For those who haven’t been keeping with the wacky world of F1 politics, here is a short primer:
First you must understand the current geography of F1. There are three major bodies involved, the FIA (the rules), the FOM (the money) and the FOTA (the teams). All three would like to reduce the costs associated with operating an F1 team, but they don’t necessarily agree on how to go about it. Currently the FIA and FOM have put forth rules that will allow teams to operate based on one of two strategies. Either you get to have unlimited budgets but limited technical freedom, or you can have a limited budget with more freedom from technical regulations. This may seem like a best-of-both worlds strategy, but I don’t think that it is.
Imagine an F1 world where Renault, Ferrari, McLaren, BMW and Toyota are spending upwards of $200 million dollars a year to compete with teams who have budgets of only $60 million dollars. The big boys will be spending enormous amounts of money, constrained by an overburdened set of technical regulations while the budget teams may be able to beat them with their greater technical freedoms. I can’t imagine Ferrari would be to happy with Lola coming into F1 and being able to run circles around them for a fraction of the cost.
So why wouldn’t the big boys want to run under the currently proposed budget cap? Well, I suppose it doesn’t seem like a worthwhile effort to them. The big name teams are in F1 to express their technical expertise on the world’s grandest motorsports stage. This season in particular has proven to the F1 world that pouring money into your team does not guarantee success. BrawnGP and RBR have begun to run away with the championship lead while the traditional front-runners are floundering. It isn’t because BrawnGP or RBR have spent more money, it is because they are simply doing it better. They are what F1 is all about. A dedicated team of engineers, mechanics and drivers that have crafted a car capable of amazing feats of speed, endurance and reliability.
So how does one fix the current debacle? Easy, at least I think it is easy. Simply begin to transition the cost savings measures from a technical regulation model to a budget cap model. Over the course of a number of seasons allow the teams more technical freedom in exchange for reduced budget caps. But don’t start with $60 million dollars, perhaps that number is attainable in five or more years, but the teams simply cannot be forced into it next year.
One thing I would love to see in F1 is a removal of technical regulations regarding the engine, in conjunction with a reasonable overall budget cap. Currently the engines are 2.4 Liter V8s, limited to 18,000 RPM. Additionally, development on these engines has been frozen for 5 years. That doesn’t seem very F1 to me, F1 is all about development. I would rather the FIA mandate a maximum amount of fuel per race and a restrictor plate. Allow the teams to use any displacement and configuration they want to achieve maximum performance from a specific amount of fuel and air. The size of the restrictor plate should be equal to the current intake volume of the 2.4 Liter V8 running at 18,000 RPM. That way a team could use a 4 cylinder, turbocharged boxer engine if they felt that it provided the best performance, or a supercharged 1 liter, inline 3 cyclinder. The point being that engine development would be a primary differentiator in performance. One other added benefit would be that the teams would be focusing a massive engineering effort on efficiency and fuel economy, something that the motoring public would directly benefit from.