What do you guys/girls think about the costumer cars thing thats been going on for a while? Is it good for F1? Bad? What about the year old chassis idea - would that be acceptable?
personally, i dont like it....i think it will lead to F1 becoming like Cart/Champcar with most or all cars nearly identical.
i say keep it a team built chassie for that team, not for customers....engines, sure, but chassies, no.....
I think that teams should build their own car, the engine should be optional, allow independants, 1 car teams like the old days, and 1 make tyres. We have a drivrs championship and a constructors, not a tyres, so either they should all be the same or at least 4 different companies should make them for variety.
1 car teams would be much easier because it would allow lower end teams to really save money, like Minardi Saulber and Jordan, if we had a 24/26 car grid and the last 4-6 cars were all independants we would have much more competition at the back of the field (even an independants champ perhaps?) so all the teams who wanted to enter in 2008 but missed the cut would get a chance to prove themselves and consider a real team the next eason.
Murphy's 9th Law of Technology:
Tell a man there are 300 million stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
Bad Idea. Then whats the point of a constructor's championship? Building your own car is what separates F1 from other open wheel series. It used to be you could purchase a car/engine and race, but the fields weren't much bigger. Just more slow cars to go around. The cost to transport the teams would still require a large budget. And would those privateers be required to run all the races?
The FIA is like any racing body: expensive & complicated is legal - cheap & easy is illegal.
I think customer cars would a good idea for cost savings for the smaller teams. The $ saved from extensive R&D and crash testing can used on the racetrack. Will F1 eventually turn into a SPEC series because of it - No. Sure 2 teams may share a chassis, however the development of those chassis will not be the same. Aerodynamic and suspension tweaks will be different from race to race thus the cars will perform differently.
Now if F1 embraced innovation instead of refinement, that'd be a different story. But in the spirit of whatever the hell Max is doing, I see customer cars as a benefit to F1, smaller teams, and most importantly: THE FANS.
We all like to see an underdog do well. Imagine the headlines if a Toro Rosso or a Spyker were to out-drive a Ferrari or a McMerc. Watching and attending the races will be much more exciting b/c you don't know who's going to win and which heads are going to roll.
