3 car teams and single entries

[Big Tea]

I hear 3 car teams and single car teams are being touted again, whats the feeling here?
My thoughts are that single car teams would be fine, but they would have no chance of winning the constructors championship.
May be good as a sort of 'start up allowance' for a fixed period of, what? 3 years? There would have to be strict rules of affiliation to existing teams though to prevent it being used as an 'ally' for scoring reasons.

3 car teams I am against, unless there is some sort of stipulation a driver with less than X races and is again not counted in the Constructors points. The same drawback as with the single car team, there has to be rules to stop the 3rd car being a blocker.
All in All undecided as more cars and drivers mean better racing, but so many pitfalls

[jjn9128]

I'd like something between - a single car entry can be a 3rd car from a top team but it must be run by a different set of mechanics from a separate pit garage, in a different livery, and have a young driver behind the wheel. It wouldn't be viable for constructors points but would be for drivers points.

[Big Tea]

Thinking longer on this, I wonder if the reasoning behind not allowing single car teams is not so much new entries, but existing teams reducing to single car?

STR and Sauber could comfortably become good single car teams, which would mean 2 less cars on track.

[Big Mangalhit]

Sauber will love the 3 car idea

[langwadt]

I hear 3 car teams and single car teams are being touted again, whats the feeling here?
My thoughts are that single car teams would be fine, but they would have no chance of winning the constructors championship.
May be good as a sort of 'start up allowance' for a fixed period of, what? 3 years? There would have to be strict rules of affiliation to existing teams though to prevent it being used as an 'ally' for scoring reasons.

3 car teams I am against, unless there is some sort of stipulation a driver with less than X races and is again not counted in the Constructors points. The same drawback as with the single car team, there has to be rules to stop the 3rd car being a blocker.
All in All undecided as more cars and drivers mean better racing, but so many pitfalls

or make it that only the best and worst placed car of the three in a team score points

[Big Tea]

I hear 3 car teams and single car teams are being touted again, whats the feeling here?
My thoughts are that single car teams would be fine, but they would have no chance of winning the constructors championship.
May be good as a sort of 'start up allowance' for a fixed period of, what? 3 years? There would have to be strict rules of affiliation to existing teams though to prevent it being used as an 'ally' for scoring reasons.

3 car teams I am against, unless there is some sort of stipulation a driver with less than X races and is again not counted in the Constructors points. The same drawback as with the single car team, there has to be rules to stop the 3rd car being a blocker.
All in All undecided as more cars and drivers mean better racing, but so many pitfalls

or make it that only the best and worst placed car of the three in a team score points

This is open to all sorts of team orders then though.

[NL_Fer]

I was thinking about the idea, that stops drivers from being employees for a team, but uses their sponser money to buy/lease the car and support from a team. This way a team should not be able to ban other top drivers for taking the 2nd seat. As things are going now, it is just bad to see a driver like Alonso being unable to take up the top seat next to Hamilton/Vettel.

It needs major working out the details and ends the WCC, but the idea sounds tempting.

[langwadt]

I hear 3 car teams and single car teams are being touted again, whats the feeling here?
My thoughts are that single car teams would be fine, but they would have no chance of winning the constructors championship.
May be good as a sort of 'start up allowance' for a fixed period of, what? 3 years? There would have to be strict rules of affiliation to existing teams though to prevent it being used as an 'ally' for scoring reasons.

3 car teams I am against, unless there is some sort of stipulation a driver with less than X races and is again not counted in the Constructors points. The same drawback as with the single car team, there has to be rules to stop the 3rd car being a blocker.
All in All undecided as more cars and drivers mean better racing, but so many pitfalls

or make it that only the best and worst placed car of the three in a team score points

This is open to all sorts of team orders then though.

if only done for the WCC I don't see why

[Zynerji]

Not a big fan of 3 car teams... I would rather see customer cars...

[Big Tea]

I am expecting the next suggestion to be rent-a-car for one race at a time, with guest drivers from football or baseball cooking whatever
Having said that, If they can get within a set % on qualifying, why not?

[notsofast]

This being a technical forum, I would have guessed that most here would prefer F1 to be primarily a constructors' championship.

One idea is to give the engine manufacturers a bit more leeway. Instead of setting a maximum of three engines per driver, give each engine manufacturer a maximum. For example, with Ferrari supplying Haas and Sauber, there would be a maximum of 18 Ferrari engines per season. How those 18 are allocated is up to the manufacturer and the constructors.

I suppose this would then lead to Vettel getting a new engine each race, and the backmarkers incurring the penalties. But the leaders would be free to push and not worry about "managing" the engine.

[langwadt]

I am expecting the next suggestion to be rent-a-car for one race at a time, with guest drivers from football or baseball cooking whatever
Having said that, If they can get within a set % on qualifying, why not?

back in 2009 Sebastien Loeb was denied a super license for having too little track experience...

[Cold Fussion]

What is the financial benefit of running 1 car instead of 2? Surely the vast majority of the cost in F1 is in the design and RND phase and not in operations. Furthermore, the potential prize money lost from scoring less points will surely outweigh the costs by a decent margin, especially when you consider you can almost always sell your second seat for a significant amount of money.

[Jolle]

I don't think an all ferrari or mercedes podium (for instance) is good for F1. And besides, most of the works teams already have 4 or more cars on the grid.
I rather see some kind of bonus or something for having a junior team, with an agreement to have them in distinctive different liveries and names.

So far so good I think. I don't know how much Mercedes invested in Force India (how about The Smart F1 Team), and if Renault has any plans to begin or sponsor a Dacia/Nissan/Lada/Infiniti team into F1.

[roon]

What is the financial benefit of running 1 car instead of 2? Surely the vast majority of the cost in F1 is in the design and RND phase and not in operations. Furthermore, the potential prize money lost from scoring less points will surely outweigh the costs by a decent margin, especially when you consider you can almost always sell your second seat for a significant amount of money.

Tend to agree with you. In low-volume production like this, material costs will be dwarfed by operational/manufacturing costs. Production capacity may be more relevant. Producing and inspecting twice the number of goods would have a significant cost, again in labor and operations, as well as in manufacturing time. Extra machine tools, metrology, and operators.

Counterpoint could be: focusing resources on one enterprise instead of two could allow a lower-budget team to field one car and driver at the same level as a top-tier team. A Force India with one car & driver could invest in that one car & driver to the same level that a Red Bull does. This does not solve for R&D costs, only race-to-race, trackside operations.