Should all be equal in F1?

[Esseesse]

vxr8mate said:

Imagine the drivers 'duking it out' on track in the same spec cars, wouldn't that be an exciting prospect?

No, the engineering is more interesting than the drivers.

[MacW]

I'd imagine the team owners would change quite quickly.

We would have Red Star Cars, Hammer & Sickle Developments and, not forgetting, the Common Union of Non-profit Trackcars.

[Dr Z]

rdjohn said:

Matt.. said:

F1 is not just about drivers. It's a constructors championship mainly. What makes it more special than other championships is that the engineers battle it out just as much as drivers do.

Come on, you are not really suggesting that you would expect 10 engineers to perform just as well as 100 engineers?

You would not expect 11 footballers to perform as well as 110, so why can you not see there is a massive problem. The fact that the 110 engineers are probably Premiership level while the 11 are Northern Conference just magnifies the problem.

To much cash from the top teams is a huge problem that hugely distorts outcomes.

Lewis driving a Manor would be nowhere. Stevens driving a Merc would be way ahead, though maybe not winning.

Taking this analogy further about the funding available for the top teams, $50m given to 11 premiership footballers vs $50m Northern conference, I suggest the outcome will be the same. The premiership quality engineers would still do a better job, surely? Plus, they are the 'top' teams because they are able to attract the best and giving more money to the lower end of the grid, there is no guarantee that they would be able to manage it as well as the top teams. F1 history is littered with examples of teams with a lot of cash failing miserably.

/Devil's advocate

[rdjohn]

I would expect there to be a lot more Premiership engineers on the jobs market so that the Northern Conference team could improve their quality.

This trickle down would probably mean even higher quality engineers racing Clio Cup.

[IainT]

Eric Mc said:

Whatever is was - it wouldn't be Formula 1.

This. Maybe have a Saturday race of F1 drivers in GP2 cars... Special Saturday trophy with the finish order setting the Sunday F1 grid...

[anonymous-user]

How could you impose a budget cap? I work for a major F1 sponsor, I assume that some where in the group we do a fair bit of research for F1, but in 20 years I've never seen it, so if there is a budget cap what would stop some of the research currently being done by the F1 team being transferred 'out' to be done by us as title sponsor elsewhere?

I also do a bit of club racing and even at that level budgets are not equal, in the series I race in the top teams are spending 25 times what some are spending. But these 'lower; teams are not paying for track support mechanical labour etc as this is done at 'mates rate', no one could actually impose a budget cap even at this simple level.

The whole budget cap is a none starter and we need to look at the problem of how F1 income is distributed among the teams.