Seriously – budget cap. It’s not that hard.
It's hard to enforce, teams will cry foul, and there's a billion things wrong with it (billions of hidden dollars, that is) - but it's the only sensible solution. You're too far ahead of the curve, Blake, too far. You see what Max will see in five years, when Ferrari and McLaren decide that F3 offers you more chances of development (and a strong competitor called Dallara), when Toyota and Renault can't afford to spend the money, and Toro Rosso and Williams start auctioning their facilities. That's when Mallya's time to shine will come - two VJM-07s in a field of two cars.
So who do we blame for the fall of the U.S. Grand Prix ? Is it one of these two , or do we blame the circuit owners here in the states for this one?
Team costs != Venue costs. Yes, Bernie places some huge demands on circuit-owners, which cost us Imola, Indianapolis, Magny-Cours, Montreal, and soon the German and Chinese venues - but that has nothing to do with a team's spending.
There's
some relation, obviously - Honda would've found it easier to justify staying in F1 had they still had their North American races - but the teams don't pay that money.
I think I'd much prefer a low-tech, competitive F1 than a high-tech championship dominated by one driver again.
It was dominated by a single driver because he was just superior to his teammate, in a car that was superior to the others. Then came 2005, and he wasn't anywhere near the championship. When everyone is high-tech, like at the end of 2008, when for two seasons in a row
just one team failed to score (Spyker/FIF1 in both years), when the whole field was separated by a mere second.. That's high-tech. When you can't gain real speed, and just fine-tune your designs and hone the last tenths out of them.
Low-tech, competitive F1? Go watch GP2. A1GP. IndyCar. F2. F3. Renault Euroseries. Formula Ford. Formula Vee. Karts. They're competitive, they're (mostly) cheap, they've got overtaking, but they're dull as dishwasher to the hardcore fans, the ones that like the spectacle, but are there for the cars, the speed, the technology. I've watched F1, and I watched Indy, some GP2, A1GP, F3 and NASCAR. Even Formula Master, the BTCC support-series. None of them came close to the addiction that F1 set off, because only in F1 could I log in and read technical files, compare aerodynamic parts and settings, analyze cars and teammates, re-read the history of development.
Formula
One, by definition, is a high-tech series where only the top few are truly competitive. We complain about four-five winners per year, when in the old days, the top car would quite often out-qualify the field by over a second. They'd lap the whole field, and lap the backmarkers five or six times - if those backmarkers finished at all. These days, it takes some major mistakes by Sutil to get him lapped twice - that's as competitive and close as F1 should ever get.
Cost-cutting measures are needed, and
now, if we want a decent-sized grid - but do we want it? Yeah, I want a full field, with fun amateurs like FIF1, serious amateurs like Aguri, struggling manufacturers like the '90s Ferrari or late-years Honda - and we need cost-cutting for that. But I don't want them to get their help for free - they can and
should struggle - and the only way to get that is budget-caps. The '90s were a wonderful time, because nobody really dared to spend that much money - until Mercedes came along.
Then Ferrari assembled their dream-team, dominated the sport, and kicked competitiveness and prices up a notch (or five). Until Mercedes came, FOM Prize-money was a major part of the budget - now, it's peanuts compared to sponsor-money and manufacturer backing.
If we want F1 to stay the pinnacle, we need to stop specing everything. If we want to keep teams around, we need lower costs. We
can combine the two: Budget caps. Hard caps of 5m$ personnel, 30m$ development, 5m$ engines (or the option of a self-paid 15m$ budget to develop their own engine), and some extra money for things I've overlooked (perhaps drivers can be self-paid by sponsors?) - with shipping to races and testing handled by the FOM - and teams would be dying to enter the sport. Several teams stated that with 50m$ budgets, they'd be in the sport forever and then some. Set up a special division in the FIA to track team's expenses, have them account for every nut and bold, every e-mail attachment containing CFD data, and regulate it tightly.
I'd love F1 that way. Instead of stipulating the exact dimensions, once trying to reduce speeds and once trying to increase safety, once increasing overtaking-chances and once reducing them, and always overcomplicating the cars, we could define a set of rules that would ensure decent overtaking (and hopefully something that looks better than the 2009 package), and keep it that way. Then let the teams loose: let them choose between spending on a high-quality tunnel, a better engine, or the perfect chassis. The correct compromises, good management and skilled workforces will be the defining factor of F1 success - not pouring in money and assembling expensive dream-teams. Teams will have to chose between a genius, high-payed Newey, or 50 interns who might just have the next winning innovation in their fresh minds. Between trying a new concept like the sharkfin or bridge-wing, or just optimizing the surface-shapes. Between a new 72deg V10, or keeping their trusty V8 and squeezing extra reliability and power out of it.
