Liberty Media New F1 from 2021

[gandharva]

All in all good changes. Seems Sergios rumbling payed off.

[santos]

Increase revs, cheaper engines... if it's still 3 engines per season... looks like a miracle.

[Thunder]

The 2 existing Topics on this have been merged.

[wesley123]

Am I missing something or are most points contradicting each other in some way?

[Gaz.]

Am I missing something or are most points contradicting each other in some way?

It's like 6 people have come up with a wish list then presented it as one without proof reading it.

[AngusF1]

I'll take a stab here.

Perhaps the most consequential change is the $150M (or was it pounds? euros?) budget cap, because a significant portion of the people employed in F1 are going to get the sack. Too bad for them and their families. The engineering staff who are serious about their F1 careers will now have to fight like dogs for three years to determine who gets to stay.

•The PU must be cheaper, simpler, louder, have more power and reduce the necessity of grid penalties.

Good.

•It must remain road relevant, hybrid and allow manufacturers to build unique and original PU.

"Road relevant" = turbo vacuum clearer, "hybrid" = electric engine, "Unique and original" = not a spec engine.

•We believe how you spend the money must be more decisive and important than how much money you spend.

Easy to say but very difficult in engineering reality, because the teams are all full of smart people and will be within 20% spending efficiency of one-another if not much closer.

•While there will be some standardised elements, car differentiation must remain a core value

Boo hiss. F1 cars should be fully custom prototypes with no standardisation.

•The new revenue distribution criteria must be more balanced, based on meritocracy of the current performance and reward success for the teams and the Commercial Rights Holder.

Great profit = greater payout to the teams. Higher place in the standings = more prize money.

•F1s unique, historical franchise and value must and will still be recognised.

Ferrari will still get special money.

•Engineering technology must remain a cornerstone but driver’s skill must be the predominant factor in the performance of the car.

Incredible, if taken literally. Currently car-driver split is above 80-20, probably more like 90-10. This would be very difficult to achieve. Even in MotoGP, is the bike-rider split lower than 50-50? Possibly, or around that point. Getting close to this point would require massively increasing the power, reducing traction, increasing the proportion of tyre grip to cornering performance, probably canning the power steering, and making the drivers actually drive near the limit for most of the race.

•The cars must and will remain different from each other and maintain performance differentiators like aerodynamics, suspensions and PU performance. However, we believe areas not relevant to fans need to be standardised.

No, horrendous. Why? There is no good reason for this. The whole point of F1 is that the cars are unique prototypes. As many fans are engineers of all kinds, all areas of the car are relevant to the fans. The budgets are more than high enough to support fully unique cars.

[AngusF1]

Another query, what will happen to all the money the richer teams make which is over their spending cap if they can't spend it? Given back to the owners as profit? Invested so that when the spending cap rules collapse they'll have an enormous capital reserve? Confiscated by the F1 owners / FIA?

[jjn9128]

Thinking about it I think Liberty were in a position of power here - if their suggestions are common sense and will help wheel-to-wheel action then they would have public opinion on their side. So what is annoying me is that they had the opportunity to tell the public their ideas and strong arm the teams a bit. Even though I hate social media it does give fans a chance to tell teams what they think.

Their spiel when they joined was to be more open to the fans, but then they keep this private with the teams. I think that's what annoys me most.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Not sure if this warrants it's own thread, but I guess there will be major consequences leading from this friday's morning meeting.

https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... 1-bahrain/

Brief overview.

money and governance:
- budget cap 150 million $ (does not include driver salaries, exec salaries, and marketing)
- draconian punishments for anyone trying to circumvent this rule
- use of external watchdogs for policing budget cap
- equal price money distribution between teams
- ferrari's historical bonus cut in half (down to 50 mil)
- all engine manufacturers get a 10 mil bonus
- a simple majority needed for new rules changes (51%), only sensitive topics require 75% majority (at the moment any changes not safety related need 100% agreement after certain deadline)

Engines:
- because the teams did not bring their own proposals to the table liberty is going ahead with their original proposal
- 1.6L V6 to stay
- peak power at +3000 rpm (operating range 13500+ rpm)
- relaxation of fuel flow regs
- removal of MGU-H
- more powerful mgu-k
- standard battery and turbo to keep the costs down
- engine regs are non negotiable (take it or leave it approach from liberty)
https://twitter.com/tgruener/status/982193176889847808

Transmition:
- inner workings of transmitions to be supplied by engine manufacturers, only gearbox itself can still be made by teams (this due to being irrelevant from fan's perspective)

Suspension and tires:
- return to active suspension suggested, with a standard ECU (so the driver can better trim his car in traffic - drs on steroids? )
- 18 inch wheels
- tire warmers ban

If this is indeed true, then I love this! At least Liberty is showing guts. Hope this paves way for simplifying F1, making it affordable for new teams and more competitive. Those who want to go can go!

