39 replies to this topic

[Blind Driver]

Everyone will agree that F-1 is an expensive sport. Many will also agree that it's TOO expensive of a sport. Team principals, as well as the FIA, have expressed their interest in cutting costs but it never seems to go anywhere.

There seem to be all kinds of ideas floating around regarding how to reduce costs. The one engine per weekend rule is one example. There have been proposals to ban various driver's aids, to limit testing, etc. Most of these ideas seem to rely on narrowing the rules to limit the freedom that teams have to design their cars. The theory is that by limiting flexibility in design, this also limits the amount of money teams will spend.

I have a different view.

My feeling is that if you narrow a particular design rule you force the engineer to try to extract more performance from that rule. For example, if a rule states that any part of the car 150mm behind the center of the rear wheels can't be more than 800mm above a reference plane, an engineer will have to make a greater effort to extract more performance from this rule. Since there is little flexibility in designing within the rule, more effort must be expended for a relatively small performance gain. This greater effort takes more money.

Now let's look at the (almost) opposite of this situation. If the rules regarding bodywork were very loose, designers would be free to come up with all kinds of different solutions. Williams would have one style of bodywork, Sauber would have another, and Toyota would have yet another. By allowing teams to use more of their imagination in car design, the number of approaches to a particular problem becomes greater. With more design avenues to pursue, more performance is gained by changing the way a designer thinks rather than how much time he can get in a wind tunnel. Shifting a design philosophy in an unconventional direction opens the possibility of great performance gains. More so than will endless design optimization and testing.

I use the example of bodywork rules but this can be applied to almost all the FIA technical regulations.

A by-product of greater variation between teams is that each pair of cars will now be unique (or rather more unique than they are perceived). This, I feel, would allow greater interest by casual fans since the difference between cars is now more obvious. More interest by fans can't be a bad thing.

I'm sure that there are shortcomings with my idea. Any comments?

[Clatter]

I dont see how anything you propose will reduce costs.

It doesnt matter what the parameters are, the designers will spend all they can trying to extract the max, afterall thats their job.

I do however like the idea of relaxing some of the rules so that there is some diversity, but this probably isnt the right time to do it.

[scdecade]

I have an idea for saving money on engines in F1 that is based partially on something Norbert Haug said in one of the FIA Friday press conferences. He said something the effect that if you want to save money on engines it would be a better idea to increase displacement to 4 liters than reduce it to 2.4 because a) it's inherently more difficult to make a 4.0 liter engine rev to 20k rpm and therefore necessitate using exotic materials, and b) because the usefullness of extra horsepower would be less important than making the horsepower in a useful way, i.e. optimal torque curve. So my idea is as follows:

1) define a geometric box that's sized to be comfortablely inclusive of the total area of each of the current F1 engines (respectively). The definition of the engine being something like "the thing that produces power if only liquids enters the area of the box and only a drive shaft comes out of the area of the box."

2) specify the minimum COG of the box with the engine centrally placed inside it. require teams to use ballast, if necessary, to get the COG of the box up to the minimum.

3) give the teams a maximum of 2 sets of dry tires per race weekend and 2 sets of wet tires.

4) significantly reduce the size of front wings, rear wings, and to a lesser extent diffusers.

5) eliminate all restrictions on F1 engine configurations.

6) build the box.

7) randomly remove engines from a few cars at every GP, drain it of all fluids, put it in the box, measure the COG.

If this were implemented I'm pretty sure that F1 engine budgets would be sliced by 75%+ and yet the sport would continue to be rightfully known as a formula open to technical innovation. Consider two scenarios:

- Mercedes produce a miracle engine of 2.4 liters that revs to 25k rpm and is made from super-hardened exotic alloys and has a clutchpack that is 1 inch in diameter.
- Jordan use a 4 liter, turbo charged, supercharged 4 cylinder engine with push rods and rocker valves and has an 8" diameter clutchpack.

Both engines would have the same COG after ballasting (inside the theoretical box). Both engines would produce more power than the chassis could use. The focus would be on putting the power down in a smooth manner . This would place the emphasis on driver skill, electronics, saving tires, and aero. Spending more money on exotic castings and alloys (for the engine anyway) would be futile and yet we'd see a wide variety of configurations.

