Some of the comments in other threads have touched on backmarkers, teams departing and how best to fill the grid. Personally I'm a great believer in allowing customer cars and think, with the right controls, this is the best way to fill the grid with viable cars and teams. But I'm sure there are other opinions and ideas. I'm not against backmarkers per se, for me the defining credential that every team/car/driver needs to meet is, do they have a plan and path to success. IMO this plan needs to demonstrate the human and financial resources along with the required potential talent. The governing body should focus on tests and requirements oriented around those objectives to determine if any new applicant is going to bring value to F1. Customer cars can play a role here, but, I agree there needs to be limits and controls. Always bearing in mind that F1 has a history of customer cars. There were many seasons with races that had as few as 5 car types. Often there were 5 and even 6 cars from one manufacturer. In the rush to introduce cost savings, what has happened is, creativity has been stifled. The problem here is that creativity and testing is the way lower teams (usually with smaller budgets) have closed the gap and sometimes passed the traditional top teams. By greatly simplify the rules, I feel you will enable creativity (with the vicarious benefit of removing the need for a law degree to interpret things).
No customer cars, ruins the spirit of F1, IMO. My idea I've said before: The top 5 finishers in the WCC get to run a 3rd car. These entries cannot have their points count towards the next year's WCC but they can towards the WDC. This would give more drivers a shot in good equipment and grids would be full.
+1 Further, who/what decides who gets what left-overs? Everyone would want the RB8; Must they sell a couple to Marussia? Marussia & Caterham? Force India? Would anyone want Clifford? [He did manage second after all....] Not a bad idea at all. Would present some logistical challenges but nothing that can't be overcome. I guess these would also be rented to pay jockeys. There's guys out there who would pay *big* money to drive a third RB9 this coming season! Downsides? I reckon the strong would get stronger and the weak weaker. Then the third driver could "interfere" with the efforts of the other guys? Beyond that, I dunno. *Must* the top 5 run a third car? Or can they choose not to? Certainly an interesting idea though. Cheers, Ian
Interesting thought, and indeed having 3 cars as part of a team has also been part of F1's history. To me I don't see much difference to customer cars, but I believe both methods could work, but definitely both methods would need controls mechanisms. The really big and obvious danger here is that you are giving a huge advantage to the teams who are allowed to run a 3rd car. In the current environment it would be come a workhorse test circulating testing various things for the main cars. These teams would get so much more tire info before and during the race. For those reasons I'd prefer to see the extra cars in independent teams.
