Ideas to cut costs in F1

[G-Rock]

Since the FIA is really losing their minds with cost cutting measures, how about we give them some ideas.

My idea would be for the FIA to buy or copy Nascar chassis, with Nascar standardized engines (who gives a F#@& if they are pushrod and based on 70's technology), cut the fenders and roof off to make them open wheel and we have a low cost racing series. They could even slap some KERS technology on to make it green.

[Giblet]

I figure get rid of engines altogether, and start all the cars at the top of a hill, and have a BMX style start with a gate that falls forward.

It's green, cheap, and a good short race cuz hey, F1 is never about the fans right?

[Ogami musashi]

Cut costs?

Simple:
-bring the number of wheels from 4 to 2
-Make the wings lift (it costs so much to make downforce so if you invert it, it may even gives you money.)
-Allow the driver to make only the half race distance, the other half being done by a drone.
-Reduce the length of tracks.
-Remove air conditioning, onboard Hi-Fi and GPS from the cars;
-Reduce de number of drivers to 2. That's the only quantity needed to have competition.
-Allow competition but only by allowing teams to choose on which side of the car they'll put their 2 wheels.
-Scrap TV broadcasting, what's the use for?


Well there's many more , but definitely cost cutting is "not rocket science" (copyright Fans-that-redo-F1-each-day) so solutions are simple.

[Belatti]

Here it is an article in Spanish about Cosworth.

http://8000vueltas.com/2007/08/31/el-ul ... e-cosworth

I will translate some facts and figures:

- In 2005 each manufacturer spent arround 200 mill USD in their engine programs, while Cosworth total turnover (including F1, IRL, Champ Car and WRC) was arround that.
- Even spending that few, they reach 915CV at the end of 2005 with the V10 in red bull.
- The difference between Cosworth and the others was that Cosworth recycled gears, camshafts, carbon elements, rods, valves and other stuff. Only blocks, pistons and rings, bearings and cyl head was thrown away no matter how they where.
- In 2006 Cosworth only had 1 engine failure (Rosberg - Malaysia) and the 2.4 V8 could run more than 1/3 of the race using its full 20,000 rpm. The power was 750HP that traduced to a V10 would be almost 940HP, impressive for 1 year of development in such a little company.

I know what you all are thinking by now but the article already mentions it: its ironical that in the age of cust cutting the most cost efficient company was left over...

[ISLAMATRON]

hmmmm I thought this was a serious forum.

Standardize air filters, mirrors, wheels, brake ducts, wheel nuts, etc.... things we dont really care about

Big Ideas to reduce costs & make the cars green & increase technology, keep the v-8's for 2009-2010 with no particular rev limit but make them last 4 races along with the gearboxes. Then make a new engine formula for 2011, 2L straight 4, direct injection, no pneumatic valves, with limited fuel flow and limited fuel volume, with unlimited KERS, 6 race engine/gearbox/KERS life, with entire drivetrain available to independant teams for 10 million US per year.

biggest cost saving... maintain this aero config for the next 3 years at least.

[pipex]

Thanks Belatti, great article. I enjoyed reading it

[SoundMan]

hmmmm I thought this was a serious forum.

Standardize air filters, mirrors, wheels, brake ducts, wheel nuts, etc.... things we dont really care about

Big Ideas to reduce costs & make the cars green & increase technology, keep the v-8's for 2009-2010 with no particular rev limit but make them last 4 races along with the gearboxes. Then make a new engine formula for 2011, 2L straight 4, direct injection, no pneumatic valves, with limited fuel flow and limited fuel volume, with unlimited KERS, 6 race engine/gearbox/KERS life, with entire drivetrain available to independant teams for 10 million US per year.

biggest cost saving... maintain this aero config for the next 3 years at least.

