The Official F1 2022 silly season *contains speculation*

[TheDeuce]

talksthetorque said:

Think so too. Not going to find anyone with deeper pockets than VAG unless Musk jumps in and then hires Pastor Maldonado and Roman Grosjean as drivers (with Kvyat as dev driver)

If they ever get solid state cells working, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Musk bought an F1 team and started petitioning for full electrification..it would be a superb platform for the new technology.

Big 'if' on getting those cells to work though..

[vaud]

jsf said:

Probably be Williams as the new owners cash out their investment.

I misread that as "Probably be Williams as the new owners crash out their investment."

[stemll]

talksthetorque said:

jsf said:

MartG said:

I suspect whatever team Audi buy will have a Porsche engine fairly soon

Probably be Williams as the new owners cash out their investment.

Think so too. Not going to find anyone with deeper pockets than VAG unless Musk jumps in and then hires Pastor Maldonado and Roman Grosjean as drivers (with Kvyat as dev driver)

With Jost Capito, Sven Smeets and FX Demaison already there, it's pretty much a VAG team already. Question is will it be just Audi F1, or Williams Audi.

[anonymous-user]

stemll said:

With Jost Capito, Sven Smeets and FX Demaison already there, it's pretty much a VAG team already. Question is will it be just Audi F1, or Williams Audi.

If it follows form of the previous team names, one step removed from the name change kills the old name. You just have to look at the number of previous team names to see that, Williams as a name has no future value when you are marketing your major corporate brand.

[Mark-C]

jsf said:

stemll said:

With Jost Capito, Sven Smeets and FX Demaison already there, it's pretty much a VAG team already. Question is will it be just Audi F1, or Williams Audi.

If it follows form of the previous team names, one step removed from the name change kills the old name. You just have to look at the number of previous team names to see that, Williams as a name has no future value when you are marketing your major corporate brand.

Yep - the same thing happened to Sauber and Racing Point very recently and it's not a new thing. The Williams name will be gone to join Brabham, Lotus and Tyrrell in the history books

[andburg]

if they were to drop Williams as a name I expect they would lose the £10m payment they currently receive...peanuts for VAG but they may well want to keep it

[Teddy Lop]

Mark-C said:

jsf said:

stemll said:

With Jost Capito, Sven Smeets and FX Demaison already there, it's pretty much a VAG team already. Question is will it be just Audi F1, or Williams Audi.

If it follows form of the previous team names, one step removed from the name change kills the old name. You just have to look at the number of previous team names to see that, Williams as a name has no future value when you are marketing your major corporate brand.

Yep - the same thing happened to Sauber and Racing Point very recently and it's not a new thing. The Williams name will be gone to join Brabham, Lotus and Tyrrell in the history books

Probably.

If they'd sold up to say BMW when the name still meant something to the general mildly motorsport-aware car buying public there may have been scope to retain the name and even use it on special halo models of their line up but I think those days are long gone. What the petrolhead geeks think is not part of the equation.

[SpudLink]

Teddy Lop said:

Probably.

If they'd sold up to say BMW when the name still meant something to the general mildly motorsport-aware car buying public there may have been scope to retain the name and even use it on special halo models of their line up but I think those days are long gone. What the petrolhead geeks think is not part of the equation.

The decline of Williams has been painful to watch. However if it had survived only as trim level on BMWs, well that would have been worse.
Imagine seeing the X5 Williams-Line in the office car park every day.

Edited by SpudLink on Tuesday 3rd May 15:25

[Teddy Lop]

SpudLink said:

The decline of Williams has been painful to watch. However if it had survived only as trim level on BMWs, well that would have been worse.
Imagine seeing the X5 Williams-Line in the office car park every day.

Edited by SpudLink on Tuesday 3rd May 15:25

I was thinking more a special edition of an m-car proper than a trim level, although having seen the latest M3 theres only latifi who could improve the looks.

[SpudLink]

Teddy Lop said:

SpudLink said:

The decline of Williams has been painful to watch. However if it had survived only as trim level on BMWs, well that would have been worse.
Imagine seeing the X5 Williams-Line in the office car park every day.

Edited by SpudLink on Tuesday 3rd May 15:25

I was thinking more a special edition of an m-car proper than a trim level, although having seen the latest M3 theres only latifi who could improve the looks.

