

The loss of the Caterham and Marussia cars from the grids in Texas and Brazil have brought a growing problem in Formula 1 into the spotlight, unsustainable costs. Grid numbers seem certain to dwindle and debates are being had up and down the paddock about the need for three car teams or allowing customer cars into the sport. Its no secret that a number of other teams on the grid have serious financial problems. But three car teams are not the answer nor are customer cars, both of these could do irreparable damage to Grand Prix racing and the wider motosport industry.

The problem I think is that F1 sometimes struggles to look outside of the security fences of its own paddock and has a tendency to follow overly complex routes. The technical and Sporting regulations are far too restrictive and contractual requirements do not allow new teams to flourish. I am not going to go into too much detail about the specifics of prize money or travel schedules, Joe Saward has written much on the subject and I have nothing to add to that.

Instead I will look at ways that the major problems at the back of the grid can be resolved without any major change to the DNA of Formula 1. But why should anyone care, after all the back of the grid teams hardly get any television air time (despite there being great racing back there), and a lot of fans feel that they would rather see more top cars and superstar drivers fighting it out at the front. But the reality is that F1 needs the small teams, it always has and always will. A great example of this, indeed perhaps the best example, is the Minardi team, it gave talented young drivers and more importantly talented young engineers a start in the sport.

Aldo Costa who played a key role in developing the Mercedes W05 in 2014 started out at the tiny Italian squad, so did Ferrari Team Manager Massimo Rivola and there are many others. In terms of drivers the list is very strong, Alex Zanardi, Giancarlo Fisichella, Jarno Trulli, Marc Gene, Anthony Davidson, Mark Webber, Justin Wilson, and someone called Fernando Alonso all got their big breaks with the team.

The small budgets of teams like Minardi and Caterham forced engineers to be efficient and innovative, and drivers to give good technical feedback. When Minardi morphed into Toro Rosso the young driver development continued to bring on talent but the engineering side was reduced when the team opted to use modified Red Bull designs rather than creating its own cars (that has changed in recent years however). Additionally the low budget ethos was gone.

F1 needs to find a way to bring back teams like Minardi and one method of doing this is loosening up the sporting and contractual requirements for teams. Ways for new teams, engineers and drivers to get into F1 organically need to be found.

Single car teams should be permitted, while the cost of designing and developing a single car is the same regardless of how many are built, the costs of staffing, shipping, running and maintaining a single car are much much lower. Of course the opportunity to sell the second seat is also gone with a single car, but if the opportunity arises then the single car team should be given the opportunity to expand to two cars.

Two car teams should not be required to run the same paint job on both cars. I actually struggle to understand why this rule is so strictly enforced in F1, after all even if it was not in place you would still see two silver Mercedes and two red Ferraris. But further down the grid you would start to see split paint jobs, now to my mind this can only be a good thing, there will be more variety on the grid, more colour, and at the same time more opportunity for teams to attract sponsors. Imagine the Lotus team with Maldonado’s car painted in a patriotic yellow blue and red livery in deference to his main backers, while Grosjean’s car could be heavily backed by Total and Renault.



This is not a new idea, its universal in NASCAR and common in Indycar. In F1 BAR wanted to do it way back in 1999, indeed it even launched its cars with two different paint jobs in order to promote two different tobacco brands but it was not allowed to race the cars like that and ended up running the famous zipper livery.

There is a strong financial case for the introduction of customer cars which is why they are still on the agenda. Customer cars featured in F1 in recent years with Super Aguri and Toro Rosso using other peoples designs, despite it not really being allowed. The practice was ended in 2010. But strong case or not customer cars are bad for the sport. Part of the DNA of F1 is that teams engineer and develop cars themselves and that should be protected.



However a compromise could be found that does not destroy the DNA of F1, at the end of the season teams could sell off their old chassis to smaller teams, this would save some costs, but when I say chassis I mean the bare monocoque. I think that if a team were to buy a year old chassis then it could not acquire any data from the vendor, bodywork or any other parts. The team would still have to develop its own front crash structure, rear crash structure, uprights, suspension geometry and control systems. They would have to do their own aero and power unit installation.

This has happened before, the Super Aguri SA05 and SA06 designs were built around the Arrows A23 tub, its an approach that saves time and money for small teams without removing the engineering aspect from the sport.



Formula 1 lacks a bit of variety in my opinion, but its great when something out of the norm happens, like the one off wildcard entry of Le Mans winner Andre Lotterer at Spa this year. In fact I think Formula 1 could do with more of this, allowing single car wildcard entries for selected races if there is space on the grid. For these entries I think a year old customer car is acceptable on a one off basis, imagine an extra McLaren at Silverstone for Stoffel Vandoorne, Gary Paffett or Paul Di Resta run by a team like Fortec or an extra Petrobras branded Williams run by a Brazilian team for Felipe Nasr at Interlagos. This used to be a regular thing in F1, especially in Japan, with manufacturers like Maki and Kojima turning up at Fuji.

You could take it further and have regional entries, cars that only run in Asian races or the races in the Americas, though if cars run in multiple races then perhaps they should not be pure customer cars.

The final thing that could make F1 a whole lot more sustainable for junior teams would be a cost cap. Indeed Caterham, Marussia and HRT entered F1 in the expectation that there would be a budget cap, but politics killed it. As a result the new teams struggled badly and now its seems that all of them may have failed. One of the reasons that the cost cap failed was that many in the paddock did not want a two class F1.

But a cost cap is needed for small teams, but to ensure that they are not left behind resulting in a two class F1, the cost capped teams should be given much more technical freedom. The cars perhaps could have larger wings, a higher peak fuel flow rate, free weight distribution, adjustable gear ratios, active suspension, maybe fully active aerodynamics. The fact is the teams could not afford to develop it all so efficient engineering and innovation would be rewarded, the additional technical freedoms would ensure that the cars have strong pace.

Formula 1 has to take a hard look at where it is at the moment and where it is heading, indeed it needs to decide where it wants to be, but a knee jerk reaction of introducing third cars or pure customer cars is not the right way forward.