It’s also the balance that the FIA has never managed to maintain to anybody’s satisfaction.
A lot of the issues with F1 stem from the fact that it’s actually two seperate competitions. If you let constructors build the fastest car that they safely can, then two bad things happen. Firstly, the fastest car will win. Secondly, the teams with less money can’t compete. The F1 brand is about having the most technologically advanced cars, but really it has to constantly hold the best teams back in order to keep things competitive. That’s why the regulations are so hopelessly complex (this years new regulations have to cover up the holes in last years poor regulating...), and it’s why anything that is truly innovative is nearly always instantly banned.
F1 is constantly swinging between a state of dominant constructors (Mercedes the past 6 years), and being more like a spec series (the new 2021 regs). If F1 wanted to actually live up to its brand, it would let the constructors build mostly whatever they wanted to. But if it did that, it would also have to divvy up the prize money more fairly to keep the lesser teams from going under, which it’s never going to do because of how political it all is.
A budget cap is one solution to keep design regulations to a minimum and ensure that smaller teams can compete. F1 introduced a $145 million budget cap for the 2021 season, going down to $135 million for 2023-25 seasons. Right now the three biggest teams (MB, Ferrari, Red Bull) spend somewhere around half a billion or so per season.
But that’s not a solution for balancing the concerns of the two competitions. The new regs are going to bring F1 closer to being a spec series than it’s ever been before.
The budget cap is just a little over the current Haas budget. Personally I don’t find the prospect of watching a race with 10 Haas level teams in it to be a particularly compelling idea. I’m also not that excited about the idea of constructor innovation being limited to what you can achieve with a Haas budget.
The budget cap is probably the bluntest tool available for addressing constructor performance balancing. For example, the current chassis rules make aero incredibly complex to design (which is expensive), and makes close racing impossible (because of all the dirty air). They would have been better off simplifying those rules (and maybe bringing back ground effect). Look at how well Racing Point performed last weekend, they nearly got a podium. The only significant change they made was copying the Mercedes 2019 aero kit.
I would be very surprised if Haas is spending anywhere close to the incoming budget cap. They arguably have the smallest expenditure thanks to the Ferrari parts deal and contracting the chassis out to Dallara. Of the current teams, I think only Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mclaren (by a much smaller margin) are spending above the incoming cap.
Sealed ground effect will probably not return to F1, not for performance reasons but safety. Introducing the seal greatly increases downforce but once it is broken, the dropoff is incredible. Maintaining that would be nearly impossible with surface imperfections and debris on the track.
The Haas budget for last year was ~ $170 million, not all of that goes to capped expenses, but after you account for that it puts them just under the new cap (Williams, Toro Rosso and Alfa Romeo all spend less than Haas). Renault, McLaren (about $270 million each) and Racing Point (about $190 million) are all above it. There are also 0 teams currently under the cap who make their own engines (Renault is the lowest budget non-customer team). So in terms of budget the current cap really does push everybody down to about the same level as Haas.
Regarding ground effect, the new 2021 regs have already brought it back. They’ve simplified the wing designs, and moved a lot of the downforce to ground effect. It’s not the same level of ground effect that F1 had in the 70s/80s, it’s more like the current IndyCar ground effect design. But the result from a following car perspective is the same. Moving the downforce from wake generating bodywork to under the chassis. However the overall effect is less downforce and therefore slower cars on circuit.
Those numbers are pretty generous, I would beg to differ on at least some of them. [1][2][3]
My mistake when you mentioned ground effect, I thought you meant sealed (skirts and fans). The ground effect you mean is already a thing in present F1 thanks to diffusers. The new rules have just made the diffuser bigger and simplified the front and rear wings.
The budget cap was revised down after Covid hit (down to $145 million from $175 million), to stop the midfield from going broke, and Ross Brawn says they’re going to lower it further in the coming years [0].
You can’t figure out exactly what teams that’s going to hit, because publicly available finances don’t have enough detail. But it’s either going to bring spending more or less in line with Haas or Racing Point, who are both pretty close in terms of spending anyway. The reason McLaren (a relatively big spending team) are so publicly in favour of it is that they’ve had some pretty serious financial trouble going on recently.
I'd go with something more radical: a 2x5 meters max box, 100 kg of gas for the 300 km race, 600 kg minimum weight, 50 million budget maybe including the drivers (there is a very long line of them) and maybe a max downforce test if it can be made hard to cheat. Then let the teams do whatever they want.
Somebody will optimize for the engine, somebody for the aerodynamics, somebody for the suspensions, somebody for the tires (buy them from whoever they want) etc. I guess very few will spend much on the driver.
At the beginning they'll be slower than the current cars (which are only marginally faster than the v10s of 2004) but year after year they'll improve new areas of the design and get fast again. I expect a lot of technical drama and very different solutions. It's going to be back to the 70x and 80s with today's technology and processes.
It could definitely be managed better, to optimize for what they seem to be trying to (sport + performance).
Budget caps seems like a cop-out though, as eventually the budgetary rules inherit all the complexity in the current technical rules.
I think some kind of FRAND forced tech licensing / transfer + shared manufacturing would be an interesting solution. Whereby a hyper-optimized solution by a leading team can be licenses (or is outright open sourced) for the next season. And similarly, where all builders have access to a neutral manufacturing facility (a la TSMC).
This reminded me of Finnish folk racing Jokamiesluokka[1], where the owner of the car has to entertain offers for the car after a race and must sell the car if there's a willing buyer. This is to keep the cost of cars down.
This is similarly done in American short-track racing as well with the “engine claim” system - I’ve normally heard of it on dirt but I wouldn’t be surprised if asphalt series do it to.
Below is just one example of how these rules can be structured.
Customer teams get exactly the same engine that the works team uses. The reason they don’t perform as well is that they still have to design the rest of their car (which includes a lot of performance impacting design), and they also may have to modify the engine to fit it in their chassis.
This and the difference in resources. Only Red Bull managed to systematically outperform the factory team of their engine (Renault.) McLaren is more on an even ground with them but still a little bit better. Renault is not pouring much money in their car.
And people who like to think about possible unfairness could argue that manufacturers build about 100 engines per season, test them, then pick the ones to keep, the ones to give to customers and the ones that turned out not to be good enough for racing. It's hard to get the very best engine if you are only a customer and you're really competing against the manufacturer and not only an appearance.
A lot of the issues with F1 stem from the fact that it’s actually two seperate competitions. If you let constructors build the fastest car that they safely can, then two bad things happen. Firstly, the fastest car will win. Secondly, the teams with less money can’t compete. The F1 brand is about having the most technologically advanced cars, but really it has to constantly hold the best teams back in order to keep things competitive. That’s why the regulations are so hopelessly complex (this years new regulations have to cover up the holes in last years poor regulating...), and it’s why anything that is truly innovative is nearly always instantly banned.
F1 is constantly swinging between a state of dominant constructors (Mercedes the past 6 years), and being more like a spec series (the new 2021 regs). If F1 wanted to actually live up to its brand, it would let the constructors build mostly whatever they wanted to. But if it did that, it would also have to divvy up the prize money more fairly to keep the lesser teams from going under, which it’s never going to do because of how political it all is.