[Jason]

If you loosen the restriction and I guarantee top teams will still find the most dominating solution. The net result would be the performance gap between the top teams and the smaller team will be even larger. The only reasonable way to cut down on cost is to ban expensive stuff. Like banning the use of wind tunnels. They're expensive to run and maintain. Right now, smaller teams that aren't able to make of one and at a huge competitive disadvantage. It's no wonder that Ferrari didn't lose much speed going from track to track during the testing ban. I also, like the idea of banning a lot of the driver's aids.

[scdecade]

Originally posted by Jason
If you loosen the restriction and I guarantee top teams will still find the most dominating solution. The net result would be the performance gap between the top teams and the smaller team will be even larger. The only reasonable way to cut down on cost is to ban expensive stuff. Like banning the use of wind tunnels. They're expensive to run and maintain. Right now, smaller teams that aren't able to make of one and at a huge competitive disadvantage. It's no wonder that Ferrari didn't lose much speed going from track to track during the testing ban. I also, like the idea of banning a lot of the driver's aids.

Err ah, you say it's only reasonable to cut cost by banning "expensive stuff." Did banning Aluminum Berillium reduce costs? No. Did the banning of materials with certain specific densities reduce cost? No. Also, define "expensive stuff" please. Do you ban materials based on their marketing name? Do you attempt to ban materials based on their molecular makeup? How? Do you attempt to ban materials by their phsyical properties? If so, then measured in what direction? Would you prefer teams to buy $40 million computers instead of $40 million wind tunnels?

Sorry, nothing you list above will reduce costs in F1. Actually, reducing costs is something of a fools quest because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The amount of money that people are prepared to spend in F1 has nothing to do with the technical rules; it has everything to do with how valuble it is from a marketing and (to a lesser extent) technical return. The trick is to retain the innovation and variety in F1 (which my idea attempts to do) and yet make the cost of competing reasonable. I don't see how "banning stuff" will do that.

[Jason]

Originally posted by scdecade


Err ah, you say it's only reasonable to cut cost by banning "expensive stuff." Did banning Aluminum Berillium reduce costs? No. Did the banning of materials with certain specific densities reduce cost? No. Also, define "expensive stuff" please. Do you ban materials based on their marketing name? Do you attempt to ban materials based on their molecular makeup? How? Do you attempt to ban materials by their phsyical properties? If so, then measured in what direction? Would you prefer teams to buy $40 million computers instead of $40 million wind tunnels?

Sorry, nothing you list above will reduce costs in F1. Actually, reducing costs is something of a fools quest because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The amount of money that people are prepared to spend in F1 has nothing to do with the technical rules; it has everything to do with how valuble it is from a marketing and (to a lesser extent) technical return. The trick is to retain the innovation and variety in F1 (which my idea attempts to do) and yet make the cost of competing reasonable. I don't see how "banning stuff" will do that.

Are you being facetious with that "Aluminum Berillium" example? Anyhow, information gleaned from $40 million computers isn't going to be nearly as reliable as the data generated from a $40 million wind tunnel. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure they're already running the best/most powerful computers out there. So, any advantage gained from spending more money on computers would be minimal. Wind tunnels are the quickest and most accurate way of generating aerodynamic data, without having to test. Why impose a test ban, at all. It only gives the edge to teams with wind tunnels. Banning "expensive stuff" that have that type of impact of say a wind tunnel will make a definite difference. The same money spent in other areas won't yield nearly as much useful data.

[Paste]

I think that we should just remove engines from the equation. Make the tracks all downhill with a tow rope at some point to drag them back up to the top. No more engines will sure save the teams some money, and the cars will be going much slower, so aerodynamics won't matter.

[jimmy mike]

I think your title is wrong. You are giving us A Radical Cost Increasing Idea.

[skinnylizard]

i know. how about limiting all staff to 74.938 people?

[pio!pio!]

what about..a yearly budget cap for formula 1 teams..you may not spent more than 'xx' amount

[scdecade]

Originally posted by Jason

Are you being facetious with that "Aluminum Berillium" example?

Are you taking issue with my spelling?

[tifosi]

Originally posted by pio!pio!
what about..a yearly budget cap for formula 1 teams..you may not spent more than 'xx' amount

And you would enforce it how exactly???

