop being a permanent minor league in residence on the grid.

This thread gets after HRT and Marussia which is fair. Lend some criticism to Caterham as well. They've had consistent funding, consistent management, and good drivers. And they have zero points. They need to score non-fluke points this year. If they don't then why are they in F1? At least the other two teams have legacy issues that can be blamed on past management.

I'll give all three teams the benefit of the doubt for one more season. They'll be the only thing I have to root for as Vettel rambles to another easy championship.