Pup wrote:I don't disagree with Prost. Aero should be less important. I just don't think that it will effect overall spending. What you said is that aero is what they spend their money on, but I've shown you that engine expenditures are still as high as ever.
What Prost is complaining about is that Renault is spending all this money, yet no one is paying attention. He's speaking for Renault here, so he naturally wants what you do - for the engines to take center stage. I think that's fine.
But the fact that Renault is spending so much money for so little gain, when they don't even get any publicity from it, shows just how meaningless budgets become when the teams are fighting for first. They will spend every dime they have on whatever they can, then they'll ask for more and spend it too, and maybe even a bit more just for good measure. If you tell them they can't spend it on downforce, they'll spend it on engines. Or batteries, or brakes, or suspensions or who knows what all. Oh, and they'll also still spend it on downforce.
They aren't just going to pocket the extra change and go home. They'll spend it. They'll most definitely spend it. And when the season is over, they'll look at the damage and say "Whoa! We sure spent some money there! We should do something about that!" And the teams who didn't win will even go and say that to the FIA.
That's why this is all a bit silly. When McLaren have the biggest budget, they aren't making a peep about cost. But when Red Bull pops up with unlimited funds, suddenly Whitmarsh & Co. are absolutely dismayed at the lavishness of it all. The same goes for the others.
So let the top teams bicker among themselves over who gets to spend the most next year. They exist in a microclimate within F1 that is fairly stable and self-correcting, if mostly unobtainable by the others. They'll spend what they want, and no one can do diddly about it nor should they.
There are two distinct groups within F1 that could use financial help: the tail end and the mid pack. If you want to help the tail enders, then you have to actually make the cost of making a car and then getting it and someone to drive it to the races. The simplest way to do that is with customer cars. Actually, the simplest way is for Bernie to just give them the money, and so he does.
But if you want to help the mid pack, then you need to widen the pool of sponsors within F1. Think about it, all the sport needs are two or three Fortune 500 companies willing to come in as title sponsors and suddenly we have a viable midfield. And to do that, you have to bring the eyeballs and that means a) better racing and b) better promotion. You also need to get rid of stupid rules like having only one title sponsor per team as opposed to per car. Halving the cost of a title sponsorship might in itself bring in the needed funds.
Personally, I think the fight for sponsor money is part of the competition. Much like real life, I suppose. When I went out on my own, I hated the idea that getting work wasn't just about my talent in doing what I do. Turns out, I also have to be good at selling myself. I don't like it, but there it is. Same with F1 - part of it is selling yourself to sponsors in order to survive. I seem to remember Sir Frank once saying that was actually his favorite challenge in running a team.
But yes, get rid of the wings, at least one of them, just because.
Renault seems to think they are getting a good value for what they spend Pup. Refer to what the ex-Renault Sport engine head said about it. If Renault were getting a bad deal for everything as an engine supplier, they wouldn't stick around at all. The F1 team wasn't a good deal for them, so they pulled out, but continued supplying engines.
Prost didn't say a single thing about Renault spending money and seeing nothing in return. Not sure where you picked that up. He is simply stating what I, and others have said - that aerodynamic development is what is eating up excessive amounts of money. Engines have been locked, in-season testing has been banned, and costs are still what they are. For F1 to be a legitimate attraction to auto manufacturers, engines have to be unlocked. Aero needs to locked, or curtailed to the point where there is little to do on that front from a R&D perspective. That would include ruling against aerodynamic trickery when such things show up at a race weekend instead of allowing things to slide because Whiting doesn't know what he is looking at. In any event, it's no coincidence when the engine formula was at its most flexible you saw many engine manufacturers participating in F1. The more restrictive the engine rules became, the less you saw of them since it serves little purpose to design an engine that can never be developed in meaningful sense. F1 aerodynamics have minimal relevancy to road cars, yet F1 does everything it can to continue perpetuating focus on a moronic area.
Regarding F1 sponsorship, top companies do not see it as a good value for their money.
Sure if the costs for title sponsorship were lower, it might be more attractive to them. But as seeing one cannot guarantee how much on-air exposure they will receive, that might have quite a bit to do with it. The awful state of FOM TV production isn't going to help things. I'm afraid though a few Fortune 500 companies entering as sponsors is not going to make the midfield viable. You're always going to have a midfield. The midfield only looked more viable years ago for a plethora of reasons that had less to do with sponsorship, and more to do with where the rules and regulations were at in those days. Before the silly engine rules and other things, you used to see way more mechanical failures over the course of any grand prix. That was what allowed for midfield teams to show up much higher in the standings; better reliability than others on a given race weekend. It also made for more compelling TV to watch since a fan could cheer for an underdog to somehow break into the top 6. With the distribution of points being given from P1 to P10 instead of P1 to P6, it cheapened the thrill of seeing such things. F1 is trying to control unpredictability with what they do now, and as 2013 shows, it backfired tremendously on them as teams opted to just cruise around the circuit for the duration of the race. Racing is about the unpredictable as that is what causes a fan to tune in week after week. Predictable racing results in dull racing, which drives viewership down, and in turn makes little sense for big dollar sponsors to even participate. Why sponsor if teams are just going to cruise around and periodically engage in pseudo-battles that become uninteresting when it becomes obvious that a driver deploys DRS and overtakes with little fuss?
It goes beyond simply selling one's self. The product is abysmal relative to any period in the sport's history, and no amount of selling can cover that up.
doubles the punishment for excess spending, first use the money then see other team take advantage of it