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2016 Formula 1 Season

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Broadly the grid does line up with budget.

The poor teams are not going to win, so expecting to see a Leicester Premiership equivalent is not going to happen.

But given some very good leadership it could happen over a significant period of time as it is still a meritocracy.

You can start at the back of the grid and if you can come up with a few clever technical ideas that move your performance up, that can allow you get more funding through sponsorship,TV and prize money, which allows you to spend more on developing performance, which allows you to get more sponsorship etc.
 
Cav said:
Interesting implication that F1 is not entertaining - actually correct.
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Clearly - actually incorrect ;-). Millions of people watch and enjoy it so therefore it is entertaining. I accept it may not entertain you.

However it is not an entertainment only motorsport with reverse grids or weight penalties such as BTCC.
 
In general in sport people want to see the best win, not see the best get penalised for working hard to be the best.
 
IanW said:
You can start at the back of the grid and if you can come up with a few clever technical ideas that move your performance up, that can allow you get more funding through sponsorship,TV and prize money, which allows you to spend more on developing performance, which allows you to get more sponsorship etc.
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I know a chap who handled F1 insurance (and Moto GP) for donkeys years. He tells tales back to the days when Bernie used to take the circuit gate cash receipts home in a Gladstone bag on his private plane, and attended every GP for many years.

Years ago he told me that the owners of many middle rank teams run a delicate balancing act of just enough performance to get enough TV coverage to keep their sponsors happy, yet not too much performance which leads to a spiral of better results leading to greater sponsorship income demanding still better results and thus more outlay.

By running in the middle of the pack, the team owners get to trouser a healthy and steady income, he told me.
 
DuncanF said:
I know a chap who handled F1 insurance (and Moto GP) for donkeys years. He tells tales back to the days when Bernie used to take the circuit gate cash receipts home in a Gladstone bag on his private plane, and attended every GP for many years.

Years ago he told me that the owners of many middle rank teams run a delicate balancing act of just enough performance to get enough TV coverage to keep their sponsors happy, yet not too much performance which leads to a spiral of better results leading to greater sponsorship income demanding still better results and thus more outlay.

By running in the middle of the pack, the team owners get to trouser a healthy and steady income, he told me.
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I almost certainly know the chap to whom you refer. :)
I think there are several sorts of team owners. The ones that really want to win take some amazing financial risks to get to the top. Ron Dennis and Frank Williams are examples.
There are others who pocket every bit of the sponsorship money they can get away with, whilst not going too badly, and convincing the press they are short of budget. Jack Oliver and Eddie Jordan did this for years IMO.
It is different nowadays that sort of thing hasn't really been possible for 10 or more years.
 
Didn't they both rely on hugely wealthy Saudi sheiks in order to take on establishment? They dreamed big sure but they could afford to with such financial muscle behind them I would have thought?

Frank really wasn't making much of a fist of it before that cash came along despite selling out to Walter Wolf (a Canadian multi millionaire) IIRC.
 
I really can't imagine a potential F1 team owner who aspires to constructors' championships would try and do it with less cash than everyone else. And even when you do have the money, it has to be managed properly. Remember Ferrari with their huge budget doing much between Schekter and Schumacher?
 
IanW said:
In general in sport people want to see the best win, not see the best get penalised for working hard to be the best.
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Which always confuses me when it comes to American motorsport and Gridiron Football (plus others, I can't think off the top of my head). How many other areas in American life to they handicap the one doing best to "make it fair"? Or if it's to make it more of a show, then I am confusing sport and entertainment........
 
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fay spook said:
Gridiron Football (plus others, I can't think off the top of my head). How many other areas in American life to they handicap the one doing best to "make it fair"? Or if it's to make it more of a show, then I am confusing sport and entertainment........
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In the NFL they don't "handicap" teams they try to create a level playing field where the competition is close and therefore exciting and where the best run clubs are the most successful not just those with most resources. And it pretty much works. The best run teams (New England, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Baltimore) are consistently competitive, the traditionally relied on being rich teams (Dallas, Washington) consistently underperform and the badly run teams repeatedly come last (Cleveland, Tampa Bay).

And "best run" means make the best use of the rules and conditions to give themselves the best chance to win games in a very competitive environment. So although "worst team picks first" in the draft is aimed at distributing premium talent to the worst teams it doesn't have much effect and well run teams have consistently better success at picking young players (which is why the same teams end up picking first every year).

