Ban automakers

[roon]

F1 should break from car manufacturers. Road cars are heading toward automation and electrification. Forced marketing connections between track and road should be abandoned.

Ban automaker association, participation, and funding. Ban Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, and Renault. Leave motorsports companies only. Leave motorsport engine suppiers only. Williams, Sauber, RB, TR, Haas, RP, remain. New entrants will arrive.

This returns the racing cars to a singular focus: laptimes.

This eliminates automaker influence on funding and regulations.

This returns the spectacle to fans, away from pandering outreach to the general population.

[Phil]

It's a little late for that now...

[FrukostScones]

It's a little late for that now...

we already have Indycar. (the laptimes though, cough cough.)

[roon]

LMP1* and LMP2 might be a better analogy.

*Disincluding LMP1H

[zac510]

F1 should break from car manufacturers. Road cars are heading toward automation and electrification. Forced marketing connections between track and road should be abandoned.

Ban automaker association, participation, and funding. Ban Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, and Renault. Leave motorsports companies only. Leave motorsport engine suppiers only. Williams, Sauber, RB, TR, Haas, RP, remain. New entrants will arrive.

This returns the racing cars to a singular focus: laptimes.

This eliminates automaker influence on funding and regulations.

This returns the spectacle to fans, away from pandering outreach to the general population.

Why would a private team not have an interest in marketing, sponsorship, influencing the regulations in their favour, or winning the race as slowly as possible?

A private team and a manufacturer team are one and the same, the latter is just a lot wealthier. In the same way there are poor and wealthy privateers in Sauber and RBR.

Their motivations are all the same, regardless of wealth or ownership.

edit: I want to add that I agree with you in principle that one or two exceptionally wealthy manufacturer and then 10 privateer teams is not a good platform for a balanced racing series. But this proposed rule change would not change the environment the teams operate in and not change their motivations and rich and poor would still exist.

[santos]

Do you know a category of motorsport that doesn't have a automaker? And the problem isn't that. WRC have them and it's totally fine. On the other end, WEC that was becoming a very nice category with the batle between audi, Porsche and Toyota, now i only see it because of the GTE.

[Jolle]

And what about Philip Morris? If a party is responsible for the ever growing costs of F1, they are raising the bar since 1981. They set the bar so high that only a company as Daimler or a money machine like RedBull can compete.

[Xwang]

Are Mercedes and Ferrari really lot more wealthier than RBR that does not have to invest in designing and building an engine?

[mertol]

How is Philip Morris responsible? Why can't the other teams find sponsors? The whole ban on cigarettes is nonsense. Either make them completely illegal or allow their advertising.

[Jolle]

How is Philip Morris responsible? Why can't the other teams find sponsors? The whole ban on cigarettes is nonsense. Either make them completely illegal or allow their advertising.

Philip Morris is a bit more then a sponsor. When the decided to do F1 proper, and not be dependent of a team. They funded Project Four to buy/merge with McLaren and much of the team management was done in Lausanne, next to all of the team marketing of course. After Honda left, the disappointment of Mansell and probably a bit Ron Dennish behaviour, they decided to part with their own team and made a mega deal with Ferrari. Winning at any cost. This destroyed one "garagiste" team after the other. They just couldn't keep up. Mclaren only could keep up because Daimler stepped in and took over the team and same goes for Benneton (and without much succes, Stewart and Sauber of course).

At this moment you could almost divide the big teams from their funding to see how the game is played.
Philip Morris - Ferrari
Daimler - Reynard-Brackly
RedBull - Stewart-Milton Keens
Renault - Enstone
You can almost swap the funding/name and the factory/team without much trouble, as has been happend in the past. What you can also see, that from the four big funders of F1, only two are car brands, the other ones are marketing wizards.

a really fun fact is of course, that the Ferrari team is funded by Philip Morris and FIAT Chrysler themselves fund another team...

In the past the influence of Philip Morris was a lot bigger by they way, they were funding/placing drivers with multiple teams trough the paddock. Just look at old pics, more then half of the cars had a Marlboro logo around the drivers name. Guess you paid/approved that driver?

[zac510]

Great point about Philip Morris Jolle! Their funding created the same imbalance of wealth that a manufacturer can.

How is Philip Morris responsible? Why can't the other teams find sponsors? The whole ban on cigarettes is nonsense. Either make them completely illegal or allow their advertising.

You are accepting that F1 is a meritocracy and that if one team has a very wealthy sponsor backer or manufacturer funding then by merit (wealth) it's acceptable that they win. However, If I understand roon's point, it's that there can be a little bit too much merit sometimes .

Sports with closed economies like NFL can have a salary cap but it's proving difficult in international sports like F1 and soccer.

[Jolle]

Great point about Philip Morris Jolle! Their funding created the same imbalance of wealth that a manufacturer can.

How is Philip Morris responsible? Why can't the other teams find sponsors? The whole ban on cigarettes is nonsense. Either make them completely illegal or allow their advertising.

You are accepting that F1 is a meritocracy and that if one team has a very wealthy sponsor backer or manufacturer funding then by merit (wealth) it's acceptable that they win. However, If I understand roon's point, it's that there can be a little bit too much merit sometimes .

Sports with closed economies like NFL can have a salary cap but it's proving difficult in international sports like F1 and soccer.

American sports like NFL or NBA have another few "tricks" that make if more entertainment business then a sport. The whole draft system is a bit like a balance of performance and makes a loosing team actually a solid investment.

It is kinda fun that in Europe, where we tend to have a socialist liberal economy, with lots of equal opportunity rules, sport is as capitalist as you can imagine while in capitalist America, the sport is the opposite.

[zac510]

It's as if in sport we desire the opposite of what we get in politics!

[strad]

I'm confused... So you would ban Ferrari since they are an auto maker?

[roon]

Yes, because Ferrari will advocate for multi cylinder engines and loudness. Others would advocate lower power:weight ratio drivetrains that achieve other deliverables imposed artificially via regulations. The premise of the thread is to detach marketing convolutedness from the sport. Resulting in racing cars only concerned with lap times and by default reliability among other metrics. Not saying it's right, but it might be worth considering. In the other direction, no road cars will be resembling F1 cars to any remarkable degree. AMG One will be incredibly slower than W10. Furthermore, road cars will become evermore a form of pure functional transportation as suggested in the OP. Ever fewer will care about motorsports veneers placed upon road transports.