Three-car teams: yes or no? (Poll)
20th September 2009, 7:00 by Keith Collantine 129 Comments »
Ferrari want to run a third car for Michael Schumacher
Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo has mentioned several times in recent weeks he wants F1 teams to be able to run three cars in 2010 in the hope that he can lure Michael Schumacher back to drive.
FIA president Max Mosley has scoffed at the idea, dismissing it as “fantasy”. But would you like to see bigger teams and larger grid sizes?
Should F1 teams be allowed to run three cars?
- Yes (1,273 Votes)
- No (1,614 Votes)
- No opinion (110 Votes)
Total Voters: 2,997
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As I’ve already explained before, I’m not keen on the idea of ‘three-car’ teams. In short, it feels like a ‘quick-fix’ solution to the threat of dwindling team numbers, and one that would cause more problems in the long-term.
I thought McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh put a sensible explanation forward for the problems with three-car teams:
We need to be sensitive to the fact that if there were three Brawns, Red Bulls and McLarens here, then it doesn’t make it easier for the small teams. So we need to be willing and prepared to do third cars, but you should only do that if you have fewer teams present than we currently have.
Despite concerns over the future of Renault and possibly Toyota, with four new teams entering F1 in 2010 there doesn’t seem to be any immediate need to rush to three-car teams. Particularly if every team were to try to run three cars, increasing the field size theoretically to a new record of 42, which would cause logistical problems.
Although I like the idea of suddenly having 50% more cars in F1, I don’t like the three-car solution. What’s your take?
See more results of F1 Fanatic polls: F1 Fanatic polls archive
Read more: Why three-car teams isn’t a great idea
Kovy said on 20th September 2009, 7:24
I’d love it, the more the merrier.
It would definitely make it harder for small teams to achieve anything though.
I just want to see Schumi back
Ronman said on 20th September 2009, 22:03
imagine 42 nutcases at turn 1 at Spa….aaah the carnage….
mm said on 20th September 2009, 23:37
There would not be 42 cars, some of the tracks cannot take it, and some of the garages aren’t anywhere near big enough. It would require a cut back on the number of teams – which I don’t see the point. Sure if we were struggling with 5 teams on the grid, okay a couple of teams are rumoured to be leaving. But at the same time even if 4 teams dropped out before next season (although that would be sad) – we would still have the number of cars as we do now.
the Sri lankan said on 20th September 2009, 23:05
its a gamble to get Alonso in the 3rd car. not Schumi
Ninad said on 20th September 2009, 8:05
No. we have 14 teams so we do not need 3 cars…..
If number of teams were less, say 8 or less then we need 3 cars!!
HounslowBusGarage said on 20th September 2009, 9:34
I agree. It depends on how many teams actually turn up in Oz next year. If it’s 14, then demonstrably, we do not need three cars per team. However if Renault, Toyo, BMW/Whoever, Torro Rosso and one or two of the new teams don’t make it, we will need all the cars we can get to make any kind of race at all.
Pariscy said on 20th September 2009, 8:18
I can see both sides of the argument, and there can be a simple solution, not the best, but a simple and easy one.
At the forefront of the issue is the current cost cutting endeavor in F1, not a bad thing by itself, but let’s be honest. We follow Formula 1 in part (and that’s a big part) for it being at the pinnacle of technology and pushing the BEST drivers in the world to their limit and they in turn, pushing their BEST cars min the world to their limit. The departure of three team drivers in the middle of the 2009 season, and their replacement with drivers with total lack of F1 car experience, shows the need for a third driver to be experienced and up to date with the team’s latest equipment AND IT’S DRIVING. For those skeptical ones, the obvious argument would be safety. An inexperienced driver get’s in the car and on race day, has a drive of the sort of Badoer, only this time his actions cause an accident. How good would that be for anyone, the big teams, the small teams, the spectators, or the sponsors, or the fellow drivers that would be at increased risk of injury as a result.
So the simple answer is, allow the 3rd car in all European races, where the shipping costs for all teams are at the lowest, and allow each team to choose 3 or 4 non-European races that each individual team wants to take a 3rd car. Maybe all of them will choose the same races; I don’t think so. Each will choose races that they are about to bring massive new development in order to test it better, thus a better show for the fans, better preparation for the teams, and a much safer sport.
Michel S. said on 20th September 2009, 8:23
I voted no, because I did not see any proposal that link the establishment of three-car teams with an expansion of the points system.
e.g.
