Phil wrote:for 2016, we're assuming 4 factory-teams and 6 teams in a customer-role. Still a minority.
In F1 there has always been some teams spending more money than the average F1 team, so they were the only real contenders for the title. F1 has never been a spec series where anyone can compete for wins. You can´t seriously expect a majority fighting for victories, those with real chances for victory have always been a minority, and will always be
Phil wrote:If you're a team like Williams, part of F1 since over 40 years, and suddenly, perhaps through sponsorship and/or better engineers, gain the means to drastically improve the car to the point they become a threat, Mercedes will no longer have a reason to supply them with competitive engines anymore.
At that point, if they really want to be title contenders, they´ll have to look for solutions, first of all investing a lot more money than currently.
But if main problem of F1 is X team investing 117M total can´t compete with A and B teams investing 400M plus R&D, then there´s no problem
Phil wrote:What will happen? These 6-7 teams, still a majority by todays standards, will be further forced outside the sport.
I disagree about this catastrophical point of view
In F1 there have always been midfielders unable to compete for victory, and even smaller teams unable to compete with midfielders. This is not new in F1, and the sport has survived 65 seasons
Phil wrote: OR - if the sport finds a way to make these engines less of a factor at the expense of these factory-teams (that are currently a minority), but making the sport more relevant to the majority of its participants and bring the field closer together like we did during the engine-freeze period
Closer, but not enough to be real contenders anycase, so I don´t see any mayor difference
How many teams won a race in that period? A minority too, not even a complete engine freeze solved that
But in that case it was manufacturers those being forced outside the sport becasue they couldn´t do their job. So that period in reality didn´t solve the parity problem, and created an added problem of manufacturers pissed off.
Phil wrote:The simple solution would be to find a middle ground that works for both engine manufacturers and the remaining teams; allow engine development but protect the customer teams by forcing those engine manufacturers to parity (no A-B spec engines) and a maximum price threshold for these engines. Assuming a factory-team still has a non-crucial advantage should be enough for them to prevail over their own customer by creating a better or at least equal car to them. It's also key that the engines get closer to each other as a result of diminishing returns and locked down regulations.
I was against the maximum price threshold for the PU, but I´m slowly changing my mind. At first I though nobody should say to any company what´s the price of their products, but now I agree if manufacturers want to spend a billion in R&D it must be their own investment and can´t expect their customer teams will pay that investment. This is racing, if you want to invest a lot of money do it, but don´t expect anyone paying that for you, specially when they will never enjoy the best spec of that product so they don´t take advantage of that R&D
But you can´t put a max price, and also force them to supply A-spec PUs, IMHO A-spec and B-spec PUs are necessary. Forcing manufacturers to supply A-spec PUs with a maximum price for each unit would be too much. In that case it would be a lot better to be a customer team than a factory team, no R&D, no big investments, and you get the best posible spec PU at a cheap price?
It wouldn´t be fair for manufacturers