And this is the problem in F1 I think. It's not very exciting (or at least fans of the sport talk about little else) and if Team A is better than Team B but Team B has much more money then Team B will mostly win. Team B will then spend ages talking about how brilliant they are and how F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport and nothing must be changed to affect this or it won't be any good. Oh and by the way those people at Team A who made them better than us this year? Here's a boatload of money so we can to Make Team B Great Again.

Nobody in F1 cares about this because it's not really a sport but a business and everyone is rolling in money. This is also true of the NFL but at least they realise they are in the business of entertainment and that entertainment in sport comes from fair, close competition at the highest level. In F1 they have managed to create a business where the end product can be predictable and boring but it still makes loads of money so they have no reason to change it.

Hence the pinnacle of motorsport mantra.
 
Also note in the NFL the meta (how you run your club and how you manage the rules and constraints) has become such a big part of how you win that it's in itself competitive and entertaining. Which is why the NFL dominates its markets year round despite having a short three month season.
 
If the NFL was a successful model for motorsport competition (with the emphasis on sport) then I'm sure NASCAR and Indycar would be the 'pinnacle of motorsport' and the best drivers in the world would all be in the USA.

But I don't think the people who love F1 want it to be an artificially close sportainment. I do think they want a bit more of a level playing field and more opportunities for innovation, talent and good management to succeed on the track, and there are ways to improve things for sure.

Maybe once the stranglehold of Bernie and Ferrari is broken, some of those things will happen.
 
I'm even more confused now about what the perception is of what the public/fans want.

Do they want all the cars, drivers, and budgets to be the same, with only the management of teams as a variable? If so, you're back to square one, as the best run team will win. The whole of F1 will be centred on one or two team owners, nothing else.
 
Patrick Dixon said:
If the NFL was a successful model for motorsport competition (with the emphasis on sport) then I'm sure NASCAR and Indycar would be the 'pinnacle of motorsport' and the best drivers in the world would all be in the USA.
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That's a Brexit thread level logic fail right there Patrick :)

(To be clear I am not suggesting that F1 is not the pinnacle of motorsport, only that this is used as a cover for some obvious problems in the sport from a competitive point of view).

Patrick Dixon said:
But I don't think the people who love F1 want it to be an artificially close sportainment. I do think they want a bit more of a level playing field and more opportunities for innovation, talent and good management to succeed on the track, and there are ways to improve things for sure.
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Which is the NFL model. Create an environment where the best talent (both sporting and team) competitors will win and nobody has a systemic advantage that allows them to dominate despite a talent deficit. The natural outcome of this is that competition is close because at the 99th percentile talent differences are very small.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
Do they want all the cars, drivers, and budgets to be the same, with only the management of teams as a variable? If so, you're back to square one, as the best run team will win. The whole of F1 will be centred on one or two team owners, nothing else.
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Building the car is obviously a core part of F1 so same cars or weight handicaps would be a terrible idea. Possibly some sort of budgetary levelling would, I think, make for better sport but I suspect this is antithetical to F1's business model which is why their efforts in this direction have been so half hearted.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
I'm even more confused now about what the perception is of what the public/fans want.

Do they want all the cars, drivers, and budgets to be the same, with only the management of teams as a variable? If so, you're back to square one, as the best run team will win. The whole of F1 will be centred on one or two team owners, nothing else.
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Problem is you have the three tiers of performers at the moments, Red Bull, Merc and Ferrrari fighting for the top 6 grid slots, 5 midfield teams and a couple of stragglers, although the stragglers are now beginning to merge with the mid table runners.

The difference in performance from top to bottom is not far away from the Turbo v N/A cars of the late eighties who ran their own races and pissed a lot of fans off.

It's sad that in 2010 the budget cap was overturned. Litespeed who saw the writing on the wall had their entry taken over by Maylasia/Lotus Racing/Team Lotus/Caterham.

They tooled up with Mike Gascoyne and a host of other well respected F1 personnel and had a queue of top drivers wanting the seat.
They even attracted top names from McLaren too. I was gutted to see them 5 seconds off the pace year upon year with no real steps forward

My mates lad worked for XTrack so by default Team Lotus and had first hand experience of just how one sided things were as he travelled the circuits with them. Lotus/Caterham were no mugs but simply financially out of their depth. Fernandes took flack but very little he could do.

I'm still amazed they get grids of 20 if things are the same as they were 3 years ago.
 
If you take a look at the grids through the whole history of F1, they're littered with long forgotten teams. It's just the way it is.

Can you imagine how tough the BTCC is? And that's with all manner of attempts to make it "affordable". Most teams spend hundreds of thousands and watch the same few drivers win each year. Le Mans? The same. When did a good amateur last win MotoGP and have a shot at the championship?
 
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