Fulcrum wrote: ↑22 Oct 2018, 07:31
Is it sport, is it entertainment, is it both? Which comes first?
Shoot me down all you like, but F1 plays the "game" in a manner equivalent to Manchester United playing at home every game, with the wind behind their backs, with the opposition having to run uphill every half; not discounting the fact they already have the best personnel, best facilities, biggest stadiums, and biggest fan bases. All of their competitive advantages do not need to be slanted any further by making the opposition play balanced on 1 leg.
At every level of the sport, there is positive reinforcement for the "haves" over the "have-nots". Keep it as it is, and it will always be as lopsided as it is. Some would argue, quite rightly, that this is perfectly fair. The fastest should be the fastest, they earned it. You'd have difficulty arguing it makes the sport entertaining though, when competition is confined to 1 driver per team, and 2-3 teams on any given weekend.
Disparaging Americanization of the sport is fine, but you should question whether it would be more, or less, effective than the current system of administration, whereby teams at the back are simply bankruptcies waiting to happen. American teams in American sports are viable businesses. When someone sells up, there are queues of investors looking to get in the door. Like it or not, F1 should be making decisions that precipitate similar circumstances for their participants.
Lastly, I'm not suggesting enforcing "draft" rules in a literal sense. I'm simply advocating for considering some rules that operate in a similar manner, that make sense relative to the domain of F1.
F1 has always been like this, even the second ever year had teams running out of money and had to run to F2 rules to make up the grid.
The average lifespan of a team is 3 seasons. If a team makes it to four seasons then they are in credit with the sporting Gods.
Motorsport has always been expensive, there's two well known sayings attributed to motorsport- to make a small fortune in motorsport, start with a large one. Also, speed costs money, how fast do you want to go? A third which is usually attributed to second hand cars but equally applicable is "fast, reliable, cheap- pick any two".
This isn't just exclusive to F1, the same names dominate their respective sports- Audi & Porsche in sportscars, Rossi and Doohan before him in MotoGP/500s, Penske/Haas/Ganassi in Indycars. 20 years ago Fogarty on a Ducati was unstoppable in World Superbikes.
25 years ago Williams dominated F1, having won the WCC in 1986, 1987, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997. In the years they didn't win they were either second or third, with 1988 being the outlier in 7th. From 1979 to 2004 it's quicker to list the years they were not in the top 4 with just four instances.
Imagine if this topic was written in 2005 with people moaning that Williams, Mclaren and Ferrari are winning everything for the last 25 years and something should be done? Really what has changed other than its now Mercedes, Ferrari and RedBull winning?
