Baulz wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024, 20:15
More frequent and significant rule changes would spice things up.
The problem with budget cap, wind tunnel restrictions, and no testing it is really hard if not impossible for a team to catch up. Red Bull got an advantage just like Mercedes with the engines and will maintain that advantage due to restrictions.
Why does this myth keep coming back. There is absolutely no evidence that the budget cap makes catch-up impossible. We saw a similar lack of catch up without the budget cap between teams on more or less equal spending, with the main difference that they were spending 3x more than they are now - and the other teams that were not spending that amount had no chance of even competing. The fact that for 3 years RB is reasonably ahead of the rest (and only so after a TD in 2022 ruined the competition) is by far not enough to support the premise that the budget cap is to blame. On the other hand, decades of prior F1 data have clearly shown that there is a strong correlation between spending and points scored, and that prior to the budget cap, F1 was pay-to-win.
What F1 needs to 'be fixed' in my opinion is not more frequent rule changes; at best that scrambles the field and makes a new team dominant every 2 years.
What F1 needs is a long term vision on how it develops: gradual, predictable developments that teams can anticipate, and where they do keep building on prior years. In that way, you can maintain changes instead of a fully frozen ruleset, but you do have chance of convergence - because what we saw in the MB-dominated era was basically that convergence can happen if the regulations are stable (and I think also if they gradually, predictably develop), but that it takes around 5 years.
For the rest, IMO, F1 needs the following:
- A better budget cap. Include everything, including salaries of the top team personnel and drivers (of course, the limit will need to be higher then, perhaps 180-200 million). That introduces a new trade-off: spend more on top drivers leaving less development budget? Or take chances with cheaper, unproven drivers and have more development budget?
- A decision on whether F1 wants to be a (team)sport, entertainment venue, or an avenue of technology development relevant for road cars. If it's the latter, we need to face the reality of other energy carriers than fossil fuels (it would be quite interesting to set a max. CO2/km target which reduces every year, and let teams figure out how to achieve that... if you want some diversity on the grid). If it's pure sports or entertainment, you can keep the fossil fuels - as long as we acknowledge that F1 is using outdated tech for entertainment purposes, like archery. If you want to be pure entertainment? Further restrictions to the car design - maybe standardization even, such that it really is a driver competition. A team (engineering/design) sport? Provide more less restrictive design rules, such that we have more variety on the grid. But a likely result is that one team will dominate for some time - and then we need to accept that.
- Vastly reduce the influence of the teams on decisions. We can use a few more teams, and having existing teams essentially block that is not a good situation. Also get rid of all legacy payments and such. All teams are equal, and should be treated as such.
