Should Formula 1 teams be allowed to run third cars excusively for young drivers as Mercedes’ Toto Wolff has suggested? In his new column for RaceFans, Dieter Rencken looks at how the sport can find places for more newcomers and finds there’s no straightforward solution.

The concept of three-car (or more) Formula 1 teams is hardly new: the very first world championship grand prix, held at Silverstone on 13th May 1950, featured four entries each from Alfa Romeo and Talbot Lago. The 1952 German Grand Prix saw four Ferraris fill the top four places, a feat repeated by Mercedes in Britain three years later, and Maserati and Cooper thereafter.

Two decades later McLaren campaigned two cars in regular Marlboro livery and one under Yardley colours to solve a particularly tricky contractual issue. That said, the team’s F1 debut at the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix saw just a single car entered, for the team owner, whereas in 1978 the team campaigned five cars in Italy.

Multi-car teams dwindled over the following years. The 1985 German Grand Prix marked the last time a trio entered by the same constructor featuring on a grand prix grid – Renault, with cars for Derek Warwick, Patrick Tambay and Francois Hesnault.

The regulations were later changed, making it mandatory for teams to enter no more or less than two cars each. “No more than 26 cars will be admitted to the championship, two being entered by each competitor,” reads article 8.6 of today’s sporting regulations.

That’s unequivocal. Noah would be immensely proud were he around to see a modern F1 grid (particularly as teams often to line up two-by-two). But suddenly three-car teams are back on the agenda.

Mercedes Motorsport CEO Toto Wolff floated the idea as a way of solving a dilemma of the team’s own making: having more drivers under contract than seats to put them in, with next year’s W10s already earmarked for one multiple champion and one multiple race-winner. Thus Toto’s logic goes: let us (or anyone else keen on the idea) run third cars as means of accommodating talented young drivers who otherwise stare unemployment in the face, while simultaneously filling grids.

“I like the idea,“ explained Wolff, “because I felt the more cars we had in the field, the more opportunity we give to young, exciting drivers to fight in a competitive car against experienced drivers, it would create great stories.”

“Maybe [it is] an easier access for talent.”

On the surface, three-car teams tick those two boxes. But, as is all-too-often the case in F1, the knock-on effects of quick fixes – particularly those punted as part of a particular team’s agenda – outweigh their immediate advantages.

Consider a grid where the top dozen might be made up of as few as four different cars instead of the current six. And imagine the impact on the constructors’ championship, which currently pays points to the top 10 places. These could be filled by three three-car teams, plus a (p)lucky interloper.

Equally, the strategic benefits of having two competitive cars were made clear by Wolff’s comments in Australia after Valtteri Bottas crashed in qualifying and Ferrari won. Imagine the advantages to – select – teams of having third cars. In this context, ‘select’ means those who can afford them…

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Certain demerits of any concept could, of course, be mitigated through judicious tinkering, such as by paying points further down the order, or by prohibiting more than two cars from scoring points – whether as a baseline or by excluding the third car from the points, possibly even elevating all subsequent competitors.

Imagine the utterly logical scenario: The ‘Big Four’, having the means and needs to do so, enter three cars each, and lock out the top 10; but as their third cars do not qualify for points the driver finishing 13th on track eventually picks up points for ninth. A mathematical nightmare, and proof of how just how myopic pandering to a particular set of circumstances creates a multitude of problems.

The three-car argument is a sticking plaster solution to graver F1 ills. Third cars were last bandied about around 2013 when it seemed the grid might shrink to just eight teams: HRT had collapsed, Manor-Marussia and Caterham were teetering and Sauber was in dire straits, too. Eight teams running three cars seemed an obvious ‘fix’, but not one which would address the sport’s deeper problems.

Then as now, the root cause is commercial inequity. Three of those teams went to the wall despite the sport’s multi-billion dollar turnover. In their place just one (Haas, whose Ferrari connection makes it a unique case) has arrived. A sport which loses teams faster than it can replace them is not in good health.

In Singapore Wolff indicated he may table the issue at the Strategy Group meeting (held last week) but did admit he is not “flavour of the month” and thus it was likely to be shouted down. According to sources the matter was not discussed, so either Wolff saw the writing on the wall, or has since thought better of it.

Regardless, let’s return to that clause 8.6 above: No more than 26 cars will be admitted to the Championship, two being entered by each competitor.

It’s been 23 years since F1 last played host to 26 cars. The closest it’s come this millennium was in 2010-12, when 24 cars graced grids, including Manor, Caterham and HRT (under various guises) following an aborted initiative by the FIA to introduce a $40m budget cap formula. Indeed, F1 came within a whisker of 26 cars but for still-born USF1, which failed even before completing its first car.

By the time the cap was canned the others were too far down the road and ended up racing against far better equipped rivals. Within seven years, all three had gone. Thus, since the beginning of the 21st century F1 has operated with an average of 10 teams or, expressed statistically, at 76 per cent of its potential.

