I don't agree that a team that fields only 1 car could operate at a higher level than a team with more cars. Mainly because the biggest income of a team is sponsorship. And I doubt that sponsors will be willing to pay the same for half as many cars.roon wrote: ↑16 Jul 2018, 04:23...Cold Fussion wrote: ↑15 Jul 2018, 17:52What 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.
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.
I think that more than 1 cars is better for operations because you generally lower the overhead with bigger operations. When you need e.g. 10 people for 1 car, it would be quite possible that you only need 15 people for 2 cars. Additionally you create oportunities for more specializations in your operation.