20 replies to this topic

[Tron]

Was watching Sky Sports F1 legends featuring Gerhard Berger, and as he's been placed in the FIA's commission for single seaters from Kart and onwards, he describe the numoerous categories leading to F1 as - "The whole thing is a mess."

 

He's reason being that's become complecating for young drivers to enter F1, as the F1 teams (Or sponsors?) don't know how to measure them between the many diverse categories.

[DampMongoose]

Unfortunately with the way things are, 75% of the F1 teams have a perfect measure... 

 

 

£££

[Jackmancer]

I just wonder why sponsors pick **** drivers so often.

[PNSD]

There's too many series which is encouraging too many awful drivers to come through the ranks...

[ensign14]

And not just drivers.  Where do engineers learn their craft in a competitive environment, when there's a fetish for one-makery?

[Prost1997T]

And not just drivers.  Where do engineers learn their craft in a competitive environment, when there's a fetish for one-makery?

 

The one make thing is to allow drivers to be compared. Hence "junior" series. Even then there's still complaints about Prema in Euro F3 for example.

[rhukkas]

1. Karting has nothing to do with F1. If it's a mess it's because F1 has polluted the sport with his false aspirations. Karting would be much better if people like Bergerwould piss off and stop trying to interfer,

For everything else, it's simple. When EVERYONE wants to get to F1 the demands for winning smaller championships on theladder become higher so two things happen.

 

1. Costs go mental

2. demand for wins is high, but supply is low.... so ... naturally supply is increased to meet demands and boom **** loads of classes and championships

 

F1 IS the problem.. NOT the solution.

[ch103]

Problem with the support series is that they are so expensive.  Motorsports has such a high barrier to entry that only the well connected or wealthy have the chance to compete.

[Fastcake]

I just wonder why sponsors pick **** drivers so often.

Sponsors, or at least those with money to spend at the top level, don't really pick drivers based on talent. Just having their logo fly by isn't enough for the millions they have to spend now, they'll want someone they can show off in their home country or alternatively is related to the boss.

[JHSingo]

Completely agree. But it is one thing to state the obvious, and another to take firm action.

 

Introducing yet another junior category in the form of MSA F4 isn't going to help in Britain, it is just going to make the problem worse.

Edited by JHSingo, 08 October 2013 - 11:46.

[Tron]

In my PC opinion, there should be a proper league in each country, starting from karts and working up to the formula series, with the top leagues filtering the better drivers to GP2, then to their holy grail, F1.

 

However there's still the problem of sponsors backing the less talented drivers and getting the drives in the upper leagues...

[fastwriter]

The main problem is, to find any sponsor at all in countries like Germany, the Netherlands or France. Interest in Motorsport dropped quite dramatically in the media and in the public. Getting a green image is more important for most companies than to sponsor a young driver who is burning the natural resources. Only in dveloping or oil rich countries like Venezuela and Russia you can find sponsors who are willing to pay the millions needed to get into F1. If you want to drive one season in F3, you need at least half a million Euros already. In GP2 it's over the million. So, if you go through the ranks up to F1 you already need at least two million Euros. No company in Germany for example, is willing to pay that at the moment. So with Hülkenberg we will have seen the last german driver for a while getting into F1.

[rhukkas]

The reason a league system can't work is because motorsport isn't a uniform sport.

 

Firstly, leave karting out of it. Ever since F1 started lurking around in the 80s karting has had its soul destroyed in pursuit of this falsehood (and it is a falsehood) that it's the first stepping stone to F1. We were doing very well before that term started to get thrown about. So politely anyone thinking karting has to change for F1 can go **** themselves.

 

The reason you can't have a league system is because F1 is in itself an inherently unfair sport. A sport where you can pay for a drive and a sport where 90% of the performance is equipment based. You can create a meritocracy from the 'classes' below when the ultimate aim is to be in a car with an inherent 'unfair' advantage. 

Cars develop and change overtime. It's not like football or tennis or gold where its pretty much the same sport as it was 50 years ago. Motorsport changes evolves. And the reality is that's it's VERY expensive and that means those who are paying for the drives are in real control not the actual governing bodies.

 

The solution to me is not that everything should be centralised around F1 because that destroys everything beneath. It's actually to make other motorsports more viable in terms of a profession. Other motorsports should start trying to gain some more credibility.

[noikeee]

Gerhard is extremely qualified to talk about this as someone very much in the know, but I don't think it's anywhere near as much of a mess for those involved as for the people that casually watch a race or two and get confused about all the formulas. I think the teams and the people that manage the drivers careers now fully well which series are strong and worth the value, and which aren't. Okay it's difficult to compare driver talent between different formulas, but when has it ever not been so since the 1980s? Formula 3 Britain, Formula 3 Japan, Formula 3 Germany, F3000, which one was the strongest in the 80s? And the 90s? Now GP2, GP3, WSR and Euro F3 these days? Isn't this the exact same thing as back then? (just with added cost and spec cars, of course, which are related to a whole lot of different issues)

[maverick69]

There's two problems. One is called Bernie - the other Flavo.

