63 replies to this topic

[readonly]

What do yo think of this idea?

For each race, the bottom 6 teams in the WCC are allowed to run 3 cars.

[Risil]

I like proposals to get more entries on the grid, and I think the every-team-must-have-two-cars is a bit of a sacred cow that needs to be, er, put out to pasture.

 

But... Can Haas afford to run 3 cars? What good would that do?

[Colbul1]

Most of the teams can barely afford to run 2 cars, a third car would be financial madness.  The top teams will still finish in the first 4-6 places.

[pitlanepalpatine]

I don't think that the teams earning less money for their results want to spend more money on spare parts.

[Risil]

Incidentally this may be getting into TNF territory, but earlier this year I had some 1993 races on while working from home and Bob Varsha mentioned that when Scuderia Italia pulled out after the Portuguse Grand Prix, there were only 24 entries left and the FIA were accepting applications for one of the existing teams to run a third car. Apparently McLaren were interested. Anyone remember reading anything similar?

 

Of course in the end Simtek and Pacific entered for the 1994 season, and Forti entered in 1995, so F1 stayed at capacity until Simtek ran out of money following the 1995 Monaco GP. I suspect the limiting factor on running extra cars has been the cost of extra engine leases.

[PayasYouRace]

The bottom teams are less likely to afford the third car without putting a pay driver in there to find it.

I’d like to see some more flexibility in the number of cars a team can enter, but we’d need a more open entry process. It’s too much of a closed shop right now.

[shure]

Seems a logistical nightmare.  How frequently would the bottom 6 be assessed?  Is it every race?  In which case on sequential flyaways does every team have to transport 3 cars + bits all over the world just in case they drop into the bottom 6?  And how does it work with components that they might only have to use once all season?  Seems a bit of a waste to have to buy eg a PU that may never even be used.  And that's even aside from any financial considerations and driver logistics.

 

Don't think this is a winner

[Risil]

Seems a logistical nightmare.  How frequently would the bottom 6 be assessed?  Is it every race?  In which case on sequential flyaways does every team have to transport 3 cars + bits all over the world just in case they drop into the bottom 6?  And how does it work with components that they might only have to use once all season?  Seems a bit of a waste to have to buy eg a PU that may never even be used.  And that's even aside from any financial considerations and driver logistics.

 

Don't think this is a winner

 

Presumably it would be assessed like the "teams outside the top 4 can run an extra car in practice" rule they brought in for 2004(?) I.e. based on last year's constructors championship results. 

[PayasYouRace]

Either that or like the pre-qualifying draws of the late 80s/early 90s, reviewed at the season mid-point.

[Beri]

It would make for some good filled field and possibly some handy tactics to outscore the better teams.

 

Yet I dont think its doable in light of the budget cap. Also, who are the bottom 6 teams? Will you enforce teams that were outside the top 4 the previous race, but were inside it this one to constantly switch between a 3 car outfit and a 2 car outfit? Thats too costly and too much work.

 

The idea of 3 cars for those teams would be great in theory. But it will never work out.

Edited by Beri, 16 December 2020 - 11:20.

[Cyanide]

Due to the financial and logistical nightmare, everybody would just hire a pay driver to cover the costs. Which leads to no closer racing, just filler material. 

[jjcale]

What do yo think of this idea?

For each race, the bottom 6 teams in the WCC are allowed to run 3 cars.

 

It would need to be season long and not race by race to make sense. 

 

Sell the seats to pay drivers/sponsors is how it could be viable.

 

Its an idea ...

 

It might help the bottom teams to survive and it might get us exposure for more driving talent ... but not sure if there are benefits for F1 overall - as opposed to benefits for 3 teams and a few more drivers. [edit - stupid me read 3 teams instead of 6 teams .... that makes a big difference ... that's more than half the grid and going on 30% more drivers in races .... this might be a better idea than thought]

 

And it need not be mandatory - if Haas does not want to put another driver at risk in its shitboxes which split apart in potentially deadly ways if youre really unlucky, it wouldnt have to. 

