2015 Formula 1 Season Paddock

It was a legitimate question, not an opinion. I just was wondering what your thoughts were. No reason to get snarky.

 

This thread is really odd to me. I know I'm new to the sport, and probably don't have the depth of knowledge that everybody has, but not every opinion has to be hotly contested. I feel like there is room for fans with different takes on how things could be improved. If the sport was perfect, they wouldn't trying to fix it right? And if it were easy to fix, it would have already been done, right? Throwing money at teams might work, might not. Spreading it around requires a very rich group of people to agree to do something altruistic, which is going to be a tough sell.

 

Hm. Well, I guess I would start by questioning the premise that Frachise cars are automatically going to be backmarkers or non-competitive. I haven't read ALL the articles on it yet, but I haven't seen anything that suggests that they would be a whole other class of car.

 

Read my link a few posts back about how unfairly the prize proceeds in F1 are distributed and see if you still think that an equal distribution of funds wouldn't be a better starting point to bringing the midfield and back markers up the field as opposed to the big 4 getting richer selling B spec cars to customer teams that are not manufacturing anything on the car

 

So, taking that to its logical conclusion (that frachise cars will be competitive), you will have another group of teams that are competitive, but not constantly in danger of dropping off the grid due to financial issues (a risk that would exist even if you gave independents more money due to mismanagment, etc). These teams would have better support, better guidance, maybe eve great drivers similar to the Torro Rosso setup. I'm not saying it will fix F1, but it might things interesting.

 

So you think that Mercedes for instance will just sell another team a car exactly the same as Hamilton's or Rosberg's ?

 

I don't know. Probably not, but it will probably be a better car than a Manor or Force India, don't you think?

 

Fair enough. I think it will be. The truth is that the idea is in such infancy that there is very little information about it, and it's really just a contingency plan for teams dropping off. Teams dropping out don't always do so because they run out of money. Red Bull just this year threatened to pull out of F1, which would have pulled 4 cars off the track. Nothing to do with money, at least not the same way Manor or Lotus have money issues, it was almost completely due to not being competitive with Renault engines.

 

Maybe faster than the current Manor / Marussia team but in fairness to them they are still running a modified 2014 spec car

Force India is already running Mercedes power , so I'm going to go with a not necessarily on them

and if all the midfield teams are franchise cars , there will still be winners and losers through out that whole raft of B spec runners , just as there is a hierarchy to the A spec runners

 

And just to clarify, I totally agree that prize distribution sucks. Just not sure that will change, so other options might be something to consider.

 

Depends on the rule structure. If they provide a chassis and power unit, but bodies are left to the teams it could be interesting.

 

It's always to do with money

Caterham , Marussia , Toyota , Jaguar

Red Bull was never going anywhere , they just wanted to put pressure on Renault

 

The franchise car plan is to allow for teams to run with no in house facilities , including aerodynamic capabilities and therefore , no chassis work

 

Can you link the article where you read that? That would definitely change my opinion on this.

 

Nevermind, I think I found it.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119296

I would have to say that if that is what gets finalized, I'm not really cool with that proposal. I could get on board with customer cars if they had a lot more freedom to modify and give them a fighting chance.

You read my mind on the budget cap. I was just about to type it. I look at that happening with the same cynicism that you have for the big guys giving customers competitive cars. But yeah, cost controlling would benefit the sport immensely I think.

 

"The more viable proposition for keeping a smaller team on the grid, even if effectively in name only, is to become a customer.

A lot of operating costs would disappear as it would shut down its windtunnel, dynos, simulators and CFD computers because it would be buying two works cars, with the parent company providing everything."

http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119296

 

Sounds less like a meeting and more like a stick-up.

 

Yeah, my limited knowledge of the EU when dealing with this stuff is that they are merciless.

 

5 Grid Place Penalty for Vettel for passing under Red Flags

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id...handed-five-place-grid-penalty-q1-elimination

 

5 Things We Learned From Montreal Qualifying

http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/9877316/five-things-we-learnt-from-canadian-gp-qualifying