[dau]

1. Karting has nothing to do with F1. If it's a mess it's because F1 has polluted the sport with his false aspirations. Karting would be much better if people like Bergerwould piss off and stop trying to interfer,

For everything else, it's simple. When EVERYONE wants to get to F1 the demands for winning smaller championships on theladder become higher so two things happen.

 

1. Costs go mental

2. demand for wins is high, but supply is low.... so ... naturally supply is increased to meet demands and boom **** loads of classes and championships

 

F1 IS the problem.. NOT the solution.

Man, you seem really protective of your karting. Maybe you should take a deep breath and calm down a bit before telling "people like Berger" to piss off, because he's not going to do anything to karting. He's the president of the FIA Single Seater Commission, which looks at anything between karting and F1. Like the OP writes in his first sentence. Out of two. Seriously.

[redreni]

Berger is correct the junior single seater landscape is a mess. He can't do anything about it, unfortunately. EU rules mean if somebody wishes to start up yet another single seater category the FIA has no option but to sanction it, and as long as there are enough privately wealthy or well-backed young hopefuls, with or without the talent to go with their ambition, the seats will be filled and the quality in every series and championship will continue to be diluted.

 

In a perfect world there would be a meritocracy so that, before the major teams and manufacturers go out and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds bankrolling a young driver's career and ushering him into F1, they can have a way of knowing if he's any good first by having him compete on equal terms against not only the proteges from the other young driver programmes, but also against the wider pool of young talent. So you'd get rid of most of the junior F3 and Formula Renault categories altogether, get rid of Auto GP, get rid of GP3 and just keep Japanese and European F3, Formula Renault 3.5 and GP2 as your direct F1 feeders, designed to get drivers used to working in a team environment. Below that you'd want a strict meritocracy, and for that purpose I'd want to bring back the FIA Forumula 2 Championship, which I'd make into a World Championship, and which would still have a prize F1 test for the Champion and would aim to feed drivers into Euro F3, FR3.5 or GP2. Below the main F2 Championship you'd have regional F2 Championships, and below that, national F2 Championships (possibly based on the current F4 machinery).

 

F2 would have the teamless structure F2 had during its latest iteration under Jonathan Palmer, and places would be allocated on merit on a strict promotion/relegation basis. So you'd get kids straight out of karting into their national F2 series, and if they finished high enough up in the points, they would win promotion to their regional series and then to the F2 World Championship. And the structure of F2 would ensure the cream rises to the top, because the conditions would be the same for every entrant. But the main way of ensuring the best quality drivers would end up in the F2 World Championship would be to ensure the national F2, Regional F2 and F2WC route was the only one availble. As soon as you introduce alternative ways up to the top of the ladder, then you end up with young driver programmes and F1 teams having to choose between drivers that have never raced each other on an equal footing. And this takes us back to the fundamental problem: the FIA is obligated to sanction as many categories as there are people wanting to set one up, consequently the system is extremely messy, as Berger rightly says, and it's difficult to see what can be done about it.

[Tron]

This is where I love this forum. So many interesting different sides of the arguement!!!

 

From what I remember back in the 80's and 90's, sports prototype cars and the Formula-3000 were the step before F1.

 

I remember Jean Alesi, hot shot in Formula-3000 with Eddie Jordan as team manager, got the sponsorship to snatch Alboreto's Tyrell seat half way through the season.

That's become rare these days that a youngster with no F1 experience gets a seat in the middle of the season.

 

At least Alesi had talent as a pay driver then, but I feel his races in Formula-3000, is what had money thrown at him as with many others.

Also what helped Alesi and others back then, was mid season testing, where F1 teams could test a young driver during any point of the season, which was also an audition for sponsorship.

 

And that's Berger's point. These days there isn't just F-3000 as a bench mark for youngsters, there's like 3 or 4 different classes, very equal to one another and in each country which are also making GP2 struggle as a young division for F1.

 

So I'm hopeful for a league system, but as pointed out already, seems impossible due to money, so probably one of the other ways to start solving this, is by lifting the season's restriction on testing for youngsters.

 

I'm certain if a young Sainz Jnr is allowed to go in circles in an old Redbull flat out for a week, he'll get the millage to net good laps to convince sponsors, and maybe that's what back markers need to scrap in those extra Dollars.

Minardi survived like that.

[Tron]

There's two problems. One is called Bernie - the other Flavo.

 

Please explain Flavo? Really curious to how deep his involvement is...

[ray b]

if the FIA Has TO APPROVE  what ever proposed series

 

how about a F-U as in unlimited racing series sort of like the old can-am cars

but for open wheeled cars with simple safety rules only like crash tests   

[Tron]

if the FIA Has TO APPROVE  what ever proposed series

 

how about a F-U as in unlimited racing series sort of like the old can-am cars

but for open wheeled cars with simple safety rules only like crash tests 

 

F-U... I like.