If not F1 as it is, then what?

[SidSidney]

Blanchimont started a thread the other day that I found intriguing, around a concept for a totally free technical formula.

It started me thinking about what my ideal combination of cars, engines, technologies and drivers would have been.

I really liked the super high tech active suspension cars, like the Williams FW15, and also the small, volatile turbo V engines from the 1980s, like the 1.5L V6 Honda unit in the back of the McLaren MP4/4.

Ground effects like the skirts and curved floor on the Renault RE30 would be great, as would monsterous slick tyres, with special supersofts for ridiculously spectacular qualifying runs.

Other aero - define some boxes and do whatever the hell you want inside them, but you aren't allowed to use wind tunnels to test them any more. CFD, track testing: fine. I used to wander up to Silverstone sometimes just to watch the regular tests.

Smaller innovations like the McLaren MP4/12 brake steering system, reactive suspension, blown diffusers, rear wing F ducts, and traction / launch control are absolutely fine, those kind of things are exactly why F1 exists, to push the boundaries of prototypes. Those marginal design breakthroughs were often how smaller teams used their brains to get a jump on better funded teams.

Gearboxes - I don't care really what they are made of, but I personally would like them to be manual once again, because it brings in the element of human error under pressure - a missed gear often won or lost a race. But realistically that would be one of the very first innovations on day one.

Electric energy systems - I don't mind, but not at the expense of awesome motors. If you add them it's your problem to work out the weight/performance balance, not mine.

Budgets - dude this is F1. Either bring a serious budget, work with a smaller budget and your brains, or go karting instead. But don't be whining about a lack of fairness, the basic premise of F1 is survival of the fittest. It's not meant to be a free ride for mediocrity.

Rules - get rid of the nanny state - track limits, causing a collision, pit lane speed limits, safety cars, giving back the position after using a short cut - gone.

DRS - gone in a heartbeat.

Fuel - free, but tank size would be small enough to punish the fuel hogs. Refuelling optional - if you can get around on one tank and a 900cc engine and still win, good luck to you.

Fuel flow/efficiency - seriously, fuel efficiency, in F1? Get the f**k out of my race series you spoddy enviro-gimp.

Tyres - 5 options, all of them degrading like a m********ker, with two suppliers minimum.

Drivers - the more aggressive and combatative the better - Arnoux, Rosberg Sr., Mansell, Schumacher in a bad mood, Villeneuve Sr., Senna. Ricciardo, Grosjean. People not afraid to stick a wheel into a sidepod from time to time.

That would be a Sunday worth watching.

[Manoah2u]

Imho, Formula 1 has just one major concern; it's aimed at restriction. It's slowly and gently pushed into a near spec-series,
which is thoroughly wrong for the race class that is F1.

If F1's "owners, leaders, controllers" ditch that concept, with possibly a temporal loss of finances/less profit for a short while,
then F1 can get back on track.

Aero, power units, tires, etc. is way too controlled and restricted.

In the 'old' days, we saw completly different design approaches, each with their pro and cons,
and it made it fun to look at, it made it interesting to look at and it made it technologically worthwile.

We've been slowly losing this possibilty somewhere since the early or mid 00's, sometimes we get treated
by a 'gimmick', like double-deck diffusers, f-duct, blown diffusers, etc. It's good these 'technical innovations'
popped up, unfortunately they got banned - even though the thought process behind that is understandable.
The problem though is these are essentially gimmicks housed in a restrictive designer operational window.

If you compare F1 cars from the late 80's, early 90's, till the late 90's they all housed their own 'design direction'.

Lotus' double-nose was a solution that looked interesting, despite being ugly, that unfortunately for them didn't work - even though the question remains whether the concept is flawed or that the finances and exodus of knowledge recently is the cause for their performance 'demise'.

The idea of having screaming v10's and v12's offcourse is enjoyed by every motorsport fan - but having v6 turbo's instead isn't a problem in all honesty. The 80's showed these v6turbos' can be insanely powerfull and entertaining.

I'm starting to believe F1 as it is doesn't really have too much 'wrong' going on, only that it is controlled too much. But a little investigation exposes the problem behind this; cost control. In real basic simplistic terms, this cost control was instealled, not because of the big team's desires to cut costs down - but because of the smaller teams that are edging into bankrupcy.
This in turn thus means, that F1 has been 'controlled' to artificially keep smaller teams alive.
Is that fair? actually, no.
Because what are the smaller teams providing F1? paydrivers with zero potential, years of spending without improvement and then falling apart into pieces. Just look at HRT, USF1 (which didn't even make it at all), Caterham, Marussia, etc.

So in the end, there is a devestating solution brought into the entire f1 concept because of dwindling teams that in the end are going bankrupt and down anyways.

Solution; don't do that!

F1 isn't a boyscout group. It never was and never should. If you can't play with the big boys, you don't play.
There's nothing wrong with GP2. Perhaps grant GP2 some more 'exposure' and let the smaller teams be happy there.

Caterham entered F1 in a total dismay, nobody realyl knew what it was, actually. Team Lotus? LotusF1? Lotus? 1Malaysia? Proton F1? Caterham? - And how about Marussia? VirginF1? Richard Branson f1? Marussia? - HRT? Campos? Campos Meta? Hispania ? HRT? and now we're getting another bigmouthed American with US success behind his name entering F1 acting like USF1 that the smaller teams made mistakes (dah).

So a long story short;

F1 as it is is because there is artificial control to keep smaller teams alive that are in financial trouble whilst trying to have them compete with the big boys that have their businesses sorted.

The longer i see bernie's concept of 3-car teams and ditching the smaller teams, the more i get it.

There have been 2 different F1 formats where smaller teams could operate themselves in; post-2008 and post-2013.

F1 changes itself from time to time and frankly, i don't see anything wrong there. But I do see much harm in artifical control, which houses both economic and technical control (including DRS fake overtaking), which in the long term can be devastating.