+1

that all sounds very good to me. i like that alot

[persovik]

The most efficient cost-cutting exercize would be to allow the teams to reap the benefits from previous cost-cutting exercizes. Many of the changes from the last few years have been costly in the short term and the long term savings have never been realized because of new changes.
Sort of like tearing down an expensive house to build a slightly cheaper one, and repeating the process every year.

[mike]

i think relating road tech to F1 cars is a great way to save money
for example most manufacturer around the world already have KERS technology, some even much more advance than the ones you will see on next years car
if big manufacturers are willing to put billions and billions into develop KERS then F1 is the perfect competitive platform to accelerate the development of KERS

i think the only way that we can make F1 low cost is to promote low cost performace technology for them to develop.
it is meaningless to develop engines that can rev 20k rpm, they spend so much effort on making the internals lighter with metal matrix composites, when they should promote a inline 4 turbo formula, with 10k rev limit and limited boost, like 15psi
And i think they should cap the fuel used in each race, like a 100L limit, then team are forces to develop fuel efficient cars and greatly more advance KERS systems,and who knows teams might even cut downforce just to make it to the end of the race

Another reason which FIA want f1 to be low cost is to bring close racing, they want all the teams spending the same amount of money and provide a even field. and as we see in many seasons teams with the big budgets are not winning nor beating teams with a significant lesser budget.
What they should really consider as a solution is customer cars, but with good regulation like, no two cars can have the same engine and chassis package.
The last 2 years we hav red bull and STR running this arrangement, and i fail to see the down side of it, if customer cars are allowed, force india could run a Mclaren chassis and a ferrari engine, and chassis providers will also be introduced to the series, and FIA may also chose to simply cap the almount of testing per chassis, so that teams wouldn't get extra miles if they sell others their chassis. And if engines are different to the chassis, a fair bit of engineering will have to be provided from the customer team, fair and equal and cost saving.

[WhiteBlue]

the FiA is doing the right thing to go to the market and find out what an affordable F1 engine really will cost. I'm quite sure there is no real intention to piss off the big automotive teams. they just want to stop the big teams to use their endless supply of money to outrace the small teams.

I'm sure Cosworth can do it for 5 mil € on a profit. to make it work you have to make sure the other engines would have no competitive advantage from spending so much more. as soon as the fixed engine price is accepted the talk of stadard engines will be gone. competitive advantage should really come from fuel efficiency and not from spending more money.

Less testing and more televised hours at race weekends are another way to take the costs down. I find it obscene that F1 tested the week before the race at several veues this year. That was money entirely wasted. cut the testing kms in half, which is still enough.

next they can cut the number of team personnell at races. let them do 30 races and allow them only halve the people in the pit lane they have now. have longer refuelling times or do a way with refuelling. this will again help teams with fuel efficiency. have just 2 people change wheels where they employ 8 or 12 now. cut telemetry engineers from 8 or 10 to 2 or 3. all the people saved can be employed to do more races and generate more TV and sponsoring revenues with lower prices for tickets. if there are 30 instead of 17 GPs ticket prices and race fees will go down.

[Ray]

Here it is an article in Spanish about Cosworth.

http://8000vueltas.com/2007/08/31/el-ul ... e-cosworth

I will translate some facts and figures:

- In 2005 each manufacturer spent arround 200 mill USD in their engine programs, while Cosworth total turnover (including F1, IRL, Champ Car and WRC) was arround that.
- Even spending that few, they reach 915CV at the end of 2005 with the V10 in red bull.
- The difference between Cosworth and the others was that Cosworth recycled gears, camshafts, carbon elements, rods, valves and other stuff. Only blocks, pistons and rings, bearings and cyl head was thrown away no matter how they where.
- In 2006 Cosworth only had 1 engine failure (Rosberg - Malaysia) and the 2.4 V8 could run more than 1/3 of the race using its full 20,000 rpm. The power was 750HP that traduced to a V10 would be almost 940HP, impressive for 1 year of development in such a little company.

I know what you all are thinking by now but the article already mentions it: its ironical that in the age of cust cutting the most cost efficient company was left over...