- constructor championship awarded on average points per team, not total (this would discourage 3-car teams from using their third car as a spoiler, though there’ll still be a slight advantage due to faster development, and spreading reliability concerns over more cars)
- points should be awarded down to a fixed percentage of the grid size. e.g. 40%-50%. This probably require the point intervals between each position to be standardized, so we can recompute the points easily as the grid size fluctuate year-by-year. Probably fix the points awarded to the top three positions, but readjust them below that.
Ubaid Parkar said on 20th September 2009, 8:26
As mentioned above, we have 14 teams now (13 is good enough as well if Renault is thrown out). Plus this is just a gimmickry. The sport can do without such petty shows!
mp4-19b said on 20th September 2009, 8:29
The point of having three cars is a mad mad mad idea.
Why does di monty want to run Schumacher? We will definitely have FOUR world champions next year . When was the last time we’ve had four champs race together? Not even during the piquet-prost-senna-mansell era. This could be the dawn of a new era & yet maddy luca di monty wants back the “pastmaster” ? Why?
Why do they want to involve schumi in everything they do? Is it a veto or something?
Why are ferrari so reluctant to look to the future? Why give schumi another drive? Isn’t 7 Wdc enough? Its a mad mad mad idea that deserves to be heralded to trash.
Luca monty is a man with tonnes of false EGO. He needs to let of it to earn some lost respect. Every human in this world fantasizes something crazy at some point in time, but it would be so stupid to go out & tell it in the public domain. Luca di monty says smaller teams are useless & stuff, in case if he hadn’t noticed, his beloved ferrari was almost robbed of a win at spa & almost put to shame at monza by a team that operates at 25% budget that ferrari operates at. Luca instead of wasting his time on blabbing on three cars needs to ensure that ferrari come up with a competitive car for next season.
I think we must stop discussing about the three car theory. It will never happen. No one, except Ferrari are in favour of it. Big Boys Merc have made it very clear its nonsense, Once Ferrari faithful R.Brawn will not have much of a say in this matter, Merc have seen to that. I personally think ,schumi after all these years of cheating has lost his soul, its the perfect time for him to be doing some soul searching. Instead he chooses to stand & block upcoming drivers. What a pathetic man.
Maciek said on 20th September 2009, 9:24
I’m a Schumacher hater, and I want to see him back…
mp4-19b said on 20th September 2009, 9:30
Why three car? There is a old saying which says:
To gain some,you’ve gotta lose some.
Its not that ferrari don’t have an option. they can always dump kimi or massa to make way for Mr Veto. Ferrari are so deeply in love with Mr Veto. I don’t think they will ever hesitate to dump anyone to make way for him.
Even I would love to see Mr Veto comeback & entertain us by making a fool of himself
Martin said on 20th September 2009, 14:18
I remember in the old days mclaren ran a 3rd car at some events. There was some loophole that allowed it and they exploited it. Although I dont remember it giving them an sdvantage/.
Nick said on 20th September 2009, 14:21
why? so we can have two ferrari drivers pulling over for him?
Pradeek said on 20th September 2009, 11:02
I’ve read this same comment by you in another post. Anyway 3 cars for a single team will make life difficult for the 3rd driver. Already, we are seeing 1 car getting updates over another. With the 3rd car,it will make favouritism more predominant. Not at all good for F1.
Maksutov said on 20th September 2009, 13:01
makes perfect sense
Keith Collantine said on 20th September 2009, 23:37
Fair point Pradeek.
RFB said on 21st September 2009, 0:57
1999, with Schumacher, Hill, Villeneuve,and Hakkinen. Before that, you would actually have to go back a very long time ago, looks like it didn’t happen either in the 70′s or 80′s
AndrewT said on 20th September 2009, 8:48
i guess if he wants to run MSchumacher he just could have bought another team for as Red Bull did and loan out some drivers to make room for his meister, or even loaning Schumi out.
i don’t see a reason why all the teams should pay more for a third car (okay, it’s more efficient and economic to run 3 cars, relatively, but it raises the overall costs), if everyone is keen on cutting costs.
