No 12th F1 team in 2016

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Haas will be the only new team on the F1 grid in 2016, the FIA has confirmed.

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No more new F1 teams for 2016 (ESPN)

"The FIA has confirmed a 12th F1 team will not be joining the grid next year after no new teams emerged as successful candidates from its tender process."

Checo: A half-season of two halves (Crash)

"I had a good run of four or five races where I took 120% out of the car. All the simulations suggested that we were always out of the points so what we did up to there was a very good effort from the team."

Ricciardo set for double engine penalty blow (Motorsport)

"Most likely the first one will be in Monza. It's unfortunately a season that we never had before."

Toro Rosso duo silencing critics - Key (Autosport)

"They also drive very differently. They do their own thing, which is good because they have each other to bounce off, they can see what the other guy is doing and try and respect that."

Wolff dismisses criticism of Hamilton (F1i)

"I agree that it is right that the start is totally back in the hands of the drivers. At least that way we won't keep being told that a good start is about the driver and a bad one is the fault of a computer program!"

Criticism won’t break Maldonado’s positivity (F1 Zone)

"Most of the drivers here are very quick but they don’t risk. This is a sport where you need to risk sometimes."


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Comment of the day

How can F1 strike a balance between new and classic races?

There is plenty enough space on the F1 calendar to host the classics and a selection of other quality tracks and some new challenges. Twenty races is not a small number.

There is something wrong with a pricing structure where a circuit’s income is strictly spectator-dependent and the expenditure is heavily biased against spectators. The tracks that can afford to pay the most tend to be the ones that least care about spectators because they are motivated by marketing and such. An individual track’s marketing is simplest if it spends lots of money on the marketing – which means little left over for spectators. Especially after Bernie’s demands on VIP facilities and the FIA’s demands on trackside furniture (plus profit-generating escalators in an attempt to compensate for falling TV audience) leave so little left in the wallet for circuits to make their races a good experience for the sort of people in a position to buy the (usually relatively expensive) tickets.

F1 hasn’t been designed to be primarily funded by circuits since at least 1992, and possibly before that. The collapse of the TV audience and the concomitant difficulties in maintaining TV fees has exposed the flaws in the circuit funding model quite dramatically.

A better policy would be to have a base rate (covering the costs of F1 turning up) and then a small extra fee per spectator, preferably separated by type (so that people using VIP facilities result in tracks paying a VIP premium, people in grandstands/terraces yield a “typical” fee and people in general admission, who get fewer facilities, pay a bit less). I think it could raise at least as much money as the current model and result in a better balance of circuits. The best races for F1 are not always the wealthiest, as demonstrated by the fact Monaco gets a fee waiver every year and is even allowed, uniquely, to sell its own trackside advertising to supplement its income.
@Alianora-la-canta

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On this day in F1

The Osterreichring held its first world championship race on this day 45 years ago. Jacky Ickx led a one-two for Ferrari. Home favourite Jochen Rindt took pole position for what turned out to be his last start – his Lotus engine failed during the race.

Here’s the start of the grand prix:

https://youtu.be/SHGeKhYFck4?t=1m48s

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Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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41 comments on “No 12th F1 team in 2016”

  1. I think Toto’s been reading my posts. I do hate how the starts are so data-driven instead of reliant on the driver’s feel.

    1. The only real positive for true racing with this mid-season starting procedure ammend is parity. I don’t think starts should be made more dangerous and I don’t think F1 should be all about the starts, I also think tech should be used.

      1. I don’t think starts should be made more dangerous

        How is the new system any more dangerous ?

        and I don’t think F1 should be all about the starts,

        It won’t be, even if someone gets a good start there will still be 199 miles of the race left for them to run.

        I also think tech should be used.

        Why ?
        Seriously, what’s the point of racing when the drivers are just pressing buttons and letting the computers do all of the work ?
        The overall performance is already heavily weighted towards the car over the driver, why would you want to keep technology that takes away a driver’s ability to gain places through skill and timing ?

    2. Apex Assassin
      16th August 2015, 19:14

      While i do agree that’s a bit of a moot point in series that is absolutely driven by data… i mean we have drivers who can’t talk with their engineers over the radio but musty obey audio-tones to lift and coast, brake, and activate DRS. Long gone are the days when drivers drove… I still would love to see F1 become a purists sport with manual everything!!! I used to argue against that since it would mean F1 wouldn’t be the pinnacle of motorsport technology but they’ve already achieved that anyway.

  2. >no new teams emerged as successful candidates from its tender process

    Did anyone actually bother to apply?

