You are only allowed to spend so much money. It all must be receipted. It is all subject to audit...just like your taxes. Cheating would mean a permanent ban from all FIA motor sports...for the team, and the merchant/vendor supplying the fraudulently priced product or service. It would be very easy to account for money in and money out. But I don't think that is the issue...I think many here are totally satisfied with the current state of F1. They may complain when Mercedes wins and Ferrari loses...but otherwise they are happy with the sport. And there are others who wish there was a way to get back to racing as we knew it. Such is life.
I am on record as to getting rid of almost all of the aero, and on record for bringing back the V10s. I suspect not. You can take the "cost" out of aero by banning almost all protrusions from the bodywork:: no floor, no barge boards, no winglettes, no cuts in the fins, straight uncut surfaces....very easy to police with eyes and straight edge. Venturi underbody is rife for spending tons of money for minor gains. The V10s had 19,000 capability, if you reduce the RPMs to 16,000, they still produce 800 HP, but their lifetime is trippled (maybe quintiled) and you still get most of the sound ! Coupled with the reduced downforce levels (above) you get higher top speeds, longer braking events, and longer acceleration--making passing obtainiable.
V-10's are the way to go. They had all reached power parity and likely were developed as far as they could be. Get rid of the goofy aero and have spec front and rear wings. Spec a common manual transmission and remove the ability of the driver to reconfigure parameters of the vehicle from the cockpit. Allow the teams to use whatever tire they want whenever they want. Real racing would return, not this joke that we have now. IMO, this is a sane approach to cutting costs, and not the dumb cost cutting************** ideas they have now.
Agreed on all fronts. And I did say 2022 is a good start...not the complete solution. The rev limited v10 would indeed be the best solution. Cheap and cheerful. Make them run on 100% biofuel and even the ecomentalists are happy!
With much simpler cars and not much to do there isn't much need for Adrian Newey's....A sad thought in reality but I prefer to have an entertaining championship rather than watching clever way to control the air.
Top engineers, just like top drivers will always come at a premium; they are essential to achieve some success.
Obviously. But not all engineers earn what Newey does. In fact I think Newey is by far the highest paid engineer out there. So he's an exception rather than the rule. And weren't you always saying that F1 needs to focus on getting younger minds in to engineer these cars?
Teams should promote young engineers, and reward the talented ones. I mentioned Newey's salary to show that your quote that a top team can run on about $50M is wholly unrealistic. If it came to that level, the budget cap would condemn F1 to become a specs series, at best. I am not every sure you could run a F2 team for 23 races all over the world on that budget! I don't understand why everybody wants to run down F1 on this forum, by proposing to cut drivers' retainers, teams budgets, do away with state of the art technology, abandon efficient engines, and go back 20 or 30 years backwards. That's very weird, to say the least, and I don't think it's the way forward.
I'm not advocating driver cuts or even cutting team budgets. In 1995 Benetton's budget was 32 million USD, excluding driver salaries. That's $54 million today (€44m). So ~50m isn't far off. The reason why people advocate for F1 to go backwards is because the technology makes the racing pretty uninteresting. Why did we do away with traction control, abs, moving suspension and so on? Because it makes the racing boring. Of course you can run an F2 team for that budget at all the current races...easily! Top drivers pay around 1.5m for a seat at teams like prema. That's 3m for 2 drivers. They run the entire team of that and make money...
Spending money at the levels they have been spending it is not the way forward. F1 viewership is in massive decline, and has been for years. Top teams spending nearly half a billion a year has done exactly nothing for the sport. There's nothing wrong with F1 being a spec series because it already is a spec series. The one thing no one wants is a single provider of a rolling chassis and maybe two providers of engines. Either way, it doesn't matter much because the FIA will stand around and mill out pointless rules and offer up dumb ideas that do not address the quality of racing or sane operating budgets.
Some people on this forum have been very enthusiastic about cutting drivers' wages. You cannot compare a 1995 budget with today's needs. Everything is a lot more costly now than 25 years ago, the wages for a start. Also, how many GP Benetton ran that year? Now you have 23 GP, and almost need 2 sets of mechanics during the season. The top teams (Ferrari, Mercedes and RB) have around $275/300 millions budgets. That's what it takes to get to the top. We saw what happens to teams that are underfunded: they stay at the back like Williams. Technology doesn't make the racing uninteresting. It just follow progress, like it happens in all walks of life. F1 doesn't live in a bubble; it's a series based on engineering progress, new technologies, and new techniques. The halo is new technology we welcome, for example, that was worth a re-design, no? We can tweak the sporting regulations perhaps, but let the technical rules follow the world around. You stall technical progress in F1 at your peril, and next you will find that the WEC and Le Mans are more attractive, to the public. What you call boring is because Mercedes wins a lot, and many don't like it. Well, the others should catch up. When I mentioned F2 budget I specifically said 23 races at 23 different locations. That would be more costly than 24 races at 12 locations mostly in Europe. But never mind ...