 

 

Edit 2 - it would also devalue the cost of a seat at the back - so it could have the unintended consequence of not doing anything at all for those at the very back as they might only be able to sell 3 seats for no more than they can sell 2 seats now .... but the midfield teams would benefit a lot ... think of how much TRacing Point or Renaut could sell a seat for ... or better yet - what would you pay to drive the third Ferrari???  

Edited by jjcale, 16 December 2020 - 11:16.

[TheWilliamzer]

3 cars, 3 drivers, 3 garages with all logistics and tools, 3 teams of mechanics, triple-stack pitstops, lots of spares...

[readonly]

I think costs would not increase too much. One extra chassis, unassembled, occupies a low fraction of the total volume and weight of all the equipment taken to races. One extra engine shoul not be too much either. I don't know how many extra people would it take though.

[readonly]

3 cars, 3 drivers, 3 garages with all logistics and tools, 3 teams of mechanics, triple-stack pitstops, lots of spares...

What percentage would that extra be?

[Spillage]

I've no interest in watching a Mercedes 1-2-3 every week. More teams, yes. Equitable funding to increase competition, yes. Three-car teams, no.

[Beri]

I've no interest in watching a Mercedes 1-2-3 every week. More teams, yes. Equitable funding to increase competition, yes. Three-car teams, no.

 

Clearly you didnt read the proposal 

[midgrid]

Incidentally this may be getting into TNF territory, but earlier this year I had some 1993 races on while working from home and Bob Varsha mentioned that when Scuderia Italia pulled out after the Portuguse Grand Prix, there were only 24 entries left and the FIA were accepting applications for one of the existing teams to run a third car. Apparently McLaren were interested. Anyone remember reading anything similar?

 

 

 

It would have been very strange, considering that the FIA rewrote the rules earlier in the season to prevent the 26th car (usually one of the Scuderia Italia Lolas) from qualifying!

 

Since Scuderia Italia subsequently merged with Minardi for 1994, including both drivers, I like the idea of a Martini-Alboreto-Badoer line-up in three Minardis.

[Anderis]

3rd cars for bottom teams would be sold out to paydrivers, 3rd cars for top teams would completely lock out the midfield of opportunities for surprise results. I can't see how any of these will make F1 a better thing.

[Risil]

Since Scuderia Italia subsequently merged with Minardi for 1994, including both drivers, I like the idea of a Martini-Alboreto-Badoer line-up in three Minardis.

 

That would be right up there with a Brundle-Blundell-Herbert trio!

[NoForumForOldPole]

MotoGP teams field wildcards, I would like to see teams being allowed to field wildcards (twice a season?). Possibly excluding last 5 races to stop team fielding wildcards to interfere with championship battle.

Yes Russ in 3rd Merc at Silverstone or Italian in a Ferrari at Monza. Some pay driver at Williams to help pay the bills. Hulk in other RBR in Austria to see how he fairs against Albon.

Edited by NoForumForOldPole, 16 December 2020 - 11:43.

[pitlanepalpatine]

MotoGP teams field wildcards, I would like to see teams being allowed to field wildcards (twice a season?). Possibly excluding last 5 races to stop team fielding wildcards to interfere with championship battle.

Yes Russ in 3rd Merc at Silverstone or Italian in a Ferrari at Monza. Some pay driver at Williams to help pay the bills. Hulk in other RBR in Austria to see how he fairs against Albon.

 

Oh god no, don't start down this road, it'll start out as an opportunity for young drivers and end up with Merc fielding Alonso at Silverstone when he's 50 

[NoForumForOldPole]

Oh god no, don't start down this road, it'll start out as an opportunity for young drivers and end up with Merc fielding Alonso at Silverstone when he's 50

Who says young drivers? We would see some young, some old and some gentleman drivers - I dont mind 3rd Merc with Alonso at 50 at Barcelona! Or aome hopeless journeyman Isreali driver failing to qualify in Williams. Bobby in Alfa for one outing or Shwartzman in Haas. Old Honda Veteran in AlphaTauri for Suzuka.

