Formula One's Engine Crisis

[ESPImperium]

Youre going to sit there with a straight face and say the new engine formula hasnt added substantial financial problems to all of the small teams? Spending issues may have been a problem before, but this new engine makes that increased spending mandatory.

The engine deals are currently reputed to be €20-30MM / year.

The actual team budgets are reputed to be as follows (From El Mundo Deportivo)

1. Red Bull Racing €468.7MM
2. Mercedes €467.4MM
3. McLaren Honda. €465MM
4. Ferrari €418MM
5. Williams €186.4MM
6. Lotus €139.1MM
7. Toro Rosso €137.45MM
8. Force India €129.7MM
9. Sauber €103.25MM
10. Manor €83MM

Obviously, if your budget is as small as Manor, then €20-30MM is something between 1/4 and 1/3rd of the budget.

Sadly, long gone are the days when you could buy a DFV and weld a chassis together in your shed and go F1 racing.

I am not sure what the €20-30MM package buys you, I would assume that it gets you everything that you need to make it run, the ECU is a standard item, but I have no idea beyond that.

€30m will buy you a Ferrari 059/3 engine, a Ferrari rear end and three chassis, and get you a test session and about 8 races through the season. Basically a complete race team, you would only need another €15m to complete the season. However you would have zero development plan on that budget. Thats if you were Manor right now. However Manor have, to my knowledge been running without a third chassis all season as 03 was written off in the Bianchi incident.

€30m could buy you a Mercedes PU106B and a Mercedes gearbox, all your wiring looms, your Mclaren ECU and maybes a couple of steering wheels. You would need another €30m to go racing with 3 high spec chassis for the season and complete it with testing. Again zero development plan.

However, €30m could easily buy you one full upgrade and one good update for the car with another couple of value for money updates. Another words, enough lap time to make your car up to 1.2 seconds faster if you are a mid pack team. It would do a top end team one pre season update that will bring 0.45 seconds faster at Albert Park for two cars.

€30m will bring different degrees of success for various different teams, a team like Manor could spend that and gain 1.8 seconds over the year as they have more aero refinements to find, where that money to Mercedes could find only 20% of that in 0.4 seconds as they are hitting the glass ceiling and don't have many more aero refinements to find and need to spend mega just to remain on top. €30m can be spent in various different ways on different apples and oranges, a team may spend some on mechanical refinements to make the tyres last and still stay as quick, others could spend a percentage on buying more tools for the power unit electronics side to gain more management tools from the manufacturer.

[Andres125sx]

Why not just give more development tokens to manufacturers who scored less world championship points....?

That would let manufacturers who take a different development path, that doesn't work out, make changes and catch back up.

This seems like a simple solution.

+1

[mrluke]

So next year you have Marussia in last with a Mercedes engine and Mercedes winning with a merc engine....do the other "back of the grid" teams get more tokens to spend on development apart from Marussia?

[dans79]

Why not just give more development tokens to manufacturers who scored less world championship points....?

Because F1 is a business & a competition, not some form of egalitarianism.

[ScottB]

So next year you have Marussia in last with a Mercedes engine and Mercedes winning with a merc engine....do the other "back of the grid" teams get more tokens to spend on development apart from Marussia?

The teams don't get tokens at all, that's for engine manufacturers.

[Andres125sx]

Why not just give more development tokens to manufacturers who scored less world championship points....?

Because F1 is a business & a competition, not some form of egalitarianism.

Exactly, a business loosing audience and incoming season by season, so there´re only two posible scencarios. A) going to bankrupt so F1 dissapear. B) apllying some form of egalitarianism to solve the problems and make it interesting again


That´s what they did many times before, for example with Renault V8 engines allowing the french manufcturer to develop his engine when development was frozen so they could equal perfomance of the rest of manufacturers

[dans79]

Why not just give more development tokens to manufacturers who scored less world championship points....?

Because F1 is a business & a competition, not some form of egalitarianism.

Exactly, a business loosing audience and incoming season by season, so there´re only two posible scencarios. A) going to bankrupt so F1 dissapear. B) apllying some form of egalitarianism to solve the problems and make it interesting again


That´s what they did many times before, for example with Renault V8 engines allowing the french manufcturer to develop his engine when development was frozen so they could equal perfomance of the rest of manufacturers

To bad the tv down spiral started well before and the V8 "equalization". Not to mention, equalization didn't work last time, so no reason to assume it would work this time.

The worst thing F1 can do, is placate the average member of the general public.

[NL_Fer]

I think for more tv spectators, f1 only needs one thing. Two rivals, from two different teams, batteling eachother every race. Like Schumacher vs Alonso/Hill/Hakinnen

[dans79]

I think for more tv spectators, f1 only needs one thing. Two rivals, from two different teams, batteling eachother every race. Like Schumacher vs Alonso/Hill/Hakinnen

It's not the level of competition that's driving away viewers, it's the cost. As Far as I can tell, what European fans pay is astronomical compared to what I pay hear in the states. Not to mention FOM's video production skills are severely lacking. NASCAR from the mid 90's produced a better show than FOM does today.

[Andres125sx]

To bad the tv down spiral started well before and the V8 "equalization". Not to mention, equalization didn't work last time, so no reason to assume it would work this time.

