Porsche have traditionally been very conservative, both fiscally and engineering .... so sports cars - endurance racing has fit their outlook. If Porsche do go to F-1 they will have to be prepared to spend HUGE sums of Money ... probably from parent VW as well... and risk a well earned reputation ... I just don't see that happening, but the last time the decision was taken it was Ferry Porsche and his Piech family members saying ok to the engine for Arrows.. that flopped. Porsche pulled the plug when the money dried up ... so the board is composed of different family members today,so perhaps they are ok to risk the $$$ needed to win... but I still doubt it. If they do a team they will have to set up in the UK as working from Stuttgart will not work.... as a long time Porsche owner, I'd love to see them successful in F-1 ... as their own team but I just don't see it really happening. WEC is the home they should be in ... and they should do LMP2 cars...
As a long time Porsche owner, I hope they will never enter F1 as a team. As an engine supplier, it may be a different matter. Frankly, it doesn't fit with their approach to motor racing, and it would a headache with no tangible return. PS. They cannot do LMP2 as it is now: it's a specs series with Gibson (Nissan) engines
Porsche is not a small sports car maker anymore. Witness the SUV they make now. And F1 is not like it was in the past.
It's the SUVs that will keep luxury cars manufacturers alive, it seems. Porsche did it, Maserati followed, Jaguar too, then it was Bentley. I think Rolls Royce is thinking about it, and so is Lamborghini. Lotus wants to do SUVs in future also. Aston Martin may possibly join them. So far Ferrari denies any plan, but there are rumours there too... Some may see that as diluting the DNA, but it's really about surviving on the market by increasing the volume.
smaller than anyone but Ferrari... as it relates to F-1. Porsche has never shown the desire or willingness to commit to a full time F1 budget. that is their problem. F-1 as it is now, takes a huge commitment... close to $1B for a 5 year program... to successful. I don't see Porsche doing that.
Williams Glory - Never gonna happen - Even McLaren is falling to the midpack It's a Manufacturers game now who have 100's mill to burn for the pursuit of success
I am afraid it is, and that's why the FIA bows down to their wishes, because they are the ones that invest heavily in F1. The era of the independent "garagists" as Enzo Ferrari used to call them, could be coming to an end.
I thought the same in the mid 2000, with Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Ferrari, Toyota and Honda filling the grid. Then half of them quit and Brawn and Red Bull won, with some help from Bernie and the FIA, as they were having a power struggle with the big manufacturers. Things can change quickly in F1.
2009 was a freak year in F1, IMO. Honda suddenly gave up and took its engine, but allowed a management buyout and left behind its installations and chassis before donating a substantial amount of money as compensation. Looking for a team to buy outright as they were splitting from McLaren, Mercedes accepted to step in at short notice as engine supplier on the promise that the outfit would be for sale at the end of the year. So Brawn had state of the art chassis, top engines, and a budget to run the show. You couldn't repeat this set of circumstances .
Don't forget the double diffuser thing which, while a clever interpretation of the rules, was down to pure luck regarding the FIA letting it slide.
Well, I wouldn´t say i was pure luck. The 3 teams that were using it needed a little "push", while the 3 big teams that were threatening to create their own championship didn´t. For FIA and FOM it was "convenient" to turn a blind eye.
Red Bull is a multibillion dollar company with tons of money to burn.. So even though they aren't a car manufacturer, they have the bank account to be like one in F1 unlike Williams and other small teams.
Williams is small now but once upon a time they had lots of money to burn too and were a "factory" team despite not being owned by a car manufacturer. Same for McLaren. So it´s not really important if the team is a "garagiste" or a factory team... as long as someone is pumping the right ammount of money.
You can check that, but there were less car manufacturers' teams in F1 when Williams and McLaren were at the top in the 90s, I think. They fell behind when they lost manufacturers support and became just customer teams. BMW leaving Williams, and Mercedes abandoning McLaren announced a lean period for both. Red Bull and Toro Rosso are unique in that they are teams owned by a sponsor of substantial means. Nobody knows what would happen to the teams if Mateschitz one day decides to stop the advertising campaign for his energy drink company. They will probably be sold off.
If I recall correctly, up to a billion USD a year. I mentioned it in another thread, but I think their downfall was due to their location in Cologne, Germany. It is hard to recruit F1 engineering talent out there when the best are in Motorsport Valley in the UK and probably aren't too keen to uproot and leave if they're established already. F1 is hard as it is traveling the world, but that is a whole 'nother level. IMO it's the same reason Sauber is terrible and BMW couldn't do anything being based in Hinwil. It's kind of like the Research Triangle in North Carolina. Everyone does better by being close to one another than being off in nowhere like an island...
Yes, but that was because they lost the support (cash, tech, free engines) from the manufacturers, not because they weren´t OWNED by the manufacturers. What I mean is that, with the right resources, a non factory owned team can win, just like Red Bull did.
Yes, why not. Red Bull is an oddity in F1. But in fact, they have been treated like the factory team by Renault for a long time (the Vettel era, at least), just like McLaren is considered the Honda-preferred team up to now.