Edited by NoForumForOldPole, 16 December 2020 - 11:55.

[Calum]

I think RedBull would scrap Alpha Tauri if three car teams were allowed.

[danmills]

I'd prefer to see single privateer entrants buying last years cars.

[Oakstreet]

What about allowing 1-car team entries? Would that financially be easier to do than 2 cars?

 

edit: What danmills said at almost the same time   

Edited by Oakstreet, 16 December 2020 - 12:03.

[danmills]

What if FOM offered their own generic single team, maybe just one car entry, based on buying an older car and offered the drives for a few races to winners in previous divisions or the designated young driver for each team. Like the Pirelli test car.

Gets at least 10 or 20 young drivers a full race weekend experience without any sponsorship politics. FOM could easily afford it or other teams split equally.

Yes its another back marker, but it's another 10 new names.

No points awarded

[noikeee]

I've shared this idea so many times before.

 

At the start of the season F1 designates say, 2 slots per race for third cars. Then all the teams apply bids on whether they're interested in running a 3rd car or not.

 

Let's imagine Mercedes Ferrari RB McLaren Alpine and Aston want to run one. So that's 6 teams. There's 23 races next year so that's 23*2=46 chances of running a 3rd car. That doesn't divide nicely per 6, 42 does, so let's designate 2 GPs in which 3rd cars don't enter (possibly Monaco and maybe the season finale). The rest of those 42 entries, they're distributed per the teams, so each team gets 7 GPs in which they'll run a third car.

 

Example

 

Australia - McLaren / Alpine

Bahrain - RB / Ferrari

China - Mercedes / Aston

Spain - McLaren / Aston

Monaco - no 3rd cars

Azerbaijan - RB / Alpine

Canada - Mercedes / Ferrari

 

Whichever method of distributing these entries isn't particularly important, maybe we could let teams agree to swap between themselves too, or pick home races.

 

These 3rd cars would not count towards the WCC.

 

Benefits:

 

- more chances to more drivers in competitive cars

- more cars on track

- it's not so many extra cars that they push the weaker teams too far down the table, or to create massive team orders issues. Which is the real problem with permanent 3rd cars every race, say 3 Mercedes locking the podium every week

- makes every race different and special, introduces buzz and talking points for the media and social media

- financially weaker teams could still benefit from this scheme by selling 3rd car drives to wealthy drivers. Or they could just choose not to run any 3rd cars if they believe it's not interesting for them financially

- despite no WCC points being awarded, competitive top teams would also benefit from this, by having their 3rd drivers take away points in the WDC from their rivals by attempting to finish ahead of them

 

Other spinoffs from this idea could also be a solution, such as instead of running them through most of the season, only running them through half the season or something. Or only 1 single slot instead of 2 per race. This scheme can all be tweaked as necessary, with pros and cons.

Edited by noikeee, 16 December 2020 - 12:19.

[BRG]

What this highlights is that Bernie's old vision of an OCD perfect F1, with two car teams in identical liveries, and their transporters parked neatly to the nearest cm should be binned, just as Bernie has been binned.   

 

Let in a bit of fresh air.  One car teams, Yay!  Three car teams - why not - bring back the Yardley McLaren alongside the two Marlboro cars.  After all, we have had a Red Bull four car team for years now.  But it would need FOM's iron grip on the big sponsors to be relieved so that Rolex and DHL and Aramco and Heineken can sponsor cars rather than track side crash barriers.

Edited by BRG, 16 December 2020 - 12:13.

[THEWALL]

What do yo think of this idea?

For each race, the bottom 6 teams in the WCC are allowed to run 3 cars.

Nah. The top teams. Maybe that way they’ll be motivated to hire more than wingmen for their second and third seats.

