Revealed: Formula 1's new cost-cutting plan

[Harvey]

snip
We wouldn't have this problem if they distributed more of the TV revenues to the small teams
snip

This.

I am a firm believer that all teams, irrespective of their position in last year's championship(s), should receive exactly the same amount as each other from the TV revenues pot. Why should the winning teams receive more? It makes no sense. They already receive more by being able to charge 10x more for a square inch of ad space on the mirror housing.

But this will only happen when the teams themselves own the sport, and therefore have equal arguing...sorry, voting rights - I believe the major US sports leagues (NFL, NBA, etc) are owned like this, no?

[timbo]

Exactly. So, how do you keep teams from looking for that performance anyway? It's never happened before.

Say, you have team X which can spend 100 mil and team Y which can spend 500 mil. This difference might give team Y 3 seconds over team X, or 1 second. If you are in team X, which would you choose?

Does it really matter? In either case, I'd need to find five times my budget in order to catch up.

Formula One is not for everyone.

It does matter -- if you are 3 seconds away you stand no chance whatsoever, but if you are within 1 second you have chances if the leading team messes setup or strategy, or in the rain. What F1 needs is competition throughout the whole grid -- backmakers need to challenge mid-tiers from time to time and mid level teams need to have chances to go for the front end in a good day. If the spending brings less performance per dollar, the grids would get closer.

[timbo]

But, correct me if I'm wrong, there's a lot of F1 technology on street cars... energy recovery systems, drive controls, brake controls and even gearboxes. Maybe they were banned sometime in F1 but their development might have started here.

Well, in fact no. ERS was put long ago on Prius, drive and brake controls are on street cars for years and F1 gearboxes have no place on road cars (even road going Ferrari's have dual clutch gearbox which has no place in F1).

[timbo]

snip
We wouldn't have this problem if they distributed more of the TV revenues to the small teams
snip

This.

I am a firm believer that all teams, irrespective of their position in last year's championship(s), should receive exactly the same amount as each other from the TV revenues pot. Why should the winning teams receive more? It makes no sense. They already receive more by being able to charge 10x more for a square inch of ad space on the mirror housing.

But this will only happen when the teams themselves own the sport, and therefore have equal arguing...sorry, voting rights - I believe the major US sports leagues (NFL, NBA, etc) are owned like this, no?

Well, I do agree that TV money must be distributed if not equally but at least more evenly.
However, I don't believe that TV money if spread equally would solve the problem.
The big spenders will just spend more on top of that.

[Harvey]

snip
We wouldn't have this problem if they distributed more of the TV revenues to the small teams
snip

This.

I am a firm believer that all teams, irrespective of their position in last year's championship(s), should receive exactly the same amount as each other from the TV revenues pot. Why should the winning teams receive more? It makes no sense. They already receive more by being able to charge 10x more for a square inch of ad space on the mirror housing.

But this will only happen when the teams themselves own the sport, and therefore have equal arguing...sorry, voting rights - I believe the major US sports leagues (NFL, NBA, etc) are owned like this, no?

Well, I do agree that TV money must be distributed if not equally but at least more evenly.
However, I don't believe that TV money if spread equally would solve the problem.
The big spenders will just spend more on top of that.

Solve the problem of McLaren/Ferrari/Red Bull/whoever spending multiples of the other teams put together? No. Not even close.

But solving the problem of back markers having to search behind the sofa to afford a new endplate design mid-season? Possibly.

[bhall]

It does matter -- if you are 3 seconds away you stand no chance whatsoever, but if you are within 1 second you have chances if the leading team messes setup or strategy, or in the rain. What F1 needs is competition throughout the whole grid -- backmakers need to challenge mid-tiers from time to time and mid level teams need to have chances to go for the front end in a good day. If the spending brings less performance per dollar, the grids would get closer.

Look at Hendrick Motorsports in NASCAR over the last eight years: six Championships, including five in a row, despite competing under perhaps the most restrictive regulations in motor sport.

Funding wins. It's inevitable.

Beyond that, what happens three to four years after the introduction of these tighter regulations to F1? In your scenario, the teams that have spent $500,000,000 to gain a second every year year are then as much as 3.5s, or $2,250,000,000, ahead of the lesser funded teams that have spent $100,000,000 to gain 0.2s every year, which is, more or less, exactly where we are right now.

Again, Formula One is not for everyone.

[timbo]

But solving the problem of back markers having to search behind the sofa to afford a new endplate design mid-season? Possibly.

But why they have to? That's because without this new endplate their even more behind. For each endplate Marussia debuts RBR/Ferrari/Merc might try three.

[timbo]

Look at Hendrick Motorsports in NASCAR over the last eight years: six Championships, including five in a row, despite competing under perhaps the most restrictive regulations in motor sport.

Funding wins. It's inevitable.

Sure. But a sport needs healthy backmakers to survive.

Beyond that, what happens three to four years after the introduction of these tighter regulations to F1? In your scenario, the teams that have spent $500,000,000 to gain a second every year year are then as much as 3.5s, or $2,250,000,000, ahead of the lesser funded teams that have spent $100,000,000 to gain 0.2s every year, which is, more or less, exactly where we are right now.

In a stable regulations the field tends to level out over time.