RE F2. You said you can't run an F2 season for 50 mil at 23 locations. A very simply math sum says you're dead wrong. Cost would double. So 6 million. Benetton did 16 races. 2 million per race. 23 races = 46 million. You keep throwing around immense budgets, but that's because that's necessary NOW, because it's so complicated. It's not that difficult to grasp, is it? Simplify the sport, costs goes down. Significantly. R&D cost goes down, staff cost goes way down. If everyone is ''underfunded'', they all ''go to the back''. 2 sets of mechanics...what are you on about? Back then too. Hell, they had a testing budget/team to deal with as well AND to run the T car. Of course the tech makes the racing uninteresting, but good luck convincing you otherwise! I'm not quite sure how the HALO comes into this discussion, it is a mandatory safety device like HANS, it wasn't that a team simply plonked it on and hoped the rest would follow. I'm convinced a Formula with less aerodynamics, ''stoneage engines'' and less tech will be far more interesting than whatever we've got today. Sadly I can't really prove it, other than saying that cars following closer to each other makes for far interesting racing than cars seperated by multiple seconds because of the amount of tech/aero on the cars they physically can't drive closer without tyres overheating in a handful of corners. WEC/Le Mans will definitely not catch on more than F1 if we ''stall'' the tech race.
Simply looking at the decline in viewership tells you how much people care about technology. Costs absolutely have to come down, otherwise it will be a sport populated with billionaires and their talentless offspring and run on pointless street circuits that are as exciting to watch as orange cones set up in a Wal Mart parking lot.
I don't see nothing wrong about spending money to get results. The big spenders are at the top, although Ferrari this year ... It's not the viewership figures that matter, but the money collected by Liberty from TV channels. There were more viewers when F1 was for free; now people have to pay for it, so many deserted. The more Liberty collects, the more it can redistribute to teams, and alleviate their costs. F1 isn't a specs series. It has strict technical rules that mandate each team to own the IP of their car design. Engines and some components can be bought, but calling F1 a specs series is misleading. The day F1 becomes a specs series, it will lose all prestige, compromise its heritage and most constructors will abandon it. I'm not saying all the sporting rules are perfect, but the FIA is like a governments, often faced with problems its predecessors didn't have. Grid penalties, track limits, racing incidents, safety car periods and other issues were not dealt with 20 or more years ago; now they are. That's part of the sport evolution. It's frustrating a times, but something had to be done.
Teams are making less. Payouts are not enough for teams to pay their bills. The only teams with healthy budgets comes not from prize money or ads money, but from unicorn deals with their parent companies. MB. RBR. Ferrari. RP are examples of this. Teams that have to rely on ads money aren't doing so well. There isn't ads money anymore because they put it all behind a paywall, and that doesn't attract eyeballs. Eyeballs attract sponsorship. Without that, the clock is ticking on the sport. Keep in mind, some of the largest companies on this planet could not attract advertising dollars at all. That alone tells us there is something wrong with the machine underneath. In case you haven't noticed, Williams left the sport due to lack of money, and several other teams are on the bubble as well. But sure, ostrich away and tell us the sport is doing awesome with Liberty's price money, LMAO.
100% +1 Williams lost their big sponsor and that was the end of the line for that iconic team. Costs are out of control. FIA introducing the hybrid engine was supposed to reduce cost but instead just engine cost alone skyrocketed...let alone other cost. FIA has to admit to their failure.
Forward and backward both have their rewards and penalties, virtues and vices. Continuing the "forward" path the F1 has been on the entire hybrid period has accomplished nothing to improve attendance, lower costs, make better racing, or be more profitable. The "backward" path suggested by myself and many others would lower costs through simpler and less expensive technology, promote better racing through that less expensive technology, allow ticket prices to retreat to more rational levels which would increase attendance, etc., etc., etc., blah blah blah. It's amazing that anyone would pay Newey's salary when he's done nothing to earn it since Vettel's last WDC. It's amazing anyone would pay Vettel's salary since he's done nothing to earn it since his last WDC. Imagine how many designers and engineers one could employ with the same money. Imagine how much more experimentation lower budgets would inspire out of necessity. We don't need F1 to be kept afloat by rich fathers, we need an F1 that can be open to a young Stirling Moss, or Jim Clark. Maybe we should let more teams enter, but only the top 20 cars get to the starting grid. Not top ten teams, the top 20 cars. The history of F1 is filled with examples to model the future of F1 on.
Regarding Adrian Newey and your synopsis that "he's done nothing to earn it since Vettel's last WDC." Vettels 4x WDC titles was in a formula that had an even playing field with the V-8's with KERS..Since the intro of this turbo hybrid formula(2014), it's been Mercedes. What Red/bull lacks in the engine department, it certainly makes up for in the aero dept with Adrian Newey in this turbo hybrid era. The guy is an F1 engineering guru and still is today. Yes, he stepped away from Redbull for about a year and delegated but he eventually came back. Ferrari offered Newey lucrative contracts to work for Ferrari.......3x.......but Newey declined said contracts. He's that good.
At the risk of repeating myself, you are living in nostalgia. I don't think you represent the majority of F1 followers.
I have said this and also my plan would be to get rid of all wind tunnels. Issue a standard computer aero model program to all teams to test and adjust aero in their designs. Then, with the money saved, allow unlimited real world track testing. Wind tunnels and expensive car running equipment have replaced testing "to reduce costs". In fact, it just made it easier for the "rich teams" to outspend the poorer ones.
