How to fix F1

[Raleigh]

Budget Caps

We all know the big teams will never agree to budget caps for themselves, but how about voluntary budget caps? Teams that adhere to perhaps a $60M budget get certain technical freedoms to help bridge the gap to their better funded competition. Something along the lines of bigger diffusers, increased total fuel allowance, wider front wings. Nothing that visually turns F1 into a 2-tier series, but differences which would narrow the gap from the front to the back of the field.

Revenue Distribution

Abolish the idea of Column 1 and Column 2 teams. Currently about $350M is split between the teams that have finished twice in the top 10 in the last 3 years, change this so the $350M is split between all the teams. And split the other $350M (the prize money) so that even last place gets $10M or so. This would increase the minimum income for a team from 0 to about $40M.

Subsidize the Engines

This would be CVC's contribution. A simple $10M towards the cost for each team that buys its engines. That would exclude Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull, so not really as expensive as the idea might sound.


Overall, would provide lower budget teams a way to be competitive and dramatically reduce the gap between incoming and outgoing money for the smaller teams, helping them stay out of debt.

[mertol]

You will not solve anything with cutting costs and redistributing if noone is actually watching it. What the sport needs is being spectacular again - convince the public that the cars are actually challenging to drive. Noone likes watching teenagers saving tires, fuel and what not and never even getting close to the limits of the car.
Make it broadcast for free and most importantly on the web.
Avoid rules that are complicated or prevent the lagging teams from catching up like the engine freeze, testing bans etc. Noone likes watching his favorite hopelessly stuck for years with a slow car.

[wesley123]

F1 is for a majority owned by CVC. You can't expect them to own something and not make a profit, therefore, F1 is required to turn a profit. And not just a profit, an ever growing profit, just like any other company. And there is where things go wrong already.

To make more profit, the entry tickets(crowd, as well as tracks themselves) will go to the highest bidder, they have to. Not only that, but everything else has to go to the highest bidder to increase profit.
This aim for profit traps them at a point where things get to expensive, people wont pay for a $15 Sky subscription to watch F1 for 5-6 hours a month(although many did) and neither will people pay hundreds of dollars to watch cars go by on a 300 meter distance.
The need to make more profit turns it into something that is too expensive, and thus pushes fans away. The sport is very inaccessible to the fans, certainly compared to where at LE Mans, you can walk the paddock for very little money(if I'm correct). That brings another issue; F1 is too big to open such things up.

In the quest to turn profit, companies also stick to what is reliable, and that is TV. You can't really steal a TV subscription very easily, where on teh internetz, a live stream is found very easily. This makes the internet a very mad way to make money.

The root of the problems is it's owners. Other than that, there is nothing wrong with it at all. We can complain about tires and DRS all we want, in the end it is a gimmick introduced because CVC and Bernie sure as hell aren't going to give up their income just to make it all more accessible.

[natehall]

im not sure what the CVC ownership of F1 is worth, however I am aware that the CVC percentage has lowered over the past couple of years.. but how about something that is quite simple.

F1 Teams buy shares in the commercial rights... but only at an equal percentage top to bottom.

This means the more profit the commercial rights earn, the more money the teams earn, distributed evenly top to bottom, and also as there payment is linked with the spectacle of the sport, as more spectacle = more views = more commercial rights money...

overly simplified of course, but gives a good idea what could be done to improve what the teams could do for the longer term sustainability of the sport.

[mertol]

Changing ticket and broadcast prices are changing their income only slightly because higher prices mean less spectators and vice versa. However the sponsors would like to have as many spectators as possible. So increasing prices *might* increase income from sales only slightly but drops the money from sponsorship dramaticly. I don't know how the teams can't see that.

[emaren]

Race series go through various crisis at various times, the current crisis appears to be funding of the smaller teams.....

Personally I think that there are a few of choices....

1) Give the small teams more money - invert the bonus system - if you lose you get $100M, if you win, you get nada. Radical ? Sure it is, but it keeps the smaller teams in the series. If you can afford to spend $500M to win, well you do not need the prize money.

2) Recognise that the difference between a top team and a lower team is the difference in the aero (or whatever) budget and simply solve that issue - make the entire aero package identical across the board. All the cars will look the same, but the engines, gearboxes and advertising will be different. This is not as insane as it sounds, the current engine rules mandate attachment points, the survival cell dimension are highly regulated, even the max/min height/width at many points is set. The major differences between say a McLaren and a Mercedes revolve around suspension and aero design. get rid of those two and it becomes much closer to a spec series and much less expensive.

3) Customer cars. Why would I want to design and build my own if I can run a Red Bull car for a similar $$figure ? Given the engine attachment points etc, then you could see, say, Marrusia running a RB chassis and a Ferrari engine for less than they spent designing their own car.....

[Moose]

Subsidize the Engines

This would be CVC's contribution. A simple $10M towards the cost for each team that buys its engines. That would exclude Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull, so not really as expensive as the idea might sound.

No. This would simply cause Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault to raise the price by $10m for a season.

[Moose]

As far as I'm concerned, it's very simple what's needed, And you're not going to like it. What's needed, is a new Bernie.