[pdac]

What this highlights is that Bernie's old vision of an OCD perfect F1, with two car teams in identical liveries, and their transporters parked neatly to the nearest cm should be binned, just as Bernie has been binned.   

 

Let in a bit of fresh air.  One car teams, Yay!  Three car teams - why not - bring back the Yardley McLaren alongside the two Marlboro cars.  After all, we have had a Red Bull four car team for years now.  But it would need FOM's iron grip on the big sponsors to be relieved so that Rolex and DHL and Aramco and Heineken can sponsor cars rather than track side crash barriers.

 

So not a chance then.

[SenorSjon]

I'd prefer to see single privateer entrants buying last years cars.

 

Racing Point says hi.

 

 

I'm all up for 1-3 car teams with their own numbers. I like the IndyCar system, but I would prevent 4-car teams to prevent top 10 clear-outs by only 2-3 teams.

[ARTGP]

I'd prefer to see single privateer entrants buying last years cars.

 

this would be interesting.

Edited by ARTGP, 16 December 2020 - 12:40.

[Beamer]

I'd prefer to see single privateer entrants buying last years cars.

I know there's much resistance to customer cars, but it works for many other series. Have to be last years cars though.

And to beat the 'thats not the spirit of f1, every constructor should make its own car' sayers, dont enter them as constructors. Wdc points only, no wcc points. Only need to figure out how to deal with spec rule changes...

[noikeee]

I know there's much resistance to customer cars, but it works for many other series. Have to be last years cars though.

And to beat the 'thats not the spirit of f1, every constructor should make its own car' sayers, dont enter them as constructors. Wdc points only, no wcc points. Only need to figure out how to deal with spec rule changes...

The problem isn't that it's not in the spirit of F1. The problem is once you open up the grid to customer cars, you open up a big danger of going down a slippery slope until the whole sport becomes spec. And *that* isn't in the spirit of F1.

[Anderis]

What about allowing 1-car team entries? Would that financially be easier to do than 2 cars?

 

edit: What danmills said at almost the same time   

I think the cost of running 1 car team wouldn't be that much smaller than running 2 cars under current model, where most of the cost is design and other things that don't go down should you field 1 car instead of 2.

 

It could be a different story with customer cars allowed as in this case the design costs are down to making a deal with one of the teams. Like suggested by danmills.

 

I'd prefer to see single privateer entrants buying last years cars.

But I'm not sure if it's practical. Would those privateer entrants be eligible to earn the prize money of any sort?

If not, I don't see how they could be financially viable. You still need a driver with superlicence. Rich businessmen with sons (or whatever else relation) able to get superlicence already buy into the existing teams and I'm not sure who else would have a motivation to waste money to field such a customer team. Strict superlicence rules largely reduce a pool of drivers with connections for whom such a privateer entrance could be created.

If yes, it threatens the financial security of independent constructors and in the long run can cause the smaller independent constructors to be completely pushed out by customer teams, which I'm not fond of either.
 

Edited by Anderis, 16 December 2020 - 13:30.

[PlatenGlass]

It would be easier if it was the bottom four teams, and then it would just be whichever teams are white.

(For a while, Ferrari were at risk of having white cars in 2021.)

[theblackangus]

If anything a structure needs to be worked out where teams only run 1 car, then there is no excuse for 1/2 the cars on the grid to not complete with their "teammates".

I dont know how this would look but 3 car teams is the wrong direction. (EOS)

 

Maybe 3 championships?

Constructors

Teams

Drivers

[PayasYouRace]

I see no reason why there couldn’t be an independents’ championship which would cover prizes for customer teams and not have them directly affecting the constructors’ championship. Other series to that sort of thing. They could even resurrect the Jim Clark and Colin Chapman trophies that were awarded to the non-turbos in 1987.

[BRG]

I know there's much resistance to customer cars, but it works for many other series. Have to be last years cars though.