btw how do they think racing in monaco. and i’m not talkink about the udersized garages, rather you can’t run a lap without getting into traffic if there are 42 cars on the grid. 42! thats more than two times more than the current lineup. even 28 is crazy, 24-26 would be optimal, but 42…
considering that Räikkönen and Massa have a contract for 2010, possibly Alonso as well, not to mention Fisichella, MSchumacher, Gene and Badoer, why not run 7-car teams so that everyone in the team could race, or even a separated Ferrari-only championship…
i’m just mad about the ideas of the dinosaurs of the sport, like Montezemolo and Ecclestone, they have quite good ideas, but they should think about it before they use their power to get it implemented :S
mp4-19b said on 20th September 2009, 9:13
Luci di monty will happily swap monaco with some tilke circuit. His beloved ferrari haven’t won a race there since 2001(that too only cuz coultard starting on pole stalled his car & mika had a suspension failure). And often in the past he has criticized monaco just like he did singapore last year. Luca di monty is a bad loser & so is Mr Veto. They don’t seem to prefer circuits where they under perform.
I guess this crazy idea originated from the mouth of Mr Veto. Sources within ferrari are suggesting that Mr Veto didn’t want to let go of his seat & instead was forced out to make way for kimi. Now that ferrari have learnt that kimi is not a team player & lacks motivation they fell obligated to give back that seat to Mr Veto.
What irritates me to most is that all this is being done in the name of cutting costs, where in actual reality it would only spiral costs out of control.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr Veto had a veto done back in 2006, for a drive in 2010.
What if the 3 car idea is implemented? What if ferrari have built a dog of a car for 2010 which gets lapped every 5 laps? What if they are subjected to humiliation by force india? What if mclaren have built a car that is 5 sec quicker than them? What if Mr Veto turns out to be another Badoer of 2010?
Would ferrari turn their backs on this 3 car theory??
I suspect they will, cuz they perform well only when the rules favour them.
AndrewT said on 20th September 2009, 9:49
well, it’s a bit extreme
back to MSch, i think he is more valuable for the Ferrari as a driver rather than an advisor or expert or whatever his overpaid job is.
however, after all these scandals and conspiracies i wouldn’t be surprised if MSch would have changed his mind after considering the performance of this years Ferrari. it would have been his weakest F1 car ever, maybe the 1991 Jordan was a bit weaker, but it’s not an option for a 7-times world champion that used to fight for wins (the other 19 used to try to fight for the 2nd place after him, i mean…). maybe the return-like announcement was just a marketing-move, which achieved it’s goal perfectly as so many tickets were bought for Valencia as it was never expected…
so let’s go through the factors:
- MSch is a goldmine for the marketing experts. you can sell the F1 again through him.
- MSch performs not so well as an advisor
- Ferrari has maybe 7 drivers (at least 6 for sure)
- this years efforts are played down after Massa’s accident. if they replaced MSch with Badoer this means they didn’t want anything from the season. maybe the decision was made before that, and that was another factor that made Schumi say “no”. a car that won’t be improved is not for him.
Ferrari and Monaco, yeah, obviously not a success-story. Monaco will stay either (as a perfect visualisation of poor, cost-cutting f1
), even if it’s inadequate for proper f1 races. i know it was just my example.
about the rules. there were always voices that emphasised the connection between FIA decisions and Ferrari. from 2003 there were a lots of changes that were meant to interrupt the hegemony of Ferrari, but didn’t help, so maybe these were only for guise. and now that a guy called Jean Todt has a good chance for being next FIA president, things can change again in favour of Ferrari.
(so Vatanen VS Todt = Formula-1 VS Ferrari?)
i have nothing against Ferrari in particular and would oppose the 3-car idea whoever would have came up with it, because it’s drastic, useless and expensive.
IDR said on 20th September 2009, 9:02
Well, Red Bull has four.
I would love to see a pair of Alfas competing again.
Luca should think about it!
mm said on 20th September 2009, 23:45
Ferrari are more than welcome to enter another team under the same rules any other new team can enter. There are regulations that mean certain things must differ between two teams, the red bull cars are quite different if you look at their technical approach.
Michael said on 20th September 2009, 9:07
i think that we need new teams in F1
YouTube will be in F1
so, where is Facebook, Google or other world websites?
dsob said on 20th September 2009, 9:35
Just to – again – set the record straight, YouTube will not be in Formula 1. The man who started YouTube some years ago and then sold it to Google, that man, that individual, has invested some of his own money in the new U.S. Formula 1 team.
