This week’s poll asks whether Formula 1 needs to rethink its budget cap as the series’ top four team have pulled further away from their rivals this year.
But reader @Skydiverian suggests it might not be realistic to expect F1 to regularly have more than four race-winning teams:
Four competitive teams has happened before but it’s still not great and the problem is as it always is, money. And I’d like to see more teams in a season have a realistic shot of winning races. It’s unfortunate that the stats are not on my side.
Pretty much since the late 80s the problem has been that the best teams could throw more money at the problem to fix it. Now, teams that are significantly behind can’t throw more money at the problem to catch-up due to the cost cap, rather than simply not having the money in the first place as was common in the 80s. (This season is interesting. It seems that Mercedes blew most of it’s cap early to get and maintain their advantage, whereas Red Bull didn’t and that’s in part why Max has had a better car the last two races. But it’s not like Williams or Aston Martin can fix their problems by spending more money to fix the deficit).
The problem is that ultimately there’s no easy fix, but spending millions to be the so-called best of the rest basically seems pointless if there is a very unlikely chance of a team outside of the top four having a realistic shot at the podium or even a win. And that’s always been a problem going back decades.
Some number crunching by looking at the history books: the 500th race was 1990 Australia, 1,100th being Vegas 2023. In those 600 races I’ve found six that were won by drivers driving for teams who finished outside the top four in the constructors championship.
That’s six of 600 races over 33 years where we had a winner driving for a team who finished outside the top 4 in that years constructors championship, 1% of all races. Seven if you count Johnny Herbert’s win at the Nurburgring which to me was a genuine surprise at the time. To me those stats aren’t good enough.
Whether that’s the fault of teams with no money, teams with too much money or teams with a cash limit so they can’t design their way out is up for debate. But my point is that I’d like to see more teams have a reasonable chance of winning. F1 has never really had that and will continue not to unless something changes (maybe by letting teams further down have a bigger budget the following season rather than just more CFD time).
I’d rather that at least 70% of drivers have a realistic chance of winning, ideally 100% of teams. It’s the reason I preferred IndyCar before Alex Palou showed up, results were unpredictable and smaller teams have a chance of getting a win or two. That’s just so rare in F1 and the current cost cap rules will continue to make unlikely.
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Browse all Formula 1 articlesPoll: Does F1 needs its cost cap – or is it just holding back the smaller teams?