[Restomaniac]

Not sure if this warrants it's own thread, but I guess there will be major consequences leading from this friday's morning meeting.

https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... 1-bahrain/

Brief overview.

money and governance:
- budget cap 150 million $ (does not include driver salaries, exec salaries, and marketing)
- draconian punishments for anyone trying to circumvent this rule
- use of external watchdogs for policing budget cap
- equal price money distribution between teams
- ferrari's historical bonus cut in half (down to 50 mil)
- all engine manufacturers get a 10 mil bonus
- a simple majority needed for new rules changes (51%), only sensitive topics require 75% majority (at the moment any changes not safety related need 100% agreement after certain deadline)

Engines:
- because the teams did not bring their own proposals to the table liberty is going ahead with their original proposal
- 1.6L V6 to stay
- peak power at +3000 rpm (operating range 13500+ rpm)
- relaxation of fuel flow regs
- removal of MGU-H
- more powerful mgu-k
- standard battery and turbo to keep the costs down
- engine regs are non negotiable (take it or leave it approach from liberty)
https://twitter.com/tgruener/status/982193176889847808

Transmition:
- inner workings of transmitions to be supplied by engine manufacturers, only gearbox itself can still be made by teams (this due to being irrelevant from fan's perspective)

Suspension and tires:
- return to active suspension suggested, with a standard ECU (so the driver can better trim his car in traffic - drs on steroids? )
- 18 inch wheels
- tire warmers ban

If this is indeed true, then I love this! At least Liberty is showing guts. Hope this paves way for simplifying F1, making it affordable for new teams and more competitive. Those who want to go can go!

Indeed. They are pretty much saying to Ferrari 'Go on then big gob, put up or shut up!'.

The fact that Ferrari keep some of their extra is a sweetener. However if any rule change in the future needs only 75% then there is nothing Ferrari can do to stop that being taken away later either.

[ian_s]

I'll take a stab here.

Perhaps the most consequential change is the $150M (or was it pounds? euros?) budget cap, because a significant portion of the people employed in F1 are going to get the sack. Too bad for them and their families. The engineering staff who are serious about their F1 careers will now have to fight like dogs for three years to determine who gets to stay.

Dont forget that the smaller teams will have bigger budgets due to the fairer sharing of prize money, so will be able to recruit.

[astracrazy]

Perhaps the most consequential change is the $150M (or was it pounds? euros?) budget cap, because a significant portion of the people employed in F1 are going to get the sack. Too bad for them and their families. The engineering staff who are serious about their F1 careers will now have to fight like dogs for three years to determine who gets to stay.

I can't believe the budget cap will include staff wages, even though its listed as only excluding execs and drivers. I had a quick look and what I could find Mercs staff wage budget alone is $116 million for 800+ staff. Now considering most big teams have near that then I would expect there costs to be close to that too. Now we add on all the other non-car related costs and your going to be over the budget before you even put pencil to paper designing/building the car.

I think the budget will be for car related stuff only.

[adb]

Fairly impressed with their plans. Although I think they should just raise (or keep at 150) the budget cap a little bit so they can include everybody's wage, leaving out some employees, especially top staff is like asking for a fraud.
Another thing that might be problematic, is this (unnecessary imo) ban on tire warmers? Surely some cars will be much better at warming tires up, not sure how much of an advantage it could be, but I can see it backfiring badly.
Also wouldn't 18inch wheels allow rapid development of brakes, thus reducing braking distances? Which in turn would make outbraking moves even harder, so reduce proper overtaking moves.

Overall, I'm happy and actually impressed with their plans, only a few little things that may backfire. Hope they will stick to their word and won't back off.

[AngusF1]

I can't believe the budget cap will include staff wages,

As far as I can tell, the $150M does indeed include staff wages, otherwise what's to stop teams from employing 1000 engineers? According to the ethos of the changes ("We believe how you spend the money must be more decisive and important than how much money you spend"), the purpose of the cost cap is to give the teams roughly the same budget of engineering man-hours each year. If staff wages weren't included, then I don't see much point in the cost cap.

Further, manufacturing and assembling the cars themselves makes up a fairly minor component of the overall costs, somewhere on the order of $1M per car I read about 5 years ago. Even if the cost has risen recently to say 2-3M it would still be a minor portion.

[kptaylor]

Regarding staff wages, how do manufacturers count? If Merc has $116MM in staff wages what is the racing team versus the PU team?