Mosley, Sauber: Allow design freedom to teams who commit to budget cap

[Ed Harley]

This is quite interesting.​

Sauber has put its support behind Max Mosley's suggestion of Formula 1 teams being allowed greater rules freedom if they sign up to a budget cap.


Former FIA president Mosley revived the idea earlier this week, when he suggested that teams could be given total free rein on car design if they operated under a limited budget. He believes it would be a way of both controlling costs and allowing technical innovation to thrive in F1.


http://www.racer.com/f1/item/116128-...evolution-idea

[IulianFerrari]

I like it

[Ferrari_fan89]

The smaller teams will not get a big benefit from this anyway i think, i mean the big four Mclaren Mercedes Red Bull and Ferrari have such a big infrastructure and more personal and facilities. What difference would it make? They tried a budget cap before and it didn't work

[Nand0Nand0]

Budget caps will never work as intended. Stifling budgets or rules achieve the same results - entrenching the status quo.

[AfterLife]

With this idea, smaller teams will suffer big time and there will be lots of loophole disagreement and one team domination. Current rules have no game changing loophole (As far as I know), so it is better to stick with it.

[Tony]

I don't think a technical budget cap would work in practice to be honest... using Ferrari as an example, if they wanted to test a new part, they could just send that work to FIAT to do and then have FIAT transfer the item back to them at low cost. It would be a mess to follow and determine what the actual R&D cost would be even if you wanted to avoid that in the regulations...

[TigerKing]

I like the idea. It would sort of be like Indycar where they have a small budget but can make cars go as fast of Formula One cars. Looks like another good idea that greed will bury underground.

[Nand0Nand0]

I like the idea. It would sort of be like Indycar where they have a small budget but can make cars go as fast of Formula One cars. Looks like another good idea that greed will bury underground.

Two things, why on earth would anyone want to emulate Indycar - a spec series with low global interest? Also, Indy cars are nowhere near the performance of even the current F1 cars. In fact they would probably be behind GP2.

[ALO]

I like the idea. It would sort of be like Indycar where they have a small budget but can make cars go as fast of Formula One cars. Looks like another good idea that greed will bury underground.

They can go as fast (top Speed or faster) but not accelerate or go through turns as fast

[TigerKing]

Two things, why on earth would anyone want to emulate Indycar - a spec series with low global interest? Also, Indy cars are nowhere near the performance of even the current F1 cars. In fact they would probably be behind GP2.

What i meant is that Indycar is pretty fast with respect to their budget. F1 teams can have a budget of about 470 million USD whereas Indycar teams spend 15 million USD. Of course Indycar is only focused in North America but i think that F1 teams spend more money than they should. Indycar can go fast (albeit not as fast as a Marussia) but still maintain a low budget allowing for more teams to compete.

[killer]

I don't think a technical budget cap would work in practice to be honest... using Ferrari as an example, if they wanted to test a new part, they could just send that work to FIAT to do and then have FIAT transfer the item back to them at low cost. It would be a mess to follow and determine what the actual R&D cost would be even if you wanted to avoid that in the regulations...

What if they just said "design freedom", no? As has been implied, an emphasis on allowing technical innovation gives the smaller teams a fighting chance. Sure, they'll be limited by how much they have to spend, but they can take gambles on new design ideas that may give them an edge.

[gvera]

IF they find a way to really control the budget of the teams, I think this is a good idea, but that's a big IF.

[abbottcostello]

IF they find a way to really control the budget of the teams, I think this is a good idea, but that's a big IF.

My sentiment exactly.
Other than the "honor system" it is difficult to even get an accurate figure of a teams spending, but even if it started as a total farce, it would be able to be refined in the future - a foot in the door, as they say!