Multi Discipline Race Series

[NightDriver]

With the talk recently of F1 drivers jumping into WRC cars and WRC drivers wanting to give F1 a shot, I've been thinking about how well a multi discipline race series could work. I don't mean 'race of champions style', but instead a full season of motor sport with the same drivers and teams but competing in different classes throughout the year.

I'm not just talking about F1 and WRC, but also Sports Cars, karts(!?), touring cars etc.. Give each team the regs for each car type and let them decide how they use their time/facilities to work and develop each car. Not re-using any cars out there at the moment, it would be all new cars, a clean slate for everyone!

I reckon the drivers would love it, a great chance to pit the greats from various classes against each other. I'm sure the engineers would relish it, a chance to work on a multi discipline of high performance vehicles. And surely the spectators would love it! The challenge for the teams would be so much greater than just the budget, they will have plenty of resources but how to use them? Put it all into a couple of cars and aim for wins in these, or put equal effort in to score consistent points all season!

It'll never happen, I'm sure. But if it were to, how would you like to see it work? Would you watch it?

[lewis1]

sounds good to me!
shame it would cost so much!

[NightDriver]

lewis1 said:

sounds good to me!
shame it would cost so much!

Realistically, I don't think it would need to.

I would suggest it could be done with the same budgets as most of the F1 teams are currently spending. In a season an F1 team, obviously, puts all development time into the F1 car. The develop time for each 'multi discipline' car would clearly need to be reduced, but the overall development time from the 'team' need no be any higher (3-4 good people can design a championship winning btcc car, 20 people a winning Leman car, 150 people a competitive F1 car etc).

The other main cost would be parts/manufacturing. An F1 team will currently go through many iterations of all their parts throughout a season. Instead of producing further iterations of the same parts they would instead be producing smaller levels of different parts with a focus on getting it right first time rather than being able to constantly develop week on week. A massive challenge for the teams would be to understand the best times to carry out development on each car throughout the season.

Drivetrains would probably have to be 'off-the-shelf' units from Xtrac with possibly the freedom to do custom casings for the 'F1' and Sportscars. The engines could also be 'spec'd' so that all the cars in the series would use a similar base engine (fix bore/stroke) but allow various stages of tune through the use of restrictors and turbos where needed.

[mattsayle]

I would love to see an F1 season start off with all the drivers in Karts and then work there way up the ladder until they get to F1 for the last race of the year Would be great to see the different winners in the differnet cars

E.G

RD 1 - Karts

RD 2 - Formula Ford

RD 3 - Formula Palmer Audi

RD 4 - Formula Renualt

RD 5 - F3

RD 6 - F2

RD 7 - F1

[Scuffers]

you missed out F5000, LMP1, etc.

[Eric Mc]

Just like the old days, in fact.

[stifler]

I had thought this before, but more along the lines of chuck in a couple of Hillclimbs and sprints in the season. There is a good 13 mile sprint track in Germany somewhere...

[Munter]

So is this like "Superstars" but in cars/karts/bikes/trucks....

[Truckosaurus]

I'm always surprised that the manufacturer teams in F1 don't allow their drivers to have the odd 'play' in their vehicles as guest drivers in other championships (eg. Ferrari in sportscars, BMW in touring cars, Mercedes in truck racing etc.) - Perhaps Bernie discourages it to prevent the limelight shining away from his circus.

[Eric Mc]

It's only since the 1980s that F1 drivers became exclusively F1 drivers.

[StevieBee]

Munter said:

So is this like "Superstars" but in cars/karts/bikes/trucks....

Those the right side of 40 will remember that ITV ran a championship along these very lines as part of the World of Sport programme. Can't remember what it was called but I do recall Mansell and Warwick in a Rally Maestro, a slicks and wings racer touring car and the like.

I don't think it would have been an MSA / FIA sanctioned event and having been involved in a similar project for then then TVS TV channels' Rallycross Championship, was probably highly contrived too.

I remember marshalling the startline for the TVS thing and recall the director having to re-run a race asking Will Gollop if he "wouldn't mind making it look more difficult this time!"

[s3fella]

Them Maestro races were utterly brilliant! I remember one at Donnington and the field was all top class F1 and rally guys, absolutely caning the crap out of Maestros! Great stuff!

[sperminator]

I'd replace Palmer Audi with Renault and F2 with GP2 in that list and I'd stick a couple of endurance races and DTM for good measure.