This is literally what the FIA and Liberty Media and the teams are discussing right now. It’s all part of the rule changes for 2021 on.
From what I’ve heard of the 2021 rules, they are focused on bits and bobs and limits of design and such. The purported goal being to improve the ability of cars to safely and consistently race close to each other. Instead I think a serious discussion about how teams can get caught in a failure or success loop and we don’t see much variety over a season or multiple season in who the best and worst teams are. MotoGP introduced some of these a few years ago with the Open vs Factory rules differences.
https://motomatters.com/analysis/2014/02/28/motogp_rules_primer_open_vs_factory_the_.html
Also all the rule changes about more equitable sharing of prize money, clarifying how many parts a team can buy from another, budget caps to make it so that big teams can’t outspend smaller teams by too much, and all that kind of thing. This is what the current negotiations are about. The car design and technical rules are a different issue which play into it a bit, but only so much in that it doesn’t increase costs too much for engine suppliers and things.
Oh no. I like that F1 doesn’t have a salary cap. They’ve made the other sports such a mess.
F1 should require stock cars 
The problem is that F1 is about advancing engineering as much as it is about driving skills.
Rather than stock cars, F1 needs to be more like pinewood derby. Everyone gets exactly the same materials to work with. Literally the same factories, the same windtunnel, the same carbon fiber, the same tires, the same everything. Teams can make as much money as they want, but every team has exactly $X to spend on developing the car. Just like in Warhammer where your army can only have X points of units no matter how wealthy the player is.
Whoever can make the best cars out of the same (very large) pile of stuff, and also throw in having a great driver. That’s where it’s at.
There is the separate problem where advantages of car matter more than advantages of driver. A middle of the pack driver in the top car is going to win or come close. A god-tier driver, even Schumacher or Senna in their prime, could not make a piece of shit car win the race. If we want to test driver skill more, the design of the cars and tracks needs to be intentionally restricted as to make driving vastly more difficult. I can’t say excatly what those changes should be, but it is theoretically possible.
A simple idea that could be implemented very easily is a luxury tax and revenue sharing like what MLB has. You can avoid having the strict salary cap, which is also bad because it is an unfair cap on labor expenditures. Yet, you can also help achieve more competitive balance. Teams can spend as much as they want, but if they spend more than X, they have to pay a penalty tax. That tax money goes to the crappier teams, who now will have more money to spend and become competitive.
A luxury tax going to the bottom teams is interesting, though given how stingy Mercedes and Ferrari are I suspect they would go right up to that line and find clever ways to avoid paying out money. I like various ideas of giving the truly bottom feeder teams extra bonuses, like extra engine allocations or running a 3rd car in practice or allowed to burn more fuel or something. Of course there would have to be more of a disconnect between F1 sister teams (like Red Bull & Torro Rosso) as well as when teams buy parts from other teams (like engines) to prevent the top teams from directly benefitting from the bottom team bonuses. It also could entice new teams and manufacturers into joining F1, like Porsche and Audi and others that have suggested potential interest.
As you point out Scott, F1 at it’s core racing identity is about pushing the bleeding edge of automotive technology. So any restrictions on development and homogenized cars is antithetical to the identity and purpose of F1.
Why? The piece of shit New York Yankees seem perfectly content to just spend a fortune and pay the tax.
Actually I just looked it up. Only the Nationals and Red Sox paid luxury tax last year. We’ll see what happens this year.
Fucking Ferrari.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYUuF--OQs0
Ferrari make a mistake: only one car finishes.
Red Bull make a mistake: Verstappen drops from 3rd to 4th and spoils Bottas’s result.
Mercedes make a mistake: Hamilton wins anyway.
I just want some competent competition at the front. Ferrari just don’t have enough to bring it. Their best driver is discarded at the end of Q1 in favour of Vettel, who last year couldn’t overtake Ricardo despite Ricardo being down on power for most of the race. But they shouldn’t be fucking up so badly in qualifying, and they shouldn’t be getting on the podium just because of mistakes by Red Bull.
Bottas is putting in some good qualifying performances, but Hamilton is most likely going to run away with it for the rest of the season. He’s just too good. Bottas has no mind games to play on him like Rosberg did in 2016, and he’s not going to keep out-qualifying Hamilton. Nobody can keep that up.
To make the rest of the season more competitive, Ferrari need to stop fucking up, and if they do, put the effort to fix it behind Leclerc, not Vettel.
And Red Bull need to tell Gasley he has three races to get better than “first behind the other five” or else Kvyat gets another go. With Ricardo leaving Red Bull unexpectedly he was promoted as the only good choice… but he’s obviously not ready yet. Kvyat has experience at the front and has more to prove.
Please, Ferrari, you’re our only hope!
FIA is killing this sport
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Here’s what actually happened:
Vettel is in the lead of the Race, being pressured by Hamilton. Vettel makes a mistake due to that pressure. The mistake leads to him forcing Hamilton off the track and disrupting his race such that he had to back off or crash into Vettel. He’s penalized.
Or, in a form we are all fucking sick of when it comes to Vettel in his rivalry with Hamilton:
Vettel makes a mistake and loses the lead to Hamilton.
I think the mistake and dangerous driving deserves a penalty, it’s just a pity that the only one available to the stewards is a 5 second penalty. If there was a place penalty to be served within one lap, so Vettel had to let Hamilton past, then they still could have battled on track for the lead for the next 15 laps to the end of the race.
However, judging by Vettel’s actions at the end of the me race, I’ve no doubt he wouldn’t have let Hamilton past, even if ordered to. And so then a time penalty would be needed anyway.
There is nothing Vettel could have done with this specific incident otherwise without causing a crash. It was a racing incident and shouldn’t have caused any penalty.
I understand his frustration and the ensuing drama this is causing, but I wonder about one aspect. It doesn’t appear that he steered to the outside of the track to cut off Hamilton but having made a mistake he then attempted to lose as little time as possible by keeping his foot on the throttle as he rejoined the track which resulted in his inability to control his car and prevent him from rejoining the track in a safe manner. I think he knew exactly what he was risking by not being more judicious with his recovery technique - keep going as fast as possible, possibly cause Lewis to back off any pass attempt, and maybe block him. I agree with Luke that there are unfortunately few actions the stewards could take in that situation to both rectify & penalize and if you take a longer-view perspective to their purpose it should serve to warn other drivers in a similar situation of the importance of maintaining control of your car at all times to the best of your ability, even if that means loosing the racing advantage.
I don’t know much about the F1 rules, but to me it seems like
- Losing control
- Going off the track
- Cutting someone off as you come back on the track
is worthy of a penalty?
Vettel made a mistake, left the track, and prioritized keeping his position in the race over the safety of the driver who was trying to overtake him, forcing him off the track limits towards a concrete wall.
If Vettel had slowed down to rejoin the track safely, as the rules says he should, he might have lost his first place, but no penalty.
Everyone is just upset that the overtake attempts ended there due to the stewards’ decision. But thems the breaks.
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You all are vastly overestimating the amount of traction and maneuverability the cars have on grass.
So tell Vettel not to drive across the grass. That’s the whole point.
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