Parr says only eight teams next year, three car teams.

[langwadt]

Three car teams would also mean that there is even less chance of anyone but the best team getting a victory or even a podium. Interesting that the US of all place almost all of the big sports leagues have some form of budget restriction,
because they have realized that a level playing field is good for business.

[proracketeer]

So....
Who will drive the 3rd Ferrari and the 3rd RB?

[Moose]

So....
Who will drive the 3rd Ferrari and the 3rd RB?

Not sure about Ferrari, but I'd bet on Max Verstappen at RB.

[Andres125sx]

So....
Who will drive the 3rd Ferrari and the 3rd RB?

3rd Ferrari? Who cares? Maybe Bruno Senna

But who will drive the third Mercedes?




And the third Williams? After watching Massa´s perfomance and his comparison with Alonso last and current seasson..... What would be Alonso perfomance with a Williams?

As an Alonso supporter, only Mercedes could be a better team for him to join, but I´d love to see him at Williams to complete the big three, Ferrari, McLaren and Williams

[marcush.]

the more regs you have the harder it will be to close the gap .Sure the gap may not be that big with a tightly woven set of regulations but it also makes things very expnesive to improve .
In this the current regulations do not really support clever thinking but deep pockets .

I think third cars is not a bad idea -but it should be only one offs ,or maybe 2or 3 races for each driver.
I think the possibility for the lesser teams to loan or buy last years material from the top teams or surplus from the current year would be a lot more entertaining
and feasible...No additional development cost ,just producing parts of proven design that must cut a lot of money and HR recources ..sure the smaller teams would not be in püosition to win but they are not with the current regs either .
Give them middlefielders the opportunity to develop the borrowed cars with say 2 updates a year ....and you got a workable environment.
Those who have the funds mayspend as much as they have.
They are obsessed with all need to build the whole car themselves ,but ithink this is not really a good thing..Indy car Series was a real cracker with all teams bying Reynards and lola chassis and developing their own derivates..and some running just the basic package and still doing well.

[Jonnycraig]

So....
Who will drive the 3rd Ferrari and the 3rd RB?

Nobody, Bernie has taken it off the table as he has to fund the cars.

[mikeerfol]

So according to Sky there's still a chance McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari will run a 3rd car next year..

[FrukostScones]

So according to Sky there's still a chance McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari will run a 3rd car next year..

3 cars for red Bull and Ferrari, if recent confirmation by Bernie is done deal, this is a horrible development....
rest in shambles F1; alsöo this is spoiling the forward fun to 2015 massively : (

[Miguel]

I'm sure this must have been discussed here, in some other pages, but here it goes.

My problem with 3-car teams is that it finally tilts the game to beyond reach to any team not blessed with a 3rd car. First of all, yes, floating a 3rd car costs a fair bit of money, but after all most of the money spent goes into car R&D. What does the 3rd car give the team in exchange of, say, ~50 MUSD (please, update estimate here)?

• A development testbed, valuable when testing is very limited
• A driver development platform: you don't need to keep Ricciardo in an HRT or Bianchi in a Marussia
• Rob some points from WDC and WCC rivals in some situations (depends of rules)
• 50% more advertising space. This alone may be able to offset the extra costs of a 3rd car
• Sink midfield two-car teams even further down the grid, and into obvlivion, so their advertisers are more tempted to pay your fees

Why would anyone pay money for a mid-tier ad in a Lotus or Force India, if the same in Ferrari can get you an extra car, and further up the grid? It's not like the force indias appear much on the telly anyway...

[bhall II]

[...]
What does the 3rd car give the team in exchange of, say, ~50 MUSD (please, update estimate here)?

• A development testbed, valuable when testing is very limited

[...]

That's a very good point. From 2003 (or 2004?) to 2006, teams that finished outside the top-four in the previous year's Championship were allowed to run a third car on Fridays for exactly that purpose.

[Phil]

Teams have always been coming and going at the back of the grid, the problem this time is there doesn't seem to be new teams offering to come in.

While this is true - it's not 'only' the back of the grid, that is struggling. We have two midfield teams that are finding themselves right at the back and are having trouble with keeping themselves afloat; that being Force India and Sauber. Arguably, Williams was close too, before they switched to Mercedes engines this year and secured solid sponsoring with Martini & Co.

If we confine ourselfs into thinking it's just "the back of the grid" and that its business as usual in a sense, the sport will eventually go down the drain, that I am sure of. The sport might be able to afford losing Marussia and Caterham, but if the trend continues into the midfield (who will become 'back of the grid' because there won't be a 11th and a 12th team), the sport will be broken. (it will eventually even hurt the engine suppliers who are selling their engines to the smaller teams too)...

[Moose]

[...]
What does the 3rd car give the team in exchange of, say, ~50 MUSD (please, update estimate here)?

• A development testbed, valuable when testing is very limited

[...]

That's a very good point. From 2003 (or 2004?) to 2006, teams that finished outside the top-four in the previous year's Championship were allowed to run a third car on Fridays for exactly that purpose.

And more recently a team ran a 3rd (and 4th) car, and in doing so caught up in the development race from being one of the slowest cars on track, to dominating the sport for several years.

[bhall II]

Exactly. What Mateschitz & Co did with Red Bull Technology and Toro Rosso to further Red Bull Racing was genius. It's no wonder other teams want in on some of that action with third cars.

[Miguel]

[...]
What does the 3rd car give the team in exchange of, say, ~50 MUSD (please, update estimate here)?

• A development testbed, valuable when testing is very limited

[...]

That's a very good point. From 2003 (or 2004?) to 2006, teams that finished outside the top-four in the previous year's Championship were allowed to run a third car on Fridays for exactly that purpose.

And more recently a team ran a 3rd (and 4th) car, and in doing so caught up in the development race from being one of the slowest cars on track, to dominating the sport for several years.

Technically, that's two teams, but I agree with your point. The fact that other teams let this conflict of interest continue is something I never understood. Imagine the start of the 2012 brazillian GP, but instead of Senna crashing into Vettel, you have Buemi crashing into Alonso. I also wonder how much Bernie needed to bribe Williams so they accepted customer cars for a few seasons.