Ban automakers

[zac510]

This makes me think of something like hillclimb/sprint racing, or time attack. The whole car is focussed on just one lap, like a qualifying lap.

[Jolle]

Yes, because Ferrari will advocate for multi cylinder engines and loudness. Others would advocate lower power:weight ratio drivetrains that achieve other deliverables imposed artificially via regulations. The premise of the thread is to detach marketing convolutedness from the sport. Resulting in racing cars only concerned with lap times and by default reliability among other metrics. Not saying it's right, but it might be worth considering. In the other direction, no road cars will be resembling F1 cars to any remarkable degree. AMG One will be incredibly slower than W10. Furthermore, road cars will become evermore a form of pure functional transportation as suggested in the OP. Ever fewer will care about motorsports veneers placed upon road transports.

You want to ban automakers because chassis builders like Williams or RedBull only will go for laptime and sport?

I think it's the opposite.

Williams for instance is an (independed) business and has to make money at the end of the day. They are constant seeking for a balance between costs, income and investing in finding that extra edge in the formula to create a better package then their rivals to gain more income. Sporing succes as a means, not a goal. Laptime will only cost them money, it's the relative laptime that every team, from big sponsor to small team is interested in.

The four car manufactures all have a very different role in F1.

FIAT is running Philip Morris their team, and sponsor one team for themselves.
Mercedes is more or less a giant sponsor of the Brackley and Brixworth team.
Renault is really just a sponsor of Enstone, although they are getting a bit more involved.
Honda is just an engine supplier but were a big sponsor.

you could see Mercedes, RedBull, Renault, Petronas, Rich Energy and Philip Morris on one side of the isle and FIAT, Honda, Enstone, Williams on the other side.

Or do you just want to have Tyrrell, BRM, Williams and Stewart fighting it out with Illmor, Judd and Cosworth engines?

[DiogoBrand]

Weren't Ferrari and McLaren Formula One teams before they made road cars? So if an F1 team decides to make a road car, they're banned from F1?

[strad]

Ferrari go back to when a race car was basically a stripped down road car.

[Maritimer]

Ferrari started making road cars to fund the race team, McLaren have always been a constructor and started road vehicles as a side project initially. Cant fault a company for diversifying by excluding them from an organization they helped prop up from the start.

[roon]

Ferrari go back to when a race car was basically a stripped down road car.

Sportscars/GT, yes. Single seaters, no. You bring up a good point though: greater correlation between the two realms, in the past. Road and track used to be more comparable. Now they are very different--this will only continue, as conjectured in the OP. Driving road cars used to require more skill, so the average driver had something to relate to in motorsport. Eventuallly one will need no driving skill at all. Drivers will be relegated to closed courses fueled by competition and tradition.

Ferrari started making road cars to fund the race team, McLaren have always been a constructor and started road vehicles as a side project initially. Cant fault a company for diversifying by excluding them from an organization they helped prop up from the start.

That was a long time ago and much has changed. Theirs and other automakers' influences upon the regulations won't always benefit sport or logic, when they're aiming to make tenuous aesthetic connections between road transport, consumer products, and race cars.

Road relevancy, aesthetic or technical, is flawed logic that hinders the sport and adds cost.

[santos]

Ferrari - automaker
Mercedes - automaker
Renault - automaker
McLaren - automaker
Alfa Romeo - automaker
Williams - not an automaker, but had and have colaborations with automakers. Doesn't build cars, but they help development.
Racing Point - not an automaker
Haas - not an automaker
Toro Rosso - not an automaker
Red Bull - not an automaker

Half of the field would be gone.

[NoDivergence]

Plus no one left to actually make engines... Mercedes' engine tech is already planned to trickle down into road cars.

[bill shoe]

It's a little late for that now...

Yes, for sure too late, but I agree with the concept. I think the Big Lie in modern racing is that large corporate money is maybe dubious for the sporting aspect but a necessary evil for the funding. In reality if the big manufacturers were kicked out then the sport would go to a massively cheaper formula and manufacturer money would not be missed. At least by the fans. And for the first time in 20? years the cars would be allowed to start looking fundamentally different instead of using rules to force the same damn overall look plus a few tacked-on anal legality boxes where aerodynamicists are allowed to play with really inefficient aero toys.

The formula evolves to be as expensive as the field will support. So the current set of teams are effectively chosen via willingness/ability to pay rather than through ability & merit as demonstrated in a competitive environment.

[strad]

Well put Bill. Absolutely correct. It all started going wrong when the FIA started dictating the specifications of car design rather than just weight and engine size type parameters.

[notsofast]

What if there were a separate championship category for engine manufacturers? And what if the engine manufacturers were required to deliver the same engine to all their customers? (Perhaps they deliver them to the FIA, and the FIA then randomly distributes them to whoever ordered them.) Would that improve things?

[ubuysa]

What if there were a separate championship category for engine manufacturers? And what if the engine manufacturers were required to deliver the same engine to all their customers? (Perhaps they deliver them to the FIA, and the FIA then randomly distributes them to whoever ordered them.) Would that improve things?

That's not a bad idea IMO, as long as it included the engine manufacturer team too, so they don't know which of the supplied engines they'll get, and ensure that the manufacturer can't know which team had which engines.

[Jolle]

What if there were a separate championship category for engine manufacturers? And what if the engine manufacturers were required to deliver the same engine to all their customers? (Perhaps they deliver them to the FIA, and the FIA then randomly distributes them to whoever ordered them.) Would that improve things?

That's not a bad idea IMO, as long as it included the engine manufacturer team too, so they don't know which of the supplied engines they'll get, and ensure that the manufacturer can't know which team had which engines.

The rules state that engine suppliers must make the same PU available to their customers. There were made special exemptions for Sauber, Manor and Toro Rosso in the past seasons.
The specific spec of engine only really differs when a team changes PU before another (let’s say you have three specs a year, you get one of each)

[coaster]

F1 is like a police force now, so overdone with rules, what you are saying is "lets now fiddle with the rules to make this even more difficult to acheive".
Can we leave well enough alone instead of constantly screwing the rules?
How about soccer players start using their hands?

[Manoah2u]

Sooooooo you want a sport with race CARS but you don't want marques who MAKE cars to race...........right.