The Debate On Customer Cars

[ESPImperium]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/95784

The debate from 2007/2008/2009 seems to rumble on, but to a lesser amount and is driven by therelationship of McLaren Applied Technologies and Force India and Virgin and other relationships in the sport.

I think this is healthy debate and much needed debate in F1 as i think this is highlighting how to solve a problem of being compeditive in F1 to the 2 newer teams (Virgin/Hispania/Team Lotus) and other teams that can also benifit from strategic partnerships in F1.

I am for "customer cars" in F1, but my view is that smaller teams can buy a Design Licence from a team higher up the grid, but id have some constraints on that Design Licence, id make it that it has to be a 2 year old design and has to be a design that did not come P2, P2 or P3 in the constructors table. This would mean Red Bulls last design they could sell is the RB4, Ferrari the F60 and McLaren the MP4/22.

With the Design Licence, the Chassis must be built by a outside contractor such as EPM Technology or Carbotech, and any saftey updates have to be carried out by buyint team to bring the design up to scratch for that years safety regs.

As for the cost of a Design Licence, id make it arround €5m for 3 chassis to be built, and €1m for every one there after.

As for engine, KERS and tranmissions, im happy with the current regs governing theese, however id make it that Engine Manufacturers who have a works team (Ferrari/Mercedes/Renault) are only allowed to supply one additional team with an engine deal. I know Renault dont own Renault, but it would mean that as soon as they had sold their team, that team should have taken a new name, whitch would have allowed them to supply more teams with an engine. It also makes more teams go with a Cosworth power plant, and bring more manufacturers into the sport in an Engine Only basis. The cost of an engine deal id make €5m a season.

KERS is pretty much integrated to a Engine, but KERS should cost €3m a season, however id have a spec system for €1m as well, but this is only avalable to Cosworth customers. As for a tranmission deal, id make it that teams can supply as many teams as they want with a gearbox, but make it fopr the latest gearbox €5m or a year old transmission €3m. Xtrac and Hewland can also get involved with a spec gearbox for €2m as well.

The teams would then be liable to update the cars design as the "Licencee Team" would not be allowed to use their facilities to update the design.

As for Embedded Staff in smaller teams, id allow this as its a step ahead and allows the larger teams to have another income stream and keeps people in employment. However id make it that the smaller terams can have no more than 40% of their total workforce embedded staff that work on the design and chassis side of things from say McLaren Applied Technology or Red Bull Technology. However specialist Engine, KERS and Tranmission staff are expempted from this, as long as they are the same ammount of staff that run and service those parts from the "works" team. So if Ferrari have 30 KERS engineers then their customer team has to have 30 staff.

Whats the opinion of customer cars in F1, i know ive went off in a rant a little, but it would mean you couls have a team on the grid fo €20m outlay that was semi compeditive and not 7 seconds off the pace, they may be 3 to 4 seconds off the pace whitch is much better i think.

[Richard]

I agree that customer teams could be beneficial. It allows smaller teams to compete who otherwise might not be able to afford a factory.

It would however severely restrict technical diversity. We'd only see 4 designs (RB, McL, Fer, Merc) because teams like Sauber would be better off buying a Ferrari design instead of making their own car.

So whilst I like your idea of a future Eddie Jordon being able to turn up to compete in an old McLaren that he borrowed from Ron Dennis, I'd say it would kill the smaller constructors.

Your thoughts about 2 year old designs does mean that none of them will be eligible because the rules will have changed over that period.

[andartop]

...which brings us to what I believe is really necessary in F1: ensure no major rule changes over 5-10 year periods!

[beelsebob]

No major rule change for 5-10 years would simply result in cars that are too quick to be safe. I am very pro-customer cars, I also don't see the fast pace of rule changes blocking this. Teams could simply have a contract saying something along the lines of "At the first race you get our car as it was in testing", from then on, you always have a car from 2-3 races ago.

[ESPImperium]

I agree that customer teams could be beneficial. It allows smaller teams to compete who otherwise might not be able to afford a factory.

It would however severely restrict technical diversity. We'd only see 4 designs (RB, McL, Fer, Merc) because teams like Sauber would be better off buying a Ferrari design instead of making their own car.

So whilst I like your idea of a future Eddie Jordon being able to turn up to compete in an old McLaren that he borrowed from Ron Dennis, I'd say it would kill the smaller constructors.

Your thoughts about 2 year old designs does mean that none of them will be eligible because the rules will have changed over that period.

Point 1: It would allow smaller teams to compete, but id make it that after so long (probably about 3 or 5 years in the sport) they had to get a factory of their own and have a their first own chassis on the grid.

Point 2: Technichal diversity would still be prevalant as teams cant buy a current design, they would have to take a dated design and bring it up to current regs, and develop it thru the season. Also not allowing teams to buy a successful design would also give the mid pack teams a income stream.