    1. Same thought actually.
      I think nobody wanted that place left in F1 with the whole situation that has being going on since last year.

      1. I heard two teams did try to join. I bet Stefan GP, lola or scorpion GP but with The little time they World get im surprised they even did try to join.

    2. There were two applicants (names withheld by the FIA, presumably to protect the innocent), who according to the FIA did not meet their criteria. Since these included the ability for a team to sustain itself in F1, and F1 isn’t the cheapest activity one can set out to do, perhaps this is unsurprising.

      1. Indeed, I would have rather been extremely surprised by the FIA actually finding a new team to bolster the grid

    3. Yeah, two teams applied.

      1. I applied on the premise I could do as the current peasant teams and try and drag the historical teams down to my level. I wanted £1000 a year budget cap and this to be enforced on top teams just so I could have a team. Force India Sauber et al would get a taste of their own BS then.

        1. I see what you did there mark p, you made a valid point! I also got knocked back due to the fact they wouldn’t change the regs so I could race my turbo diesel ute.

        2. How did you get on?

    4. @flatdarkmars i read an article that two teams applied, but i can’t rmemeber which site that was on.

  3. COTD is sensible and well reasoned, however it assumes CVC/FOM have a goal of longterm growth rather than their real goal of short/medium term maximum profit at all cost.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      16th August 2015, 12:35

      That’s the problem. There’s always lots of talk about what F1 could do as a sport to improve but as long as those in charge are only after short-term profit, it won’t happen. Comments like “we don’t care about kids watching F1 because they can’t afford Rolex watches” says all you need to know about how the sport is being run at the moment. What use are kids? Once they can afford to buy tickets, Bernie will be long gone!

      Every suggestion seems to have to pass the Bernie Test before it’s considered – i.e. will it make Bernie richer today (Y/N)

      1. This is an alarming trend in most wealthy capitalist entities these days.

        No one at the very top loses, only those beneath them.

  4. Checo may have had a “good run of races” with his early season race errors completely evaporated by now, but, in the meantime, the Hulk managed to rule him completely pace-wise on Saturdays as well as on Sundays (which was not the case before Monaco). Even when Checo finished ahead, Nico was quicker.

    1. Yeah, that’s right. But where was Nico until Canada? There were aero updates there iirc, and Nico’s Le Mans race was coming up. Up until then, he was getting beaten by Perez as convincingly as Nico’s ever beaten him.

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      16th August 2015, 12:37

      Checo is a good driver and IMO, deserves his place at a mid-field team but Hulk is the next level up. I would love to see Hulk vs someone perceived as a top driver in the same car.

  5. Ron Brooks (@)
    16th August 2015, 1:21

    COTD – “Bernie’s demands on VIP facilities”.

    I just don’t get it.

    Is Bernie deluded enough to believe that movie stars and singers in attendance make a better race?

    I think I speak for most F1 spectators that the drivers are the VIPs I came to see.

    If not, then I’ll shut up.

    1. pastaman (@)
      16th August 2015, 4:34

      You are not alone. Cut-overs to celebs/gfs/wives in the pits always have me yelling at the TV to go back to the race.

      1. Maybe they could add an F1 OK Magazine camera option on the Red Button, that way anyone who wants to see all of the celebrities, wives, girlfriends and the like couod do so while the rest of us get to watch the race.
        I don’t object to them interviewing them in the build-up, on the grid, or after the race, but I hate it when the director cuts to celebs etc during the race.

  6. “They do their own thing, which is good because they have each other to bounce off”

    A perfect description of the lotus team

  7. “Most of the drivers here are very quick but they don’t crash. This is a sport where you need to crash sometimes.”

    Oh Pastor.

    1. ColdFly F1 (@)
      16th August 2015, 8:22

      But sometimes he (Verstappen) gets frustrated. You can see the emotion coming across.

      apple .. tree; father .. son

  8. Best part of the Round-up is the 70 Austrian GP vid. Then was everything that F1 isn’t now.

  9. ColdFly F1 (@)
    16th August 2015, 8:34

    How sick must a global sport be when it cannot attract new teams.
    It cannot be technical, as others have proven to be able to participate. It cannot be the lack of talented drivers, as there are enough around. Therefore it must be economical!
    F1 should be the hottest ticket around and just having an entry to the Championship should be worth 100’s of millions. But Bernie has sucked the sport so dry that nobody can come up with a good business plan to join and become the much needed 12th team.
    FOM/FIA are just a disaster how they run this sport we all love.

