11 F1 teams, but for how long?

Tough Times: German prosecutors have indicted F1 Supremo Bernie Ecclestone on a bribery charge, but the 82-year-old has refused to resign as Formula One boss, despite facing a trial.(Getty Images)

This season we have only 11 teams on the grid after the sad demise of HRT last year when the team couldn’t find new buyers. Seeing the current state of business and finances in the sport, the possibility of only ten teams on the grid looms large.

Over a 100 teams have come and gone – some of them still exist albeit by a different name – since the first Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1950 and had it not been for some Russian buyers, even a famous team like Sauber would have joined that list.

So why is there such a major uncertainty among the teams apart from the big four? Is it due to the current economic crisis in Europe, or is it due to the FIA regulations, which still allow bigger teams to take the advantage of their larger funds?

There is no doubt that the economic crisis has taken its toll on some of the F1 teams and the fact that Europe has been the worst hit – where all of the teams (racing divisions) are based – makes things even worse.

Along with that, one feels that maybe the FIA could have done some things better so as to save things from falling apart. The most important in this context is the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA).

The aim of RRA is to provide an equal footing for all the teams by restricting as to how much a team can spend during a season. This way both Ferrari and Caterham spend the same amount but now Caterham engineers have the chance to match their Ferrari counterparts and even outperform them in some respects.

But how many times have all teams agreed to such an agreement in the past? Whoever has more money would definitely want to dish out more to move to or stay at the front of the field. It is no secret that the teams with higher budgets will always have a larger say in the scheme of things and that is the same case here with no RRA currently in place.

That is not to say that the RRA is a trouble-free prospect. Such an agreement can only stop a team from spending too much behind the car but it can’t stop how many people it can hire. So again when we compare Ferrari to Caterham, the workforce at Maranello is much more than those at Leafield.

That would enable Ferrari to allot more minds behind studying the regulations and try and circumvent them; more people, more ideas, thus however big the attrition rate larger number of development parts will find their way onto the red car.

Now that the sport is moving towards a new technical era, costs start becoming a factor again. The new V6 units are much costlier than the current V8′s and the cost will be passed onto the customer which puts the non-factory teams at a double disadvantage.

First of all the extra cost, secondly the customer teams won’t receive as much technical know-how about the new power units as the factory teams.

This again brings us back to the question: will we soon be seeing only 20 cars on the grid or even less? What can be done to prevent it?

Let’s look at some plausible solutions:

Third car supply to smaller teams

This topic has been raised many times in the past but nothing has been done to bring it into action. Instead of restricting everybody to the same budget, maybe the supply of an Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull will be of huge benefit to the engineers at Marussia. This does not doubt the competency of the people at Marussia but you can always learn something from the best in the business.

Manufacturers coming (back) into the sport

Honda is coming back into the sport as an engine supplier in 2015. This bit of news would have livened the spirits of each and every person associated with the sport. The 2014 rule changes have played a huge part in this and hopefully we can see other manufacturers such as BMW, Audi and Volkswagen competing in F1 in the near future.

The higher the number, the competition between the manufacturers will be more. And that will bring out the best in everyone. Although that may lead to some smaller teams leaving the sport unable to match the high standards of competition, the sport itself would be in safe hands with cars up and down the grid capable of winning races.

The Big Three: Midfield teams can’t afford the likes of Kimi Raikkonen (C) of Lotus, Fernando Alonso (L) of Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel (R) of Red Bull. (Getty Images)

Changes to the regulations

The FIA has taken some steps to prevent factory teams running away at the front next year. Some of the very important changes are restrictions imposed on Wind Tunnel and CFD testing. According to the rules,

WT <= WT_limit (1 – CFD/CFD_limit)

Where:WT = Wind On TimeWT_limit = 30 hoursCFD = CFD Teraflops UsageCFD_limit = 30 Teraflops

How much of a benefit will this be in bridging the gap can’t be predicted at the moment but definitely it will limit the Big Four to some extent. Even then it’s good to see that the FIA are taking some steps to bring equality and as time passes we might see even more restrictions as the governing body tries to strike a fine balance between creating a level playing field and continue the aim of being more relevant towards the auto industry.

Selecting drivers purely on merit

A very long shot no doubt. Many would agree that one reason that the midfield teams are not able to regularly mix it up with the front is that they don’t have the best drivers. The reason for that is they simply can’t afford the likes Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.

Williams’ newly-appointed Chief Technical Officer Pat Symonds recently said that the Marussia pair is, on average, half a second slower than the considered best in the business Alonso, and that is on normal tracks – circuits like Monaco and Singapore will make that gap close to a second probably. Obviously it won’t make a difference for a team like Marussia which is around three or four seconds slower on average but for a team like Force India, which is lacking somewhere around that half a second mark, a driver like Alonso could have made all the difference.

To solve this problem, what needs to be done is drastically reduce the role money plays in deciding which driver makes his foray into Formula 1. That will automatically benefit both the driver as well as the engineer with constructive feedback from both sides and that ultimately showing its effect on the development curve of the car.

Will this mission be successful?

If even any one of the above materialises then we can be sure that the sport is going to be safe in the near future. The unfortunate part is that no single party or individual can be blamed for the current state and that makes the reconstruction process even more difficult.

It might become close to impossible if Bernie Ecclestone is put behind bars as he has been the centre of all major happenings in the sport since the 70′s but we shouldn’t lose hope because the sport has come out of even worse situations in the past. Formula 1 was, is and hopefully will remain as the pinnacle of motorsport.