And to beat the 'thats not the spirit of f1, every constructor should make its own car' sayers, dont enter them as constructors. Wdc points only, no wcc points. Only need to figure out how to deal with spec rule changes...

It all worked fine for decades.  Ferrari bought Lancia cars, Rob Walker and Frank Williams ran cars bought from other teams, Penske and Hesketh started out with March chassis. I cannot see why that cannot happen today.  Bernie has gone, we don't need to religiously stick to his ideas, times have changed.

 

We could have seen a one-car Stroll team, and a Latifi team, even a Mazepin team.  There might have been a Team Poland entry for Kubica.  Who knows?   Variety is the spice of life, surely better than seeing the same 20 cars race after race after race.

[Beamer]

The problem isn't that it's not in the spirit of F1. The problem is once you open up the grid to customer cars, you open up a big danger of going down a slippery slope until the whole sport becomes spec. And *that* isn't in the spirit of F1.

Only if no original contructors where to enter. Meaning no new cars entering and everyone running year-old+ cars, including the factory teams. No wcc anymore, just wdc. Don't see that happening. Could always put a cap on max number of customer cars per brand or total. As soon as less constructors are present, prize money per constructor goes up really quick (assuming total prize money stays the same) making it very attractive to be a constructor . Double money from wcc and customers.

[Radoye]

What do yo think of this idea?

For each race, the bottom 6 teams in the WCC are allowed to run 3 cars.

Actually, it would be a greater help to the struggling teams to let them race with just one car.

So rather than mandating two cars per team to have a maximum of two cars per team. It would save them a huge amount of money which they then might put towards making their remaining car more competitive.
 

[pdac]

What's wrong with just 6 cars for 4 teams (pick the 4 best teams and get rid of the rest - maybe merge some teams together, even).

[Bleu]

Incidentally this may be getting into TNF territory, but earlier this year I had some 1993 races on while working from home and Bob Varsha mentioned that when Scuderia Italia pulled out after the Portuguse Grand Prix, there were only 24 entries left and the FIA were accepting applications for one of the existing teams to run a third car. Apparently McLaren were interested. Anyone remember reading anything similar?

 

Of course in the end Simtek and Pacific entered for the 1994 season, and Forti entered in 1995, so F1 stayed at capacity until Simtek ran out of money following the 1995 Monaco GP. I suspect the limiting factor on running extra cars has been the cost of extra engine leases.

 

I recall hearing that. McLaren was keen to give Häkkinen a drive - of course what happened was than Andretti was out after Italian GP so Häkkinen slotted into his place.

 

I remember that Benetton was interested too and they could have taken Badoer in their 3rd car.

[TheWilliamzer]

What percentage would that extra be?

 

It will add nothing obviously to the R&D budget, but materials and race operation can see 50% increase in spending.

[balmybaldwin]

No. Just get the cost cap right and add a few new teams - maybe even a FOM funded team for new talent (engineers, designers operations staff & drivers)

[SenorSjon]

It will add nothing obviously to the R&D budget, but materials and race operation can see 50% increase in spending.

You can cover the design costs over 3 cars. So you have
Car 1 Driver 1
Car 2 Driver 2
Car 3 Billionaire Son

[cpbell]

I'd prefer to see single privateer entrants buying last years cars.

That's my preference as well - it was a normal part of F1 for ages.

[cpbell]

I see no reason why there couldn’t be an independents’ championship which would cover prizes for customer teams and not have them directly affecting the constructors’ championship. Other series to that sort of thing. They could even resurrect the Jim Clark and Colin Chapman trophies that were awarded to the non-turbos in 1987.

Good idea!

[F1 Mike]

Too expensive but another take on the idea could be each team is allowed to run a third car at ONE race meeting over the course of the year. They can decide which one but they don't have to let the other teams know until race weekend entrants are announced during that week.

There could be a strategic element to when a team runs the third car depending on how well the team's season is going, or the likes of Ferrari might want to run it at Monza?