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well, if Racing Point built their chassis in their own autoclave it doesn't mean they're racing a Mercedes right

unless they outsourced the construction to the Brackley factory either

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Yet more evidence for my latest increasingly strong hot take

Well the reason why Renault questioned the legality of front brakes and ventilation of them is that it's the system that is difficult to copy precisely from just pictures. So if the two have matching brakes, it's a copy, not original design.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

well I guess Renault should be more worried with their inside issues before start crying on other team's performance

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Why should they ignore rule breaking just because they have issues with their own car?

perhaps they should break the rules like everyone else

but seriously, I think this rule is plain dumb, teams should have freedom to acquire and develop at their own way projects from other teams. it could attract more people to race but they want still to their own elite of overspending and finger pointing

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

They did, had it cleared by the FIA for 2 years, then were disqualified once Racing Point protested it.



You think F1 requiring teams to design and manufacture their own cars is plain dumb? There are about 50 other spec series to watch including every single other open-wheel code if that's how you feel. The one indisputable thing that makes F1 F1 is teams having to design and build their own. Yes there will always be inspiration and imitation, but if teams start 100% copying the winning team then innovation in the sport is dead and the sport will die with it.

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The whole history of F1 is based around teams copying other teams concepts. But where this case seems to differ is that RP seem to have for the first time in F1 history (1995 Ligier aside as was owned by Flavio Briattore who also happened to be the boss of Benneton) an entire facsimile of the previous years champions, complete with same car characteristics.

So are we to believe that RP have not only cracked the code that no other F1 team in it's history has been able to do, executed it to absolute perfection the first time around by just taking photos and reverse engineering? Me thinks not.

Steiermark or Styrian?

I think the Racing Point was deemed and will be legal because the consequences are too lethal for both Mercedes and RP.
Imagine it's confirmed that it is a copy, and Mercedes gave them through some channels the data, because as earlier said, you cannot copy a car through photos. It's a ridiculous statement.
And then what, exclude them? Punish Mercedes? Probably they will tell they had a rat or something like that, to let's say, sacrifice someone,some technical guy from Mercedes and RP and go on like normal.

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https://www.youtube.com/user/Alonsofanscro

Gene Haas once said that if you so much as buy in "nuts and bolt" from an external supplier then it disputes your right to call yourself a fully fledged constructor.

Isn't Haas the team that took the most amount of parts (gearbox etc) from another team, Ferrari, and Williams in particular got salty about it?

Bit Rich

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

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no, but they should at least let a team purchase a used chassis to make it an affordable operation

if another team outsources their chassis fabrication to another company (Haas and Dallara), don't see much of a problem if a team buy the one year old chassis project from another and try develop on their own, better than developing a crap chassis from zero and being unable to do any shit with (right, Ferrari?)

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

I like the idea of a new team being able to buy an old chassis. It's more affordable, and F1 needs to become more affordable if it is going to survive; particularly with everything that's happened this year.

There are a few issues with it, though. Such as when there are major rule changes. For example, when the regulations change in 2022. I'm not sure how a team could buy an old chassis, because it wouldn't fit to the current rules.

It's tough. You don't want everybody to go out and buy last year's Mercedes, because F1 still has an element of design and technology. It needs to be affordable to create your own unique competitive car. I think I just want to see a return of 30+ car entry lists. Or at least 26.

I'm resigned to the fact F1 will never have over 20 cars again

They're more likely to lose a team or two than gain any, and any new team coming in will just re-brand an existing one as is usual.

Plus I think the teams kinda like it that way, makes them feel like they're part of an exclusive club and increases the value of their stock should anyone want to buy their way in.
And Liberty can't hate fitting them all onto one jumbo for the flyaways etc.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

I honestly think it's fine as it is - maybe one extra team would be good but beyond that, it's just not sustainable and it'd cause more problems that it's worth

If you look at many of those late 80s teams that came in to boost the grid - all trying to take advantage of the move from turbos to normally-aspirated engines and the extra money available from a sport that had exploded commercially in the past few years - a lot of them came in with the sort of circumstances you just don't see today:

- Leyton House March - basically an extension of Genoa Racing in F3000, but with Japanese backing and a partnership with an outstanding car constructor
- Scuderia Italia - again, another successful junior team that partnered with a car constructor in Dallara
- Larrousse - same again
- EuroBrun - a combination of two successful teams in Euroracing and Brun Motorsport
- Minardi - a team that was already building its own cars in F3000
- AGS - see above
- Life - literally bought First Racing's aborted car and stuck a stupid engine in the back which usually lasted about half a lap before grenading itself
- Andrea Moda - bought the remains of Coloni and an aborted BMW F1 car from Simtek