Renault is still a F1 PU manufacturer, isn´t it? This means equalization worked.

This also means equalization is a tool they´ve used before to keep F1 alive, so I see no reason to not doing it again providing more tokens to manufacturers with less points so they still have real chances to compete

There are many series with some sort of handicap for those with more success, from ballast in GT to reverse grids in GP2, this would be similar to keep all manufacturers with real chances to compete despite the frozen rules to limit investment

The worst thing F1 can do, is placate the average member of the general public.

Tell to MrE, he´s the one proposing trumpets in the exhaust, tracks with sprinklers, etc.

This would be to please F1 manufacturers, not the general public tough

[mrluke]

redistribute f1 revenue equally between the teams.

Make a real effort on the marketing of F1, i.e. what viewers see on TV, what can be accessed online etc. Make sure there is a decent free to view offer in all countries.

Make the cars faster so each year is a bit faster than the previous year.

That would probably do it.

[dans79]

Renault is still a F1 PU manufacturer, isn´t it? This means equalization worked.

it is today, but easily might not be tomorrow. Not to mention we have lost 3 engine manufactures since the the freeze & equalization garbage was introduced (BMW, Toyota, Cosworth). Engine manufactures are not participating in F1 to entertain you on Sunday, they are doing it to sell you a car on Monday. If you give engine manufactures no way to prove they are better than other manufactures, they will all leave in short order.

This also means equalization is a tool they´ve used before to keep F1 alive, so I see no reason to not doing it again providing more tokens to manufacturers with less points so they still have real chances to compete

See above.

There are many series with some sort of handicap for those with more success, from ballast in GT to reverse grids in GP2, this would be similar to keep all manufacturers with real chances to compete despite the frozen rules to limit investment

Individual teams, not multiple teams using the same Manufacture. Your system would royally screw Marussia next year.

redistribute f1 revenue equally between the teams.

Prize money for WDC rankings are fine as is, what should change is the off the top FOM money.



The more I read this thread, the more I think it's a EU social problem.

[Andres125sx]

If you give engine manufactures no way to prove they are better than other manufactures, they will all leave in short order.

That´s exactly the reason for the proposal, if engine freeze does not allow manufacturers like Honda or Renault to catch up, then they will leave F1.

Allowing more development to manufacturers scoring less points they´d have the chance to catch up and stay in F1.


Anycase the proposal is not like: those who win no development allowed and those who didn´t free development. That would be absurd, but giving some more token to those with problems would increase competition between manufacturers, and specially would shorten domination periods.


I actually would implement some sort of token restriction for teams too, so top teams cannot develop freely while small teams are allowed to modify his car further. Predictability is enemy #1 for any racing series, and this would prevent any team/manufacturer from long dominating periods

[dans79]

I actually would implement some sort of token restriction for teams too, so top teams cannot develop freely while small teams are allowed to modify his car further. Predictability is enemy #1 for any racing series, and this would prevent any team/manufacturer from long dominating periods

This highlights the social/fan problem I'm talking about. Your approaching this like "how can we change F1 to better entertain me". The problem with that line of thought, is the manufactures don't care one iota about entertaining you, they only care about proving they are better than the other manufactures for marketing purposes. As soon as you start actively penalizing them for doing well all the big manufactures are going give F1 a giant middle finger and leave for some other series.

[Andres125sx]

I actually would implement some sort of token restriction for teams too, so top teams cannot develop freely while small teams are allowed to modify his car further. Predictability is enemy #1 for any racing series, and this would prevent any team/manufacturer from long dominating periods

This highlights the social/fan problem I'm talking about. Your approaching this like "how can we change F1 to better entertain me". The problem with that line of thought, is the manufactures don't care one iota about entertaining you, they only care about proving they are better than the other manufactures for marketing purposes. As soon as you start actively penalizing them for doing well all the big manufactures are going give F1 a giant middle finger and leave for some other series.

This highlights you didn´t understand a single word...


1- The proposal is not to better entertain me, but to stop the audiece fall F1 is suffering for around a decade (both on track and TV numbers). It´s not me, it´s some millions persons all around the world who think F1 interest is decreasing so much it´s not worth watching anymore.

2- Manufacturers are first willing to solve this problems. As you said their only goal is marketing. What marketing is Honda getting from 2015 season? What most people think about Honda PU after a whole season without improvement? What average Joe think, Honda is handicaped by a limited token system? Or they think Honda is useless and can´t build a proper engine? That´s the marketing Honda is getting from F1 so imagine how long they will stay in F1 if the token system does not allow them to solve the problems

3- Manufacturers leaving F1 will never be those with success, that has never happened and will never happen, it´s just absurd. But those with problems are a lot more prone to leave if rules don´t allow them to solve their problems

4- The idea is not penalizing those with success, but encouraging those with problems so they can see a chance to really solve their problems and be competitive again.

5- Apart from helping those with problems, the system would guaratee some rotation both on manufacturer and team domination, wich is main problem F1 is suffering. People get tired of watching same driver/team winning constantly season by season, this system would keep interest high so audience and track attendance wouldn´t decrease (depending on Bernie´s fees obviously)