Point 3: It could kill smaller constructors, but with the right safegaurds in place, this wouldnt happen, so teams like Sauber and Williams would still be faster, just.

Point 4: The smaller teams would have to revisit the designs by themselvs and update them to current specs, this will change the design philosiphy a little, but isnt what i mean. Its ment to give them a quality base point from where to go next and bring a smaller team up to the end of the mid pack alot quicker than what they are currently doing, whitch is also semi safegarging tech diversity.

Also the point about a period of rule stability is also needed, say an aggreed 5 year fixed term that after year 1 of them is when the most changes can be made, after that only small tweaks for cost or safety grounds can be made. Also id make it that Powertrains (Engines/KERS/Transmission) have to be kept for a period of 8 years at a time, with adjustments made after year 1 and 3, and probaly year 5. Id allow the engine guys a period every year in the off season where they can adjust anything that isnt moveable or go pop and bang in the engine or the engineblok its self, thus giving many areas of open development.

New aerodynamic formula every 5 and a new engine formula every 8.

Also teams would have to carry a chassis design over for at least 3 years in every new aerodynamic formula, whitch would mean that you could have only 2 new designs every aerodynamic formula, cutting costs. Or you could make teams carry over a design for minimum 2 years without any fundamental change to front & rear crash structures, Gearbox and Chassis design.

Also coupled with the 2014 rules for Transmissions where gear 8 main ratios are locked in at the start of the year for all transmissions and drivers only allowed 4 per season, id adjust this slightly to allowing each driver to take 4 allowed final drive ratio changes over all their 4 gearboxes. http://www.manipef1.com/news/articles/12711/

[TzeiTzei]

Don't like the idea. Teams designing and building their own cars is what F1 is all about. Technical collaboration is allright but buying other teams' old cars is very much a different case.

[beelsebob]

Don't like the idea. Teams designing and building their own cars is what F1 is all about. Technical collaboration is allright but buying other teams' old cars is very much a different case.

Is it? Up until somewhere around the 70s it was entirely normal for teams to buy and sell cars. In fact, it was often the case that teams sold cars to the drivers rather than the drivers racing for the teams.

[raymondu999]

For the sake of the debate; Was last year's HRT; and Virgin, not counted? They were bought from Dallara/Wirth respectively

[Richard]

A possible halfway option would be to allow customer chassis including crash structures without any bodywork, floor or aero.

That would save the smaller teams the cost of production of large components. They could buy in the chassis, engine, gearbox, electronics and hydraulics, but having to make their own aero parts would mean they couldn't buy a winning car.

[mx_tifoso]

As far as customer cars go I have to say that I don't favor it since it takes the whole point away from the constructors concept of F1. There could only be two chassis from each team racing at a time, period. Outsourcing your chassis design to a supplier that doesn't compete in F1 is fine though.

But I don't know what to think about the partnership between McLaren and Force India in that the latter uses McLaren employees and shares other technical material. It's easy to justify but at the same time it doesn't sound all that right to me.

[cossie]

no, it will lead to spec racing, and spec racing sucks

[mx_tifoso]

I wouldn't say that it "sucks", but it serves a very different purpose.

[cossie]

As having to witness what spec racing did ti AOW racing I will always stand by spec racing sucks, do not let F1 go down that road, a bit from Bruce Ashmore on spec racing
Ashmore reflected on how CART's many managers and marketing men told the teams and the car and engine builders through the organization's hedays that the fans turned out only to see the drivers. There was little or no appeal in the cars or engines claimed those many geniuses who helped drive CART into the ground.

"When it was 1,000 horsepower and four engine companies were going at it and you had all the combinations of three different chassis and four engines we were always told that wasn't what the fans came to see," Ashmore recalls. "We were told they came to see the star drivers and we always wondered how true that was. We used to ask let's see what happens when everybody is driving the same equipment. Let's see how many fans you've got. I guess we have the answer to that today don't we?"

We've witnessed a sad, inexorably silly and lethal story over the past fifteen years. The lack of leadership, technically and otherwise, has been stunning. And so it continues.

[FW17]

What are the current regulations on customer cars? Are they still allowed to run chassis that are 2 years old?

[FoxHound]

With a bit of work, customer cars could be a very good solution.

The devil is in the detail however. What I would see working would be cars that still required some development from the customers.
The seller would give the customer specs for the upcoming season, along with CFD and windtunnel models, alowing them some form of autonomy on development.

Front wings, diffusers and engine mapping would be up to the customers to work out. The costs would be far less than the current 60-100million outlay of the middle to back markers, and racing would have more potential to be closer and therefore more exciting.
In my view this is a far better solution than budget caps, or resource restrictions which have already seen fail.
The only caveat to this, would be if a marussia "Ferrari" started beating the factory team with its own wares.
Unlikely, but plausible.