Johann said on 20th September 2009, 9:12
I think 3 car teams will be very interesting. However, the points system will have to be adapted in order to make it feasible for the smaller teams to also score a point once in a while. If the field will be expanded by 50%, the number of point scoring positions will also have to be expanded by 50% (i.e. points are scored up to 12th place). In fact, with the four new teams in F1 I think this should be done anyways.
Bigbadderboom said on 20th September 2009, 9:28
All i can see is problems arising from this solution.
Ferrari wont allow 2 cars to race on track so can you imagine 3?
Team orders would mean ridiculous strategies being implemented across the grid with cars playing defensive roles.
More than 30 cars would be ludicousley dangerous, especially first laps
And as MP4 has already said, this will not cut costs, it will escalate them. More transport costs (And will Bernie pay for the extra cars) More support, more engineers, more tyres for Bridgestone, more race support costs, more driver salaries. Frankly its stupid, if he wants Schumi driving again Luca is gonna have to upset someone to give him a seat.
mp4-19b said on 20th September 2009, 9:43
Exactly! We all know how Mr Veto’s team mates were used to shield him. Just ask Eddie or Rubens. I wouldn’t be surprised if ferrari ask the same thing from alonso-kimi-massa whoever those two unfortunate drivers are.
It would be like the AIR FORCE ONE, wherein Schumi is escorted by two ferrari’s on either sides, for him to crawl to some more worthless wins. Ferrari, just to ensure that schumi wins, will make sure that the DECOY ferrari’s are equipped with missiles to shoot off the mclarens, the brawns & the red bulls just in case they are overtaking schumi or even lapping him. If this is the case, I think kimi-massa-alonso whoever needs some training in fighter aircrafts
Baz said on 20th September 2009, 12:28
This, of course, goes against the spirit of F1, which after the Renault scandal is under the microscope. More importantly, this also flies in the face of F1 trying to keep costs down; missiles aren’t cheap.
mp4-19b said on 20th September 2009, 12:45
But missiles are free!! Cuz Schumacher had stuck a deal with Osama bin laden during his debut season, osama sponsored schumacker! . There is a veto in the agreement that Osama must supply free missiles to schumacher whenever he asks for it.
mp4-19b said on 20th September 2009, 12:47
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa131/Chaparral2E/schumacher911.jpg
slr said on 20th September 2009, 9:38
A new rule shouldn’t be implemented just so that one team would benefit. I hope Jean Todt doesn’t become FIA president, if he does then it might happen.
Steph90 said on 20th September 2009, 9:46
IDR Alfa should come back!
I voted no, partly because of the smaller teams and also because although a Ferrari fan I do not want Schuey back and this whole proposal has been brought foward by Ferrari for him to return. They’d still have too many drivers anyway, unless the whole track was just made up of red cars.
Icarus said on 20th September 2009, 10:10
No to the three teams idea, it would make following F1 much less consistent. They would have to dump the constructors title all together cause there would be no way to make it fair.
mp4-19b said on 20th September 2009, 10:15
This 3rd car can be used in testing instead of the races.Just think about it. This 3rd car will be doing:-
Friday practice:-
session 1= 25-30 laps
session 2= 25-30 laps
Saturday practice:-
session 1 = at least 15 laps
Saturday Quali:-
Total at least = 25 laps
sunday race= 55-60 laps (avg)
Ok, we know that most of the tilke circuits & most others are around 5 kms in distance, so the total distance(avg) covered by this 3rd car during the entire season would be
[total laps during a week(150-160)]*[lap distance( usually 5kms)]*[ 18 races ] = around 13,500 Kms
Tell me how this running of this 3rd car is going to cut costs??
Would it not be prudent to utilize this 3rd car for testing?
I fail to understand how the dimwit Luca di monty missed this?
Not only will this ensure testing mileage & aid in developing the car, but also will help young drivers wanting to get a drive.
At the end of the day we live in a real world, no matter what you simulate using softwares & stuff you’ll never know where you are. I’m all in favor of using this 3rd car for IN SEASON TESTING
Derek said on 20th September 2009, 10:32
I was thinking along the lines of a 3rd car for 3 to 4 races per year, team’s decide which races. This would give drivers experience. But now I agree the 3rd car should be used in the practice sessions only ie. p1, p2 and p3 again this would give the 3rd driver experience of the car and tracks so he would be ready for promotion at short notice. Additionally it would provide in-season testing of upgrades for the team.