[Scoots]

I budget cap is the only way to cut costs and still have the F1 we love. Say a 200,000,000 Euro limit on team/partner spending in a year and generally relax the technical regs. Hire a bunch of auditors and let the teams have at it.

[balaclava]

My idea for cutting costs:

• Cheap, high powered turbo engines, and freedom in the architecture of the engine up to a 2L 10 cylinder(its not as pretty as an atmo revving at 19k, i know)
  
• Freedom to devolop the chassis, but ban the little winglets that grows in the chassis in todays cars.
  
• Avon slick tires, with limited performance devolopment
  
• Ban electronic aids, be that driving aids, and telemetry (let the driver control the car parameters). Ban powersteering.
  
• Ban pitstops, one set of tires and one full tank per race.
  
• Simple, manual gearbox, without any electronics.
  
• Ban Testing (except to try new drivers, supervised by the FIA)
  
• Share the TV money equal for all teams (related to the next point)

In a more or less utopic way:

• Let the FIA be the absolute monarch of this kingdom, scrap the concorde agreement, and let FIA with their new powers to stop the big teams predation (in the name of self-interest) of the little privateers.

Going radical:

• Allow only one wind tunnel facility for the use of all teams with an equal schedule.

OT, but helps

• Ban acces to Formula One to drivers outside of Formula 2 and CART champions, a champ in any of this series has a guaranteed superlicense. Concentrate all the continent's talent in one series to guarantee the talent and experience. Make the F2 car a nice and powerful enough car to make a quality show, worth watching (a bit like MotoGP 125cc and 250cc) and televised in the same package as F1.

Ups long post, sorry for my bs.

[Ghostrider]

Todt said that 60% of all testing for Ferrari is tyre testing.

So kick out one tyre manufacturer and reduce testing by 60 %.

Easiest way of saving money I can imagine.

[Jeff]

In a word - WRONG!

Your proposal is a license to spend even more money to insure all avenues are explored.

I, and many others, undoubtedly share you intentions, but I think you're on the wrong track.

[skinnylizard]

im fact they should have one spec tire tested only by Minardi or someone so they cant have spec tires for any leading manufacturer.

as for spending cap like someone said before you will have traction control software developed by XY division for $10,000 and sold for $11,000

so much for a spending cap.

[jondoe955]

One tire supplier
No winglets and reduce f+r wings
quarter scale models (max) for wind tunnel
I like the idea of ONE shared tunnel!
Banning advertising and TV revenue would immediately reduce costs!!!;)

If they did ban wind tunnels, what would be done with them??? Aside from aircraft design and race cars, who would have any use for these pricey toys? Lockheed in Atlanta has one and rents time out for nascar and others when not in use. I would guess that most team wind tunnels are in England, and that most major car manufacturers already have one. Maybe China, India and Brazil would want some of them.

[IMHO]

Originally posted by balaclava
Ban acces to Formula One to drivers outside of Formula 2 and CART champions, a champ in any of this series has a guaranteed superlicense. Concentrate all the continent's talent in one series to guarantee the talent and experience. Make the F2 car a nice and powerful enough car to make a quality show, worth watching (a bit like MotoGP 125cc and 250cc) and televised in the same package as F1.

I'm all for this great idea. There'd be great interest in F2 all season long to see which driver would become champion and be eligible for an F1 drive. Also it would be great to watch a talented driver come up through the lower series up to F2 to make their mark. One drawback would be the big teams signing these youngsters early and then try to influence the results...

[eoin]

Not this again.

Look if Ferrari $300-350m to spend every year, they are going to spend it. End of story.

So you have a few options:

1: Reduce income- limit sponorship.
2: Punish spending- e.g Add 1kg ballast for every $10m spent
3: Make spending less effective- tighter restrictions. This won't lower cost, but it will give teams with a smaller a better chance. This is what the FIA are trying to do.

[EvilPhil]

ATLAS GPWC doesnt have the same ring to it does it... better go and register it Bira to be on the safe side lol ;)

[V10 Fireworks]

Some posters say that they still will spend as much money at the top end of the grid, that's true but they ignore that the benifit from the spend will be much less.

As teams are forced to go to spend their money on less efficient things (simulations instead of wind tunnels and testing for example) the returns will be much less.

Diminishing returns within restrictive rules will be a huge limiting factor to keep the grid close.