    1. @coldfly
      While I agree with you, I think we should also consider the technical difficulties of entering F1 these days. Even in the 90’s you could buy some engines, hire a small team of engineers etc and set up a team in an industrial unit. These days you need a wind tunnel (or access to one), a huge IT department of CFD specialists, data analysts, and the like, and a whole load of specialist equipment, resources and people.
      Even established race teams that compete in other series would struggle to put all of that together – even if they had the money to do so. Unless you’re already competing in LMP or another top class racing series, and have the support of an existing team, it is next to impossible to start an F1 team unless you’re willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the team. And who wants to invest that kind of money at a time when some of the big teams are struggling to find sponsors, while the TV figures are shrinking, and with no guarantee you’ll get a single penny back from the sport due to the strange way it distributes its profits ?

      1. And to top it all off the application window is only open for a matter of weeks, so you’ve got to pull all that together in a stupidly short period of time, unless you’re sitting about with it all there just waiting for the call from the FIA.

        And why start up your own effort from scratch when it’s probably easier to just buy an existing outfit? I don’t think there’s a shortage of teams who would happily accept an offer from someone to take it on.

        Would certainly have been interesting to know, not necessarily who applied, but in what ways they did not meet the criteria.

    2. There’s no sign that Bernie wants any more teams @coldfly. The minor teams are there to provide drama about will-they won’t-they go broke, and he has several of those already, with Haas waiting in the wings.

      He has it all set up to make F1 a losing proposition for any newbies. Not by accident IMO. There is only the one cake, after all, and no real need to divide it up any smaller, now he’s largely replaced sponsorship with his carefully controlled handouts.

    3. I agree. This is the pinnacle of motorsport, where everyone should aspire to be in: drivers and teams alike. Instead it’s a tower perched high with its stairs cut off from the rest of the castle.

    4. 10 teams is actually just perfect.

      No unnecessary / pointless chaos and additional back markers on track.

  10. There’s no sign that Bernie wants any more teams @coldfly. The minor teams are there to provide drama about will-they won’t-they go bust, and he has several of those already, with Haas waiting in the wings.

    He has it all set up to make F1 a losing proposition for any new entrants. Not by accident IMO. There is only the one cake, after all, and no real need to divide it up any smaller, now he’s largely replaced sponsorship with his carefully controlled handouts.

  11. 2009 – 10+ teams applied, three of them chosen
    2015 – two teams applied, no one chosen

    That says a lot about how attractive F1 is these days. I just think how long I will be able to watch those lazy and slow cars. I doubt F1 has a lot to do with sport since 2014.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      16th August 2015, 12:50

      @michal2009b – How attractive was it back in 2009? I think potential owners just didn’t realise how difficult it would be so it appeared more attractive than it actually was.

      In reality, HRT was always miles off the pace and went out of business fairly quickly. Lotus/Caterham lasted a little while longer, had a court battle over their name and eventually went out of business having achieved nothing in the sport. Virgin/Marussia/Manor have managed to survive despite finishing last in most seasons. On top of that, there are questions every season as to whether they’ll make it to the grid and have had 2 very serious incidents which resulted in drivers passing away – they currently exist running cars that are several seconds off the pace at each track.

      If you put in a bid in 2009 and lost, you’d be counting your lucky stars now! You certainly wouldn’t be looking at entering F1 now when arguably, it would be even harder to compete!

      1. @petebaldwin – Agree, currently it’s almost impossible to compete in F1 for new teams. It’s all for rich established teams. HRT was never on an F1 pace. Caterham and Marussia managed to hang on till V6s. Manor is only showing up at every grand prix while Lotus, Sauber and Force India are battling to survive every day.

      2. Not to forget the other team chosen, USF1, didn’t even make it to the grid for 2010.

    2. @michal2009b
      In 09 there was the promise of spending restrictions for all teams, so the applicants would only have needed a relatively small budget back then.

  12. I still don´t like the idea of an application-process in the slightest. Small entry-fee, crash-test, qualification (or pre-qualy if F1 was to ever return to a proper number of participants), that´s all there should be. And I´ll embrace everyone who tries, as I still remember Zakspeed, Andrea Moda, Life, Rial, Coloni fondly. Pre-qualy was the first drama of the weekend, often emotional for the participants and thus, their fans, and F1 simply dropped the idea of ever having it again.

  13. Apex Assassin
    16th August 2015, 19:16

    I’m curious who the two parties were that were trying to join the grid for 2016/17… even more so since it wasn’t Art GP apparently.

    Where is Super Aguri???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    This doesn’t bode well since Manor aren’t showing any signs of making the grid next season and there are huge shadows over LoLtus, Farce India, and Slobber.

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