Yes I've been wanting to see this for ages. Even if I still had to pay full price each year, I don't see why CM can't make it so that in career mode, you can either choose to start a new career, or, let the game check back to your progress the year before and continue from there.
Also, I should then be able to go back to any of my F1 games and start a career, using the correct cars from that game/year, and progress through the various car changes from year to year. If there's a year that I don't own, then I would simply continue in the cars from the previous year, and so on.
It would build up into a full career with the true progression of drivers and cars.
And even if the game engine changed completely, it should surely be able to include code that could read your previous stats and place them into the game in order to continue your career.