It absolutely blows my mind that arguably the best engine company in F1, dollar per horsepower, was so suddenly and without reason dropped. Cosworth is not a company to take lightly and they proved that with the phenomenal engines they built.

I don't necessarily agree with a budget cap across the board. It's their money to spend so let them spend it. Having said that, I would encourage more efficient use of that money in R&D in alternative powertrain systems. HERS and KERS type stuff. That way if they are going to spend lots of money, at least the rest of the world will benefit. That's what impressed me about Corvettes ALMS and LMS program. They've been running E85 for a few years now, and even with less distance per tank they've smoked all comers for the past few years. THAT'S where I'd make the budgets go to, alternative energy source development. There is no better engineering platform for vehicles than F1.

[Belatti]

I was reading this article:
The design process by Williams' Sam Michael
http://www.f1technical.net/news/11163
and instantly an idea bloomed:

Even by the time the car is launched it is out of date. By that we mean that some parts on it have already been rendered obsolete by other parts developed in the wind tunnel since it was released from design for manufacture.

Even if we all know this is necessary to achieve a respectable level of competitiveness, it sounds plain stupid. So they design something that will be obsolete even before using it.

Well, here is my idea:

* Release the tightly leashed rulebook (Everybody happy)
* Allow two car specs per year: that is, you wont change the car every race, race after race, but just once a year. It wont be allowed even to test the redesigned parts till mid year spec swap.

This way, if you designed a bad car you will pay a high price the first half of the year, but you can recover the second half. Million new parts tests will be reduced drastically. Engineers will have to improve the modeling process because they wont be able to make mistakes (even more than now).

I dont know if you get the idea, but the spirit of all this is to really get sure the thing works before actually building it, as it seems it is happening now.

[pipex]

Nice idea Belatti!. Always things can be improved, and restructuring the way how its done should save a lot of money. It shows than in F1 there are a lot of ways to cut costs, and not only the Jenson Button unnecessary helmets

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, some ideas are pretty good for bean counters. But most of them would leave the majority of engineers in F1 without a work.

My proposal is short and it's not for cutting costs, but to increase benefits for teams (engineering style: you don't cut corners, you increase efficiency, it's cheaper and faster).

Ciro's proposal: get rid of FOM. (a.k.a. as "grow a pair" ).

Now, a long explanation.

As a system engineer, I have to think about the British Railroad example you learn in first semester, when studying Systems General Theory. I quote from memory (highly unreliable memory is mine):

British railroads had a bad economic moment at the beginning of the XXth century. So, a new administration decided to cut costs. They studied which were the less profitable segments of the network and elliminated them. They were able to cut 30% of the network.

A few decades later, a new administration, also stressed by financial problems, decide to cut again the less profitable segments. Again, they found they could cut 30% of the network.

In the 90's, a new administration made a new study. Guess what: they found that they had to cut 30% of the network.

Stafford Beer's conclusion: any system has 30% of components that are non-profitable. If you cut the non-economical parts, in a few years the system reacommodates and ends again with parts that are un-economical.

So, be careful with cutting what's not useful in a system: after a few rounds of cutting everything that's not useful, you end without a system. In the end, the way of the "yang engineer" is to increase efficiency. The way of the "yin engineer" is to cut costs.

What's superfluous? The black part or the white part? You could draw the image without one of its parts, couldn't you?


Simple: the overhead costs that FOM imposes on F1 teams are larger than anything. If you could avoid the "financial" costs, you could build the engines of pure gold and diamonds and have extra money to double the salaries of everybody.

hmmmm I thought this was a serious forum.

Yeah, we've noticed... However, it's not entirely true, as long as modbaraban, giblet, ogami and a few others are around. I think they reserve the right to make jokes about anything.

[Conceptual]

How long does everyone think it will be until the computational simulations are so good that there would not need to be upgrades?

THAT would be a killer formula, but everyone would be building the same car...