Team A may well still spend $ 100 million on a solution, however Team B may only be able to find $ 10 million to spend on a solution yet Team B WILL NOT be far behind Team A.

[FrankB]

Most cost cutting measures dictate to the teams / designers what they can or can't spend their money on ... "you must design an engine that will last for 350 km, 700 km etc" or "you can only have a limited number of tyre options available for a race weekend" or whatever. The result is that the minimum amount of money needed to get on to the bottom rung of the F1 ladder is controlled - if you have got xxx USD then you can go Grand Prix racing. As we have seen being in GP racing is one thing (10 teams have managed it this year), but being truly successful another matter. What decides your success to a great extent is how much money you spend, not what you spend it on.

A team that has got an available annual budget of only 50 million USD will not spend more than that (at least not for long ). A team with an available budget of 500 million USD is unlikely to spend much less than that figure. The results of the different spending patterns will be evident on the race track, not necessarily with the biggest spenders being always at the front and the smallest spenders at the back, and everyone else tiered in between them according to their budgets, but I am sure there will be some correlation between investment and success.

[WACKO]

Originally posted by Blind Driver


If the rules regarding bodywork were very loose, designers would be free to come up with all kinds of different solutions. Williams would have one style of bodywork, Sauber would have another, and Toyota would have yet another. By allowing teams to use more of their imagination in car design, the number of approaches to a particular problem becomes greater. With more design avenues to pursue, more performance is gained by changing the way a designer thinks rather than how much time he can get in a wind tunnel. Shifting a design philosophy in an unconventional direction opens the possibility of great performance gains.

It's too idealistic. F1 designers are copy cats. They rather copy and develop a good and proven design than taking the risky road with huge chances on a dead end. This is natural, because they are depending on their jobs and can not afford to miss out completely. What you would get is that you would indeed get some greatly innovative creations, but if it proves to be good it would imply that all other teams will try and do everything to integrate that particular innovation in their own design. Meaning that they will turn on their own development, which is wasted money and then there is also the investment in implementing the new solution.

[Zmeej]

Werra informative thread

... on matters I know very little about.

Well, except this:

Originally posted by sdcdecade
Did banning Aluminium, Beryllium reduce costs? No.

Dunno why A was banned, but I imagine B was nixed for health reasons - Mme Zmeej (an occupational hygienist) sez it's a major toxin.

[Kilted Wanderer]

If lap times are wholly determined by the amount of grip the car has, the solution to the cost and safety issues raging in F1 has to be with the tyre itself. It ultimately determines the speed of the car, whatever the designers manage to attach to the tyre.

So the simple solution (ignoring of course all those financial complications of existing contracts etc) is to go down the single control tyre supply route. Specify a tyre that is hard as concrete, offers extremely limited grip, exceedingly long life and doesn't need any god awful grooves in it.

Offer the contract for F1 tyre supply to tender - x number of tyres being required per year per team - single compound to be supplied by a single manufacturer. Bids for supply to start at Zero cost to F1 - In return for free advertising on all the cars and at all the tracks - and then on upwards until the highest bidder is reached.

The single biggest mistake made over the last few years of F1 has been to allow a tyre war - get rid of it and give us back opposite lock.

[kenjafield]

I agree with loosening the rules, but for entirely different reasons. I think that in F1 the money situation is simple: teams have more going out than coming in. The idea of saving money is garbage. As already said, teams's won't spend less, they'll just spend differently! I think it was Frank Williams who said that a team will never give money back to a sponsor, just spend it elsewhere.

So the solution in my opinion is not to cut costs but to increase incomes for the (particularly small) teams. How about the share of money going to the teams being equal, rather than the situation of the big teams getting the most? That would level it out a little.

[Blind Driver]

Ok, Ok, so no one really like my idea. Fine.



I never cared for limits on income or spending in F-1. Or, taking more money from the wealthy teams and giving it to the poorer teams. It just seems too..........marxist.

One thing I never unstood is this. When all these teams signed on to the Concorde agreement why did they allow such a large share (53%?) of the TV income to be taken by Bernie? I mean, didn't they argue that since they provide the cars, the drivers, esentially the race, that they should get a larger precentage of the money? Just seemed like they gave up too much.

[skinnylizard]

u stabilize the rules so it dosent cost as much to compete. people will spend as much as they wish to but it shouldnt be astronomical to compete right off.

