F1 Fanatic

I’m surprised the FIA would have learned the lesson from last year, actually.

Yeah, I’m not taking anything as true until the FIA comes out and says it. I agree with Hairs about the FIA learning their lessons from last year, though I’m still wary of how long it took them to reach this point – they really should take applications 2 years in advance, anyone who’s committed enough to apply that far in advance should have enough resources to back them up!

Autosprint isn’t the most reliable source. Apparently an announcement is due on Friday. I’m willing to bet that the FIA have two or more choices (ie Epsilon Euskadi and Villeneuve, or Epsilon and no-one) and cannot decide between them, and so they’re going to wait for the WMSC hearing this week and put it to a vote as a second order of business because the opportunity is there.

This is why we need customer teams.

No, we don’t. Customer teams was a bad idea in the first place. All it will do is create a situation whereby one team has power over the newcomers. Customer teams would be so dependent upon the established ones that the established teams will simply abuse that relationship. You know Ferrari will use them in everything they do and won’t care less if the team dries up. Besides, the teams will protest against a new team getting instant success. Even if the nine established teams agree to allowing a customer deal, it will never happen because the three new teams will block it. Formula 1 needs ten teams to meet the minimum majority.

Icthyes, when you say “only one thing from each team” I’m assuming you mean a rear wing from one team, a front wing from another, engine cover from one more, and so on? Correct me if I’m wrong! The problem with that is that the parts simply wouldn’t work together – just like you couldn’t take a “best of” selection of parts from this years cars and create an “uber car”.

The best way I can describe it is to use what Martin Brundle (I think!) said last year – you couldn’t just stick the nose and front wing of the RB5 onto the BGP001 and expect it to go faster, because the RB5 was all about channeling air over the car, whereas the Brawn was all about channeling air under the car to feed the diffuser. Obviously that’s a massive oversimplification, but you get what I mean!

I do think that you can’t ignore the potential of customer cars – I was thinking about why more recent teams set up by ex-drivers (Stewart, Prost, etc.) have tended to fail, compared to the relative success of the entries by drivers in the early years of Formula 1. Of course, the answer is customer cars – for example, Maserati and Cooper supplied quite a few entries between them in the 1960 F1 season.

Now I’m not saying that new entries just buying chassis off current constructors is the solution, but maybe something along those lines. What I was thinking is some sort of cash pool from new teams to fund the building of a car by one manufacturer – Lola or Durango for example. All the new teams can start off with the same basic chassis and over the course of the season buy aero kits (a la IndyCar’s new regulations) to keep the cars competitive. Then a rolling introduction over maybe 2 years of their own contributions until they’re fully fledged teams in their own right. Sound plausible?

My mistake, that’s what I get for not reading posts properly! We can always hope that something’ll change, and, though I hope none of the new teams do pull out, if one were to maybe it would persuade the FIA to implement a more sustainable method of new team entry!

There’s already posts on this on the site:

No 13th F1 team in 2011

Epsilon Euskadi not giving up on F1

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