Alongside them, you have Jordan, Onyx and Coloni - all with F3000 pedigree. No F2 team today would ever take the same risk, because it's a much bigger step up now that it's a spec series, and the likely outcome is you'll be 5 seconds off the pace and bankrupt within 3 or 4 years as the 2010 trio showed

The only team that's been able to make it work is Haas, who basically followed the approach of three of the most successful new teams from that time - they partnered with an established constructor, who build their car for them. They also had the fortune of negotiating those strong links with Ferrari. The problem is most of those standalone constructors are gone. Lola blew themselves up in a last attempt to get back into F1, March and Ralt merged and both ended up going out of business, Reynard went bust in 2002, Panoz effectively stopped a couple of years after buying G-Force, and Swift have moved away from making cars

Who actually builds cars outside F1 now? Everything is a spec series and Dallara has a near-monopoly on it. Of the bigger ones I can think of, Dome won't touch F1 again after the botched F105, and Oreca won't risk the business model they have at the moment because it works well for them. What does that leave you with? Mygale? Tatuus? Riley? Ligier? They're all too small and they'd never risk it. If you had a second manufacturer of the size of Dallara, it might be possible, but they're all long gone

There's so little serious sponsorship out there now, it's impossible to sustain an F1 operation unless you had a serious backer (read: a manufacturer or some other giant corporation), and if that was already unlikely pre-covid, it's almost guaranteed to not happen post-covid. The only opportunity I can see would be if one of the Chinese manufacturers decided now was a good time to jump in while the traditional manufacturers are scaling back, because that's the sort of thing they might do. Other than that, it's just not happening

That period from 1988 to 1992 looks amazing in hindsight, especially to someone like me who wasn't around at the time. But it was a lot more complicated than it looked. There's a really good podcast in the Bring Back V10s series from The Race on the pre-qualifying era which highlights just how unsustainable the whole thing was - it was never going to last more than about 4 or 5 years, because there was no reason to sponsor a lot of these teams

While things aren't great at the moment, F1 would be the healthiest and most competitive it has ever been if it wasn't for covid. It's probably the only time in F1 history that you can say that all 20 drivers on the grid have CVs worthy of being there, even at the back. There will always be one or two teams with question marks over them - that's just the nature of it. But those teams with question marks have a lot more stable footing than the teams at the back 10 or 15 years ago. I'd much rather 8 or 9 stable teams and 1 or 2 in a bit of trouble than 8 or 9 stable teams and 3 or 4 in serious trouble

(Sorry, that ended up being much longer than expected lol)

Back in the 60s, you had Rob Walker buying Colin Chapman's previous year's Lotus (Lotii?) and the previous year's Brabhams were sold to customers too, and I thought that was a great way to go about things. The factory team would (usually) still be quicker but the customers could at least get a better starting point than beginning from scratch, while still being able to improve it a bit here and there and do well on some circuits.

I dunno, the thing with Toyota (and most manufacturers tbf) is that they entered F1 to showcase the engineering capabilities of the company. I'm not sure they would have been all that interested in buying a Ferrari and rebadging it like that - the whole mantra of the project wasn't just winning in F1, but winning via The Toyota Way. They refused to compromise their own corporate principles, which is one of the main reasons they failed

I've always been in favour of allowing customer cars but it would have to be done in a way that would still encourage teams to build their own. At least the example of this year's Racing Point shows that even if you completely clone last year's championship-winning car, there's no guarantee that even a good, well-funded professional team can run it to the same level as the team that built it

The only way you get more manufacturers into F1 is by making the engines less complex and cheaper, which isn't easy given that it has to be a hybrid at this stage. I think the likes of VW, Ford, Toyota and BMW would be looking at how long it took Honda to get up to speed and how much of a hit they took to their reputation in the process - and that was relatively early in the hybrid era, rather than 6 years in as we are now. And certainly it's impossible for one of the few remaining independent engine manufacturers to produce one

The new engine regs have guaranteed that there will be no new manufacturer till 2025 at the earliest. In fact the new regs have practically guaranteed Merc dominance until 2025. 1 token to be used next year, 1 the year after, then a total freeze for 2023 and 2024. Unless Ferrari, Renault or Honda miraculously get their engines right next year and the year after and Merc go backwards, there will be no end to the Merc engine dominance.

Fixed.

I cannot see a new manufacturer getting in at all