[SCHUEYFAN]

Originally posted by Scoots:

I budget cap is the only way to cut costs and still have the F1 we love. Say a 200,000,000 Euro limit on team/partner spending in a year and generally relax the technical regs. Hire a bunch of auditors and let the teams have at it.

I made the same proposition in another thread and it could be the only real way to keep a lid on things. You could hire five full time auditors per team and this could cost no more than $10 million to police all of Formula One. If you catch a team cheating on spending, making false invoices, etc. they could be penalized financially or they lose a ranking in the constructors championship. The NFL and NBA have an army of auditors checking the teams spending to ensure they stick to their caps. In fact over the weekend the NFL caught Denver for violations going back four years and they will be fined substantially.

This in conjunction with the new tire regulations that should greatly reduce winter testing could save significant money for the teams. With a spending cap in place the FIA need only be concerned with speed reductions in the future, which should only be minor tweaks here and there and not wholesale changes like those on the board now. Inevitably, the big teams will spend a shitload of money over the winter to redesign the cars and the bottom teams will fall even further behind. I know there would be a great deal of resistance from the owners but the abyss is just around the corner; Jaguar have fallen into it, will Jordan and Minardi? If the grid is reduced to seven teams, I fear it could be the end of Formula One.

[Q-8]

Formula 1 has found itself up against the laws of diminishing returns. Incremental improvements are made at increasingly more expensive investments. It is pushing the limits of knowledge and analysis in much the same way as high performance aircraft. The low hanging fruit is long gone. Blind Driver’s idea is to inject more diversity of design which may once again deliver the low hanging fruit.

My own belief is that Formula 1 must be technologically driven, and maintain its leading edge drive. Restricting testing to Fridays only might be a way to keep costs in line while still benefiting from computational advancements. Engineers at computers are much less costly than multiple test teams in the field.. I also support the new aero regs reducing down force and making overtaking more likely. I do not support the reduced engine size as nothing beats straight line speed and the magic of a V10 engine note. And now all we need to do is to get Bernie to understand the concept of sharing the wealth for the benifit of F1 stability!

[tifosi]

Originally posted by SCHUEYFAN
Originally posted by Scoots:

I budget cap is the only way to cut costs and still have the F1 we love. Say a 200,000,000 Euro limit on team/partner spending in a year and generally relax the technical regs. Hire a bunch of auditors and let the teams have at it.

I made the same proposition in another thread and it could be the only real way to keep a lid on things. You could hire five full time auditors per team and this could cost no more than $10 million to police all of Formula One. If you catch a team cheating on spending, making false invoices, etc. they could be penalized financially or they lose a ranking in the constructors championship. The NFL and NBA have an army of auditors checking the teams spending to ensure they stick to their caps. In fact over the weekend the NFL caught Denver for violations going back four years and they will be fined substantially.

So explain to me how these auditors prevent Ferrari from spending $100,000,000 on there now V-10 engine for the newest road car? Every manufacturere caould just get around this cap the same way.

[LS 1]

Originally posted by V10 Fireworks
Some posters say that they still will spend as much money at the top end of the grid, that's true but they ignore that the benifit from the spend will be much less.

As teams are forced to go to spend their money on less efficient things (simulations instead of wind tunnels and testing for example) the returns will be much less.

Diminishing returns within restrictive rules will be a huge limiting factor to keep the grid close.

Team A may well still spend $ 100 million on a solution, however Team B may only be able to find $ 10 million to spend on a solution yet Team B WILL NOT be far behind Team A.

Exactly.

The problem isn't cutting costs for teams like Ferrari and Williams. They are doing just fine spending more than the gross national product of some third world countries. The problem is the entry level economics--where one can spend $180,000,000/yr and wind up well back in 6th place with virtually no hope of a podium. Why bother?

Reducing the number of technological avenue reduces the number and degree of advantage that can be bought. If Ferrari wants to spend $100,000,000 perfecting wings on the side of Micheal Schumacher's helmet. let 'em. McLaren can counter with $150,000,000 barge boards for Coulthard's chin. Who cares?

[LS 1]

Originally posted by tifosi


So explain to me how these auditors prevent Ferrari from spending $100,000,000 on there now V-10 engine for the newest road car? Every manufacturere caould just get around this cap the same way.

