When the sport was awash with tobacco money about 15 years ago, the big teams all had an entire testing team, completely divorced from their race team, which would spend most days of the year simply hammering around the racetracks of Europe, at astronomical expense. Such things are illegal now because if they were not the sport would be dead within five years.
F1 is almost purely play-to-win, to use a modern coinage. The aerodynamics involved have been so insanely optimized that teams spend millions per year to employ some of the best aerodynamicists in the world to eke out another 0.005 secs/lap over the competition.
The performance gap between the top and the rest is fairly proportional to the spending gaps. In recent years it's been Mercedes winning every championship, with Ferrari winning a share of races and Red Bull stealing one or two. Those top 6 cars are often a full minute ahead of the pack after just a dozen laps or so. The rest of the cars have no chance at all. This year it's even worse as Ferrari got caught doing something illegal so their engine has been nerfed. Mercedes just drive away at the start and are almost never remotely challenged. Now in this environment, how many sponsors/car companies want to spend hundreds of millions per year just to tool around multiple minutes behind the Mercedes cars? It's just not a good investment.
And many good ideas to counteract this (reverse-grid sprint races on Saturday to decide starting order on Sunday, as opposed to traditional qualy, at select tracks) are lampooned by the fanbase for being untraditional. Unfortunately if the sport continues like this there won't be any traditions left to uphold at all; I understand their complaints but it's a delicate balance.
The latest attempt to restore some modicum of balance is spending caps. The only chance F1 has to survive long term is to encourage new teams to the sport and discourage current ones from leaving, and that means (a) limiting spending across the grid, and (b) not allowing the top engine manufacturers free reign over the formula. Unrestricted research/testing would hasten its demise because it's just another opportunity for the rich teams to spend more. And point (b) above is what killed the LMP1 class; engine manufacturers exercise political sway to make it harder for other manufacturers to enter/win/compete, but then the grid starts dying and those manufacturers pull out, leaving a set of ossified regulations that make it almost impossible for new engine manufacturers to enter.
But in racing, so much spending is “off the field”. Seems tough to audit and easy to cheat.
Things, that were only in racing cars years ago, appear now in production cars. Basically, Mercedes can afford to try new things in racing, because it will bring them money in the long run, by selling those new features in their "normal" (road) sports cars. Even if we limit the research costs, some other Mercedes team will work with (eg.) engine optimizations for their production sports cars, and those findings will also find their way to racing.
Even with mainstream car makers (which most of the companies there are), it's easier to develop racing stuff, if you then sell a bunch of very expensive, very fast street-legal cars, than if you sell mostly "normal, working people cars".
Maybe you meant "pay-to-win".
I absolutely do not discount driver skill. It's still there. But it's primarily a money game.
That's the thing I always wondered. How much skill vs car there is in modern F1. ATM I'm on the side of car being the biggest factor (subpar F1 driver will win in the best car).
I agree, Bottas is a living example. But I think any of the current drivers on the F1 grid will start to win races in the Mercedes car. Beating Hamilton is another thing however.
just a clarification, Ferrari has not been caught doing something illegal, they signed an agreement on how to handle the engine in exchange of some kind of assurance by FIA that won't happen again.
The story says someone inside Ferrari told FIA that the Ferrari engine might not be 100% legal, FIA started an illegal investigation that also involved spies inside Ferrari's factory and industrial espionage, but nothing illegal has been officially found, it would have meant for FIA to admit they ran an illegal operation.
That's how the new Ferrari/FIA deal was born.
Problem is every team is doing something the regulation does not permit, FIA has not enough people to check everything and probably not even the know how to understand exactly what's going on, cars have become too complex, but if you go slow nobody cares. See Racing Point breaking system affair. It's illegal for sure, but no fine has been issued because they need racing point to be there and fill up the grid.
On the other side, everybody knows that the "over 1 thousand" horsepower Mercedes engine is doing something not completely legal, the new regulation for this year were made explicitly to avoid having engines too powerful and 1 thousand horsepower was considered an hard limit, impossible to surpass, by FIA engineers, yet Mercedes it's around 1,020 .
But admitting that the multi championships winner is cheating, after an investigation that without informants with very specific insider information could take years, would mean casting a very bad shadow on the entire F1 circus.
You mean aside from the €400k fine...? (along with the deduction of 15 points in the constructor's championship)
- Mercedes is the real offender here. They knew very well that the brake ducts of RP were illegal, but said nothing.
- it's peanuts, and only because Ferrari kept appealing against legality of RP brake ducts, the only team left taking actions after even Renault, who made the original protest, dropped it. Coincidentally after dropping the protest Renault have started flying
I used the word "fine" but I should have used penalty, RP should not be allowed on tracks for using illegal parts.
Ferrari is not allowed to run with their original engine - even though officially nothing wrong has been found - and it's probably the only "clean" (as not illegal) engine this year.
There's a small number of teams that keep winning and have most of the fans. Having the fastest car this year gives you a leg up next year, having the fastest car attracts the fastest drivers, and having the most fans gives you negotiating leverage over the governing body.
For example, Ferrari have so many fans and so much negotiating leverage they get given $100 million every year - a "heritage bonus"
Uncapped spending would mean all the other teams would either go bankrupt, or be completely uncompetitive.
did it kill the tennis sport and/or is it killing the sport? you could argue that way given that it is always the same folks winning the big tournaments
physios (and all other folks) that fly with you. first class and private flights (hilarious that the top players are flown on the tournament dime to the tournaments), perfect nutrition (potentially with personal chefs), nutritionists, drugs or drug therapies, surgeries, preventative medicine etc. staying in a topnotch hotel for two or three weeks prior to a grandslam tournament to get accustomed to the location and time zone.... the list goes on and on.
federer can spend 5 million on it per year without notiicing it. the world number 100? probably 20k.
The costs to have a F1 is incomparable. Any single part alone is astronomical and many have to be changed between races. Having a car at all for training is a miracle!
the racket and shoes don't matter in terms of expenses, at all. RF's cost is in the millions and you are comming up with rackets... he is drawing a completely unfair advantage that only maybe 3 or 4 other tennis players can afford.
thats like saying the F1 team only needs to purchase tyres.
Sport should be more about individual qualities of the sports-man/woman than about money buying them some more advanced technology.
Look at how it is now: Mercedes has one official team, one unofficial (racing point) and a third "hidden" team, the former Williams. Where is Toto Wolff going after the announcement that he will leave Mercedes? and why you say Williams? (Wolff has bought shares of both Aston Martin - former Racing Point - and Williams)
That's 6 Mercedes cars, but only 2 allowed to go fast and win.
Ferrari-Alfa Romeo are in a similar situation.
I say let them race and see what happens.
Put the human factor back by having less cars, but with similar performances.
Honda had a works team and pulled out at the end of 2008. They sold the team to Brawn which won the 2009 title with a low budget by exploiting a loophole in the rules. The other teams couldn't catch up soon enough. Brawn had no money left and sold to Mercedes. Red Bull won the next four titles and Mercedes all the other titles up to now.
Williams and Toyota started with a double diffuser as well. Also to be clear Honda had planned for double diffuser on the 2009 car before being bought by Brawn.
So, we just need companies with a lot of money that are interested in technical advances and advertising and don’t care about RoI like banks might? What about Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, ... any takers?
It's already dead. Might as well have the testing.
It's not been interesting for a while. There may be > 10 cars, but there's very few that actually make it to a win, and there's been only one that's mattered each year for almost a decade.