Verde wrote:I tend to consider that the choice made by FIA was the best possible. USF1 seemed a good project because Windsor and Anderson were already working on it for some years and they pledged that would be in Formula 1 no matter if the budget cap would be accepted or no. The biggest problem was to believe that American companies would show up in droves, which of course didn't happen.
Campos was a serious project with good know-how and an excellent partnership with Dallara, but its fate was determined by the fact the Spanish companies weren't keen on it as well - note that Spain was already drowned in an economic crisis.
Manor was probably the worst of the projects, but Richard Branson came up and saved their asses. John Booth (a very experienced guy from lower formulae) probably realized that wouldn't have money for running the team and sold the spot not long after his entry was accepted.
What about the other contenders? Prodrive couldn't make it even when they were granted the 12th spot for the 2008 season. Epsilon Euskadi tried twice, got nothing and where are they now? Lola got into administration and God only knows what would have happened to its hypothetical Formula 1 team. And the other ones don't deserve a mention.
The problem is not with the teams, but with the model of business of Formula 1. Only a few people have the cash, the financial safety, the willing and the craziness to be there. If this cannot be changed, we're not far away from the day we'll have to say farewell to our beloved sport.
I don't. Of the teams you've listed there, USF1 and Campos were based around
speculative business models - i.e. they had grand plans that looked impressive, but nothing down on paper. Anderson and Windsor had their contacts and know-how, Campos had a contract with Dallara, that was it. Both wanted to exploit new markets for F1 which seemed like a good idea, but at the time of entry they had nothing to prove that a business model around that idea could work. The FIA either knew this and took a massive gamble, or were incompetent enough not to see potential future problems.
The 1Malaysia bid was essentially the same idea - a Malaysian team in F1 and that's why bizarrely they still run under a Malaysian flag despite being called Caterham who have no links to Malaysia whatsoever and are based in Leafield. That tells you a lot about how successful those kind of projects really turn out to be. The same can be said of Force India.
And that leaves Manor, which quickly became Virgin, which then became Marussia. Aside from the small fuel tank and Maria de Villota's accident they've managed to keep themselves largely out of trouble, but on a very low budget. Only at the end of 2012 did they start to get closer to Caterham and it remains to be seen how much they can progress for 2013. What's clear is, as you said, John Booth knew right from the start that Manor on it's own were never big enough to tackle F1. So that begs the question why the FIA granted them one of the slots in the first place.
The FIA made a massive error demanding the new teams had to use Cosworth engines and the Xtrac gearboxes, if they'd given them more freedom we could have had some far better quality entrants because I think those demands were a major factor in which teams the FIA selected. Instead we got a hotch-potch of crack-pot ideas some which failed, others which haven't yet but probably will in a couple of years time, and that's sad when you think of what might have been.