The entire development budget for the engine would be counted toward the F1 budget. There would be no budget exemption for "road car" parts that "coincidentally" made their way into F1 vehicles.

While the example isn't very good, the point is not too bad. F1 would turn into a war between accountants and attorneys, with the FIA becoming more like the IRS. All sorts of clever semantic arguments and budgetary tricks would be tried, and there would be constant arguments and appeals.

(internal revenue service--us government taxing authority)

[tifosi]

Originally posted by LS 1


The entire development budget for the engine would be counted toward the F1 budget. There would be no budget exemption for "road car" parts that "coincidentally" made their way into F1 vehicles.
(internal revenue service--us government taxing authority)

By default then no manufacturer could participate in F1. As much as F1 budgets may be they don't begin to approach the development budgets of Mercedes, BMW, Ferrari, et al road car divisions. How on earth can you limit Honda to say an $80,000,000 R&D budget considering how enourmous the company is. Ar eyou actually stating that R&D used for the newest NSX should be counted against BAR-Honda's budget???

[Scoots]

1 solution I see is to make F1 teams keep accounts apart from their parent corp, and any component they buy from an outside supplier (including the parent company) must be made available to all of the teams at the same price.

[Buttoneer]

Some interesting ideas here.

Overall I have to agree with those respondents who suggets relaxing the rules generally will reap the largest rewards for the smaller teams. All it would take to get Jordan to the front of the grid is a bit of lateral thinking and a good idea. Suddenly they are winning races and the other teams are playing catch up. true, they will get there sooner or later, but nevertheless in the meantime jordan have created a situation for themselves that allows them to find some decent sponsors for the remainder of the year. And, of course, results.

But this all does need a huge sea-change in thinking which I don't see anyone in the paddock doing at the moment.

I like the idea of the engine 'box' too. My own thoughts are that the displacement should be fixed but the configuration variable. I would even go so far as saying that a turbo diesel should be acceptable. So lets keep a 3.0 litre but if Ferrari want to go V12 and have extra fuel stops while Ford/new buyer go for a 6-pot turbo diesel then fine. Why not? The manufacturers will see a lot of R&D potential with that format and be prepared to stick it out I'm sure. You might even see some enine makers pushing two or three different types through into different teams.

The point is lets have the design departments working on real tangible differences again. Lets stop all the wing tweakery and all the huge QC costs involved in building long life engines - one per weekend is plenty enough.

And finally, Friday testing only for all teams and one tyre make. Of course Michelin and Bridgestone will bitch and moan until they are sick about this, and it is true that the increases in speed in recent years can be for the most part attributed to tyre advances, but at what cost to the sport and spectacle?

What happens next year if Michelin concentrate their R&D on renault like Bridgestone have with ferrari? We get two teams running away and no serious look-in for anyone else. yet another two-tier championship.

These changes wouldn't necessarily cut costs, but they will allow smaller budgets to be more effective.

[Blind Driver]

Alright. If limiting the income of the teams is what some of you are proposing, how about this...


The FIA mandate that any car running in the championship is painted entirely in one (maybe two) given colors. The only addition to this is the driver specific number. No other logos or lettering is allowed. No sponsors insignia.

Wild and crazy idea, huh?

[Scoots]

So no Ferrari logo on a Ferrari? That is wild and crazy.

[JVattack]

I tell you how you can get entry level team to come on and actually be competative. The winning WCC team will need to provide its car for them to purchase in following year. In otherwords Ferrari this year, in order to participate next year in F1 would need to have its current car available for sale to the bottom 3 teams at a resonable price including the engine. You can see where I am going with this one. Parity because lets face it if Minardi was allowed to race last year's Ferrari they would end up better than probably half the teams. This being the case they would not be eligible to race this year's Ferrari next year so they would have to continue with the two year old Ferrari or can build their own car. Naturally the cost of the engines, and the cost of the chassis would need to be covered by Minardi with say a 10% profit for Ferrari. Any safety changes that need to be implemented could pose a problem but not that much as safety componets are slowly developed. Bottom line guys F1 is the pinnical of motorsport and you just can say ok no more this no more that etc etc. Next thing you know we would be racing with drum breaks. One tire manufacture would also go a long way towards reducing costs and making it more of a driver's championship.