I do get it. But history suggests what starts as a halo performance model is soon diluted. For example the BMWs sold with an M badge, or the VW ‘R Line’.

[thegreenhell]

Would they have done anything more with Williams than they did with Sauber in the end? Buy it, pour money into it, get scared by the financial crash, sell it back at a massive loss. I don't recall any Sauber special edition cars from that era to bring their F1 investment into their road cars.

[Teddy Lop]

thegreenhell said:

Would they have done anything more with Williams than they did with Sauber in the end? Buy it, pour money into it, get scared by the financial crash, sell it back at a massive loss. I don't recall any Sauber special edition cars from that era to bring their F1 investment into their road cars.

Largely the exact same reasoning I describe above in relation to why Williams wouldn't be used today applies to sauber then though doesn't it.

[Dashnine]

andburg said:

if they were to drop Williams as a name I expect they would lose the £10m payment they currently receive...peanuts for VAG but they may well want to keep it

You don’t lose the payments from a name change, Racing Point / Aston Martin, Renault / Alpine, etc. I would imagine it’d be Williams powered by Audi, then Williams Audi, then Audi Williams and then it’s gone. Or maybe even quicker than that.

[thegreenhell]

Dashnine said:

andburg said:

if they were to drop Williams as a name I expect they would lose the £10m payment they currently receive...peanuts for VAG but they may well want to keep it

You don’t lose the payments from a name change, Racing Point / Aston Martin, Renault / Alpine, etc. I would imagine it’d be Williams powered by Audi, then Williams Audi, then Audi Williams and then it’s gone. Or maybe even quicker than that.

They wouldn't lose prize money, but they currently receive a special payment just for being Williams, or at least they did under the previous concorde agreement. None of those other teams you mention had any special historical payments under the concorde, only prize money. If they no longer used the historical Williams name then they would probably lose that payment for being Williams, if they are even still receiving it.

[vaud]

On a related topic:

https://www.planetf1.com/news/alexander-rossi-indy...

Is F1's goal actually to create a 2nd tier of regional series?

So you could have Formula Americas, Formula Europe and Formula APAC titles, then the global series, displacing the likes of IndyCar entirely?

You could have 15 races in each region and it would act as a feeder for F1 Global. More of a brand play than anything...

Just a thought.

[Sandpit Steve]

vaud said:

On a related topic:

https://www.planetf1.com/news/alexander-rossi-indy...

Is F1's goal actually to create a 2nd tier of regional series?

So you could have Formula Americas, Formula Europe and Formula APAC titles, then the global series, displacing the likes of IndyCar entirely?

You could have 15 races in each region and it would act as a feeder for F1 Global. More of a brand play than anything...

Just a thought.

The FIA has already done that with F3, so we have several ‘regional’ championships in the same design of car, feeding into the FIA F3 championship that we see on the F1 undercard.

It might be possible to do the same with F2 cars, but previous attempts at championships with high-performance single-seaters have all failed to work financially, because there just isn’t the revenue that F1 or Indy can generate, and not enough people with deep pockets to fund themselves.

[vaud]

Sandpit Steve said:

The FIA has already done that with F3, so we have several ‘regional’ championships in the same design of car, feeding into the FIA F3 championship that we see on the F1 undercard.

It might be possible to do the same with F2 cars, but previous attempts at championships with high-performance single-seaters have all failed to work financially, because there just isn’t the revenue that F1 or Indy can generate, and not enough people with deep pockets to fund themselves.

My point was more that they could replace Indy and have an Americas Formula One series. Same cars.

[anonymous-user]

vaud said:

My point was more that they could replace Indy and have an Americas Formula One series. Same cars.

No chance.

[MissChief]

jsf said:

vaud said:

My point was more that they could replace Indy and have an Americas Formula One series. Same cars.

No chance.

Agreed. F1 will remain unique and will remain the fastest cars.

[vaud]

MissChief said:

jsf said:

vaud said:

My point was more that they could replace Indy and have an Americas Formula One series. Same cars.

No chance.

Agreed. F1 will remain unique and will remain the fastest cars.

But it's not mutually exclusive. Regional series and a global pinnacle series.

Anyway, just speculating. If I was running Indycar I'd be worried.