Originally, Bernie did a fantastic job of unifying the teams, and getting them all pulling in the same direction so that they all got a sensible share of the TV rights. He was a master mind, and managed to get the teams a fair deal shared between them. What's happened now is that it's stopped being in Bernie's interests to get the teams a fair deal, and instead started to be in his interest to split the teams, and divide and conquer. He's being pretty successful in putting the large teams on a pedestal, and getting them to fight against the smaller teams, rather than having them all pulling in the same direction against him.

What's needed now is a new Bernie. One with only the interests of the teams in mind, who will manage to unify them all. Unfortunately, that will be a very hard task. The problem when Bernie solved it in the 60s was that none of the teams got money - they all had the same motivation. Now he's managed to make it that only the favored teams get money, and that's inherently going to set up teams against each other.

[Raleigh]

2) Recognise that the difference between a top team and a lower team is the difference in the aero (or whatever) budget and simply solve that issue - make the entire aero package identical across the board. All the cars will look the same, but the engines, gearboxes and advertising will be different. This is not as insane as it sounds, the current engine rules mandate attachment points, the survival cell dimension are highly regulated, even the max/min height/width at many points is set. The major differences between say a McLaren and a Mercedes revolve around suspension and aero design. get rid of those two and it becomes much closer to a spec series and much less expensive.

Why on earth would you want F1 to be a spec series?

Far better to give budget cap teams an aero advantage. The bigger diffuser and front wing. This will allow the teams without a huge aero budget to be closer in terms of overall downforce to the teams that can afford to spend 10s of millions refining every tiny detail of their aero packages.

[CBeck113]

The easiest and fastest fix: let it die. Then, when it has no more value, FiA can reclaim the commercial rights from CVC and return it to what it was: an engineering series with the fastest drivers in the world. The only thing that should be speced is the monocoque, just to insure that the driver is safe. THAT would save lots of money. Let them develop, then limit the ones that get too far ahead - either you let them go (= no interesting races) or you keep them somewhat together, while rewarding the teams with the best ideas. A loose set of rules and fair judgement (may be difficult to find) is all we need...

[Raleigh]

The easiest and fastest fix: let it die.

Sounds like the slowest and most painful way to fix F1...

Not to mention, it will kill at least half the teams on the grid and take years to get any form of F1 up and running again.

[FoxHound]

Kill F1? Hmmmm

What F1 needs, is a stable set of regulations that evolve rather than revolutionise at any given stage. Its CHEAPER!

Then reduce restrictions. Instead of having idiotic reams of nonsensical rules, which can be unenforceable... have simple tests.

Wanna restrict aero?
Though shalt not have more than 100nm per square inch/cm.

Wanna restrict chassis? Though shalt not have more than 3G lateral grip.

Wanna restrict engines? Though shalt not have more than 800bhp at any given stage.

Set the bar before designers put pen to paper. Make the bar hard to achieve, but possible.

Allow for some mixed philosophy, 850bhp with 2.8G lateral grip and 90nm aero energy.
The calculus is possible, some fookin clever people within F1, as hard as some may find that.

By mixing strategem of concepts, you get Arnoux v Villenueve battles....bold statement, but lets run this year via that formula.
Mercedes would not be booming past everyone using a superior aero/chassis/engine combo.
They would need to find a happy medium.

And that is the crux of the matter. F1 is a complex sport.
comparing Bernie to the Buffoon Blatter is of no consequence. You may as well compare their taste in woman, and Bernie has a decent eye for a money wench...in comparison to Herr Blatter anyways.

Find that magical happy medium, with less restriction... more innovation and greater variety, and F1 will grow beyond its current remit. Fo sho

[piast9]

I don't have a specific solutions to fix F1 but just a few observations:
- Even distribution of money for the teams would be fair. Let everyone compete at even ground. If a team is better then it is gaining more money from sponsors anyway.
- Do something with the technical regulations. Why cars are so expensive? Because it is extremely difficult to build fast car within the current regulations. Is it possible to build a racing car that costs the similar amount of money that small teams have, which has 800-900 hp and uses 100 kg of fuel per race and is able to race at similar pace as the F1? I am sure it is. I think that the fuel limitation allows the governing body to tame the cars if they become too fast, not by introducing more technical limitations.

[strad]

I not sure how to fix it, but I can see where it's headed.
With so much emphasis on safety, and restricting competition it'll be structured like drag racing.
Friday: Practice,, one car on track for X amount of minutes.
Sat.: Qualifying ,, One car on track somewhere around 3to 5 laps with the best lap determining position.
Sun.: Racing ..5 Laps per round.. Two cars on track. First round top qualifier vs bottom qualifier. Number two vs car next to bottom qualifier and so on.
Second round the winners face off.
Third round winners in round two face off and so on til you get down to a final round. I can't say how many rounds because that's determined by the number of cars in the field.
Last man standing is declared winner of the race.

[Richard]

Unfortunately I can see Bernie trying to arrange play offs to win the WDC, the top driver from the top 3 teams in a best of the last 3 races. So this year it would be Hamilton, Ricciardo and Bottas. In most years that would ensure the big teams stay in the spotlight.