And F1 believes itself to be the pinnacle of the sport…

Can it be coincidental that F1 has singularly failed to fill 26-car grids since the FIA, then presided over by Max Mosley, completed a deal to hive off F1’s commercial rights to the former barrister’s decades-long Bernie Ecclestone for a relative pittance? Ecclestone in turn cut deals with teams that collectively paid them just 23 per cent of F1’s retained revenues. Who or what could live off that sort of income?

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The answer is motor manufacturers, who flocked to F1 but, tellingly, all bar Toyota did so by buying existing teams. With the subsequent loss of Prost, F1’s grids were back to square one despite attracting the world’s (then) largest motor manufacturer to the fray which, in turns, spent a total of three billion dollars over eight years to not win a single race.

Once the bulk of manufacturers – Jaguar Racing, Honda, BMW, Toyota and Renault – realised they’d been had by Ecclestone (who simultaneously reduced free-to-air TV broadcasts, which in turn reduced the number of freebie eyeballs the car companies craved) – they pushed for greater slices of F1’s income, and were eventually awarded a collective 50 per cent, but the damage had been done.

Thus they eventually departed, leaving F1 all the poorer when it came to grids, gravitas and grandeur. Red Bull purchased Jaguar’s team, Honda (which briefly entered a B-team, Super Aguri) was given to Ross Brawn on a plate (and later returned as an engine supplier), Genii/Lotus was eventually sold back to Renault after racking up losses year on year, and Toyota withdrew and went WEC. If car companies couldn’t collectively sustain F1, who could now?

Of course, the word in the paddock was that the global economic crisis had knocked the stuffing out of them. Yet they did not stop advertising, nor cease sponsorship activities – they simply pulled out of F1, which suggests F1 was cost-ineffective as a marketing platform and/or a technological pedestal. Logically, had it been the opposite they – most certainly – would have stayed, for who doesn’t like cost-effective?

That, in a nutshell, is the overriding problem, one that persists to this day: F1 does not wash the faces of teams, only of the commercial rights holder. Hence F1’s value has risen from a (derisory) $313m Ecclestone (eventually) paid the FIA in 2000 to the $8bn Liberty paid the sport’s previous owner, venture fund CVC Capital Partners who had, in turn, acquired the rights from a bunch of banks for less than a quarter that.

The bottom line is that in order to operate at 100 per cent – i.e. with 26 teams, meaning six bright young talents could be accommodated at a stroke – F1 would need to further dilute its revenue distribution. Already Mercedes and Ferrari are squealing loudly about proposed post-2020 cuts; imagine the crescendo were their shares to be cut by an additional 20 per cent to accommodate three more teams?

Equally, F1’s prevailing revenue structure pays down to 10th place – rather conveniently, but coincidentally, the number of teams on the current grid. Imagine, though, 13 teams: do three teams simply lose out, which would defeat the objective; does the present cake get sliced thirteen ways, meaning each team receives an average of 23 per cent less income; or does Liberty some of its profits, to the chagrin of shareholders?

To put that in perspective, under the current structure 10 teams share around a billion dollars annually, or $100m average each. True, payouts vary according to performance, heritage and bonuses, so Ferrari this year receives around $150m versus Sauber’s $35m. Reduce that by 23 per cent to accommodate 26-car grids, and Ferrari’s take drops to $115m while Sauber’s is trimmed to $27m.

Would you, as a team boss, sanction grid growth under those circumstances? Ditto, demanding that Liberty covers the shortfalls means its shareholders would lose out on $300m in profits. Again, who would accept that sort of squandering?

Whichever way it’s sliced – whether third cars or grid growth – there is no long-term solution to the prickly problem of accommodating promising youngsters such as F2 championship leader George Russell and established star Esteban Ocon on current grids unless they have extremely rich benefactors, and even then there are no open seats.

Thus the only solution is for teams to take punts on youngsters, and here F1’s sport’s complicated technical and sporting regulations conspire against them. So complex are the cars and so limited is seat time that teams are often reluctant to take chances on unproven youngsters. Hence Sauber, which built its name by gambling on youngsters like Felipe Massa and Kimi Räikkönen, re-signed the Finn at the ripe age of 38.

So if answer to F1’s youth conundrum is not third cars and grid growth is unrealistic, what will encourage more teams to take a chance on emerging talents? Could the sport consider a process of relegation: just as performance points are required to gain an F1 superlicence, so they should be mandatory to retain a seat at motorsport’s top table. Finish in the lower quarter of the championship, and you’re out, regardless.

Of course, there would be howls that such a structure is unfair on drivers stuck in uncompetitive teams, but is such a system any less fair than a Russell or Ocon ending up being unemployed? F1 has never been about fairness but rather about maximising opportunities, and if you’ve blown them you don’t deserve to be about regardless of backing. Equally, teams should be offered incentives to take rookies, most certainly the F2 champion.

With Liberty targeting an increasingly younger demographic, having Golden Oldies aged 40-plus on the grid will hardly deliver the stated objective. After all, some drivers are old enough to be the fathers of the fans Liberty is aiming to attract.

Unless F1 considers seriously its future, it risks not having one, which is worse for business than any number of hands-out to encourage teams to take punts on emerging talents.

Follow Dieter on Twitter: @RacingLines

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