Don’t forget that the current spending war was started by Philip Morris all the way back in 1996. Pretty soon al the normal corporate sponsors and other companies were replaced by car manufacturers. With the hight of those years in the early 2000’s, with BMW, Toyota, Mercedes Honda and Renault all having massive budgets while Philip Morris kept upping the budget to keep in front.bill shoe wrote: ↑18 May 2019, 01:36Yes, for sure too late, but I agree with the concept. I think the Big Lie in modern racing is that large corporate money is maybe dubious for the sporting aspect but a necessary evil for the funding. In reality if the big manufacturers were kicked out then the sport would go to a massively cheaper formula and manufacturer money would not be missed. At least by the fans. And for the first time in 20? years the cars would be allowed to start looking fundamentally different instead of using rules to force the same damn overall look plus a few tacked-on anal legality boxes where aerodynamicists are allowed to play with really inefficient aero toys.
The formula evolves to be as expensive as the field will support. So the current set of teams are effectively chosen via willingness/ability to pay rather than through ability & merit as demonstrated in a competitive environment.
I wonder what would happen if PM would call it quits when their current contract runs out.