[bhall]

[...]

In a stable regulations the field tends to level out over time.

How is that a reasonable proposition if finding performance is made to be so expensive that only the top teams can afford to exploit restrictive regulations to the fullest? By their very nature, backmarkers have a very short shelf life and can't afford to remain relatively stagnant for however long it takes the top teams to encounter diminishing returns.

The question you have to ask yourself is this: do you want parity, or do you want to see active development? Choose one, because you can't have both.

Once again, Formula One is not for everyone. That's simply the nature of the beast.

[timbo]

How is that a reasonable proposition if finding performance is made to be so expensive that only the top teams can afford to exploit restrictive regulations to the fullest? By their very nature, backmarkers have a very short shelf life and can't afford to remain relatively stagnant for however long it takes the top teams to encounter diminishing returns.

Because copying ideas is cheaper most of a time.

The question you have to ask yourself is this: do you want parity, or do you want to see active development? Choose one, because you can't have both.

There must be a balance. The question is not parity, it's the budget arms race. F1 cannot be sustainable above certain level of spending.

[bhall]

If simply copying ideas allowed for upward mobility, every car on the grid would be a Red Bull clone by now. It's not that easy, though. Nothing in life ever is.

I realize it may seem like we just have different philosophical views about what F1 should or shouldn't be, and that's understandable. But, we're really talking about fundamental truths that some folks within the sport can't seem to accept.

For any situation in which funding generally correlates with success, only those with money will be successful. Full stop.

The only solution to that is to impose rules such that there's virtually no scope for development, which is a spec-series where funding will still provide an advantage. Otherwise, the haves will invariably spend more money than the have-nots in order to get the most out of anything that can be exploited. It is what it is.

Personally, I really wish the budget cap idea was actually tenable. It would be incredible to see what complete technical freedom could do these days.

[sennaf1god.94]

My list will be like this>

Engine: Development freezed during in-season, free during pre-season until regular 12 Month homologation.

This would do the complete opposite of being useful. The teams would spend no less money on engines because they would be busy developing next year's motor, but we'd still see one team able to run away with a championship based on a superior engine in the first few races.

Wrong, teams do not spend a single coin on development of engines, manufacturers do... anyway they are actually spending much more money trying to find loopholes to daily develop the current Power units. With my measures you guarantee there´s suficient freedom while keeping dev cost down and amortized during the whole year.

Now you can not xpect any other engine manufacturer but Mercedes to win ever a race because the current status quo has ben set on stone after the homologation. Only Renault can get near with the superior RedBull chassis on twisty racetracks.

Only one single update on the engine side every interseason is cost effective and will push COMPETITION (what´s this sport all about...?) and can give a chance to any manufacturer to fight for being THE superior engine, while team´s adquisition price for the PU wouldn´t change anything as the costs of building them would go down after the first year of production.

If you won´t implement measures to improve competition then you´re comdemned to see the kind of pullouts like Toyota´s, Honda´s or BMW´s from the not too far past.

[timbo]

If simply copying ideas allowed for upward mobility, every car on the grid would be a Red Bull clone by now. It's not that easy, though. Nothing in life ever is.

Sure. But the ideas do get borrowed and if the rules are stable the competition tends to become harder. I also don't speak about winning only, I put emphasis on competition. The rules must promote closer grids, of course there always would be leaders and loosers, it just must not be too spread out between them.

For any situation in which funding generally correlates with success, only those with money will be successful. Full stop.

What about Toyota ? Of course money IS advantage. I'm just thinking there should be a limit on how much advantage money can buy. Anyone complains here on the ban on exotic materials?

The only solution to that is to impose rules such that there's virtually no scope for development, which is a spec-series where funding will still provide an advantage. Otherwise, the haves will invariably spend more money than the have-nots in order to get the most out of anything that can be exploited. It is what it is.

I don't think it is as clear cut as this. Some degree of standardisation might not take away much from visual and technical appeal but actualy make life easier for lower teams.

[Wayne DR]

With all the rest of this B*^#sh!t, why are they not considering customer cars (like in the '60s and early '70s)?

We could still have 12-13 teams, but only have 6 or 7 design houses. They only way for teams to reduce their costs significantly is to reduce the number of bums on seats.

Making 4 or 6 chassis from one design is a REAL cost saving!
(And the racing will not suffer. We could have seen Dan Ricciardo in a Red Bull chassis for the last two last years giving Seb a run for his money...)

Yes, the teams with customer cars are probably going to be a race or two behind the works team in terms of development, but they could also be doing their own with a much smaller design team at a significantly reduced cost!

[gixxer_drew]

My experience with these kind of "technical budget controls" result in dominant teams being dominant with smaller margins. They make it cheaper to get your ass kicked and reduce the spread in the field, but actually more expensive to win. It just allocates max funding on unreal expensive little tiny gizmos or super high accuracy wind tunnels.

So I'm really curious, why capping the budget is not the answer to capping the budget?

Auditing works in finance sector, why not here? Can't you have very stiff penalties for lying or hiding expenditures and huge rewards for whistle blowers? Seems like it would be really hard to hide very much. Sure it will happen but it seems more effective than locking in place something technical and just forcing the money into other categories.