Captain Hammer wrote:JeanDenisAlcatraz wrote:PREQUALIFYING!!!!
How hard is it?
Incredibly. Pre-qualifying worked when it cost as little as $500,000 to establish a team. Of the 2010 competitors, Virgin have the smallest budget at somewhere under $40,000,000. If there is a chance that a team will not appear on the grid, then sponsors will not pay tens of millions of dollars to back them. Without that sponsorship, the teams will not be able to build and develop cars. If teams cannot build and develop cars, they will not qualify. If they do not qualify, they cannot race. If they do not race, then there is no reaso for them to exist. If there is no reason for them to exist, then they will not. You could re-introduce pre-qualifying, but you're only ever going to get twenty-six cars showing up. Formula 1 is so expensive that no-one in their right mind would be able to justify spending the tens of millions of dollars needed to compete if there was even the slightest chance that they would not be able to compete at all.
Exactly - an engine supply contract alone sets you back €5 million these days, so putting together an F1 team these days is not a cheap operation. And it isn't just putting together a car, but having a team of competent mechanics to eke the most out of the car (Super Aguri got a fair bit out of a lightly updated 2006 car by prioritising their set up work) and to keep the car running out on track, a design team to get the car through the FIA's mandatory crash tests and so on.
Whilst you may see just a few people at the track at any one time, there are a lot of people behind the scenes - Virgin Racing, which is the smallest team (for which you can find staff numbers, as there aren't any figures for HRT), started the season with 180 employees. It takes a lot longer to design a car these days as well - most of the big teams have two design teams, with one working on the current seasons car, and one working on next years car (although the head count restrictions coming up are likely to be a problem).
In the 1970's, when the Cosworth engine was £100,000 a year (allowing for inflation, that would be in the order of £750,000 a year today), you could buy just about everything you needed off the shelf (transmissions from Hewland, chassis from March and so on) to get a car on the track for a relatively low sum. Hesketh Racing is the perfect example of that era of F1 kitcars, as it were - March 731 chassis, Hewland FGA gearbox, Firestone tyres (to begin with), and, of course, a Cosworth DFV. Of course, with customer cars banned, everything now has to be done in house, which is expensive and time consuming.
jackanderton wrote:Actually having 13 teams would be a good start.
A good point, as Formula 1 is a very expensive proposition at the moment in comparison to most other racing series. Although many manufacturers have been feeling the pinch in other series (such as Endurance Racing, where the ACO is bringing is cost capping regulations), money problems have been key in the withdrawal of a number of entries this year.
Prodrive refused as they are currently increasing operations elsewhere (in the Le Mans series with Aston Martin, and in rallying with the Mini Clubman). Lola dropped all plans altogether this year, and ART GP withdrew their entry almost as soon as it was entered because of a lack of sponsor interest. It's hard enough for those at the back of the grid to attract sponsors, but if you were not even guaranteed to start the race, potential sponsors are going to be even more recalcitrant, especially if you could only attend a handful of races.
In fact, Formula 1 looks quite overpriced compared to other series - an Le Mans Prototype car, for example, under the 2011 ACO rules would cost a mere €400,000 to buy
http://www.lemans.org/en/news/2011-LE-M ... S_628.htmlIf, and this is a big if, the teams can impose the cost capping regulations and make them work, then in the future we might see the grid expanding. As it is, we might not even have 12 teams next year - HRT's future is still uncertain, and Red Bull are still trying to offload Toro Rosso onto somebody else, now that the junior team is increasingly unimportant to them. The FIA's main efforts in the next few years are likely to be be mainly focussing around keeping existing teams afloat for the next few years instead of expanding the grid...
Solution for more than 13 teams
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