Levelling the playing field

[Brent Mills]

In the past, I took no more than passing interest in F1, but since starting sim-racing, I've been following it more and more, although there are frustrating parts to it. The main one being the fact that the playing field is not level. In no other sport is unfair advantages to certain teams allowed and every effort is made to ensure that.

Obviously F1 is different in that it's car manufacturers sponsoring the whole thing and the quest for technological advantage is somewhat part of the competition, but unfortunately that means as a viewing spectacle it's not that interesting, when the only question is whether it's going to be Rosberg or Hamilton who win. What I want as the viewer is to know who is the best driver? The way things are, this is impossible to know, I mean maybe Markus Erikson would be crushing souls if everyone was forced to drive the same car, we really don't know who is the best in the field, which is a very strange circumstance for any sport. It must truly suck for anyone in the slower cars to know that showing the best skill in the world will never overcome mercedes.

So I would be interested to know if you think every effort should be made to make it a level playing field, and if you do, what are your ideas to achieve this without compromising other aspects of the sport?

As a simple example, what about adding weight ballast to the car according to your standings in the championship? I'm sure some sort of formula could be worked out that would mean the 1st place driver has weight added that means his lap times would be much closer to the 10th place driver. No doubt numerous problems would emerge with this kind of system, but at least it would be a start in (imo) the right direction.

 

[Terry Rock]

Other teams need to get off their a** and do the work.
As to ballast for teams who've done the work and gotten the result....absolutely not.

 

[Decenten]

Other teams need to get off their a** and do the work.
As to ballast for teams who've done the work and gotten the result....absolutely not.

A) A lot of the teams have a better aero package then Mercedes but are getting screwed over due to engine tokens and the limited chance to upgrade of which merc get the same amount of upgrades.
B) Are trying to say that teams like Red Bull and McLaren are not doing any work on their cars? The reason they are so far behind is because of F1 limiting their chance to catch up and when they do get the chance to catch up Merc get that same opportunity and we end up with Mercedes qualifying a second ahead of everybody else. The only team to have made any real improvement is Ferrari and even then they are still the better part of half a second off.

On another point if we gave Red Bull the current spec Merc engine I could easily see that they would be half a second in front of the field and Ferrari wouldn't be too far behind Red Bull if they also got the same treatment

 

[Terry Rock]

A) A lot of the teams have a better aero package then Mercedes but are getting screwed over due to engine tokens and the limited chance to upgrade of which merc get the same amount of upgrades.
B) Are trying to say that teams like Red Bull and McLaren are not doing any work on their cars? The reason they are so far behind is because of F1 limiting their chance to catch up and when they do get the chance to catch up Merc get that same opportunity and we end up with Mercedes qualifying a second ahead of everybody else. The only team to have made any real improvement is Ferrari and even then they are still the better part of half a second off.

On another point if we gave Red Bull the current spec Merc engine I could easily see that they would be half a second in front of the field and Ferrari wouldn't be too far behind Red Bull if they also got the same treatment

Everything you've mentioned is a product of this 'new' F1...not a Mercedes problem.
F1 need fixing...and fast.
Too many people in charge are out of touch or simply don't give a sh** about what the fans of the sport think.
Advertising dollars in the form of stickers on those cars, along with television broadcast rights has long 'trumped' the fan in the stands.
The people running this show could care less if fan displeasure is evident.
They will not change token, give you louder engines, abandon overly complicated cars....heck they won't even roll back a fu**ed-up qualifying format known to be broken.

 

[Decenten]

Everything you've mentioned is a product of this 'new' F1...not a Mercedes problem.
F1 need fixing...and fast.
Too many people in charge are out of touch or simply don't give a sh** about what the fans of the sport think.
Advertising dollars in the form of stickers on those cars, along with television broadcast rights has long 'trumped' the fan in the stands.
The 'powers' are not even remotely interested if it's obvious or not.
They will not change token, give you louder engines, abandon overly complicated cars....heck they won't even roll back a fu**ed-up qualifying format known to be broken.

Although Mercedes did refuse to help Renault and Ferrari find the faults in their engines I think I read somewhere last year. I am hoping that next year with the new regulations that it will close the gap. All I want and I think I speak for the majority is too go into a weekend and have multiple teams and drivers that could win and/or get points. Atm the top 2 is basically decided upon unless something happens lap 1. The rest is a bit up in the air but you will always see the same names in the usual spots.

 

[TomcatMF]

The FIA a F1 blew it with this new formula when they attempted to limit development of the power units and required the teams to use such a low number of PU per season. They should have had left the development completely open for a few years, and at the very least left the PU allocation the same number they had in 2013 (8 per season). They had to know that the first season of completely new technology was going to have problems, and that some would miss the mark from the beginning. They also should have allowed more testing. I know the smaller teams complain about testing costs, but as customers these tests would have benefited them by providing a more competitive power unit. I think the law of diminishing returns would have kicked in within a year or two, and then they could have started to lock down the engine development.
If the cost was such an issue, then they should have just stayed with the V8's. But, of course, F1 never does anything that makes sense or is logical as demonstrated by the current qualifying fiasco.

 

[Terry Rock]

It's not for Mercedes or Ferrari to 'give' assistance to the guys they're competing against.
It's for those guys to 'up' their game, whether that be through protest to the FIA to allow more development of their programs.
It's either that....or collectively threaten a boycott and mean it, about walking away from F1.
If enough teams do that, those regulations will change ....and quickly.
Who in their right mind would spend millions of dollars developing a 'mega' powerplant and then hand it to their competitor, who by the way...has a better chassis with better aero.
They'd have to be pretty fu**#ng stupid.

 

[Ghoults]

Motorsport is unique as a sport in that the equipment is always the deciding factor. Even in the most basic single make sport you will always have teams who can afford to run newer tires, fine tune their engines or get to choose the best one and can afford to buy multiple shocks just to get a good matching pair. This is even more true when all the drivers are good and driver skill variance is small. The equipment becomes more important.

F1 has always been about the car. You can take your sennas, prosts, schumachers and vettels at their prime and drop them into the current day williams or toro rosso and they would never win a race. Even if the cars were equal and using the same parts you'd have top teams ahead simply because they can invest more money into finding those advantages. And in the extreme cases hire the best drivers.

Part of motorsport is always that the equipment is hard to make balanced. It is so because the equipment is so fundamental part of it.

In f1 it is more complex because there are not only multiple teams building their own cars but you have engine manufacturers who also run their own racing teams and you have technical rules that are supposed to make the racing more balanced and fair. However when the top 2 teams have a clear advantage it is hard to change things. Merc and ferrari don't really want to change anything because they like winning. Any changed towards more fairness will only make them win less.

Similarly teams like williams, manor and force india who have the best engines will mostly oppose any rule changes that would see them lose that advantage of the best engine. In such system you can't vote any balancing rules to go through.

In the end of course this all is just a complete failure of the new engine tech rules but at this point it is looking like merc and ferrari have the future looking very nice for them whereas some middlefield teams are equally happy to enjoy a power advantage over their rivals. Similarly some of the teams are in a bad place and can do nothing about except wait for rule change that is probably coming earliest at 2020.

 

[xnorb]

Like Ghoults said: F1 is about the cars, not about the drivers.

I'd love to see the F1 drivers also competing in a parallel spec open-wheeler championship to see who's actually the fastest driver in the current field.

 

[Blkout]

If F1 development and manufacturing wasn't so expensive then more manufacturers would be involved. There would be a much larger selection of power units, transmissions, chassis, aero, etc. to choose from. Many capable engine manufacturers aren't even considering F1 due to the cost. This is hurting any F1 team not named Mercedes and Ferrari and that's not a knock against those two teams because they have full control of developing all aspects of their vehicles. The tokens were a big mistake, glad to see them going away but the cost to develop parts for these cars has to come down to make the field more level from a car perspective.

 

[Philip Heck]

It's not just cost. The hybrid system is too complex for Ilmor, Cosworth, Asiatech to join in.
If Ecclestone's idea to standardize the hybrid equipment (so manufacturers only have to focus on the engine itself) would have been accepted these 3 would have been available quite soon.

Also about the tokens:
The teams had 32 tokens available during winter. According to some Renault engineers that was enough to design a whole new PU. (which is basically what Honda did if you remember they had two different PUs for both tests and then decided on one)
You can have all the tokens you want (or abolish the system altogether) but if you have no idea how to improve your PU then that won't help you anyway.
Just to be clear I am happy that the tokens might go but it helps to understand both siodes