Ideally, GP2 would be the place for those not ready to make their own car.

The nail has been squarely hit on the head. I don’t necessarily agree with the rest of Ali’s idea, although praise is due for thinking about the issue probably more than those who get paid mega-bucks to do so.

But what I strongly agree with is that lower formulae should be the proving grounds not just for drivers, but for teams as well. Jordan was a classic example of how one should attempt to go about the business of motor racing. The team ran in lower formulae, learning, developing and progressing at a steady rate. Then they jumped up to F1, using all that previous knowledge and all those previous contacts and companies (for sponsorship opportunities etc…).

Even if costs were lowered, it would still be mightily difficult to competitively compete in F1 from scratch. Super Aguri tried this in 2006, and although they were helped by Honda, the pit crew still made lots of errors, wrong decisions were made, probably more so than Ferrari, Renault and McLaren.

Surely that is how a team should gain entry into Formula One: By proving their worth in lower series. Yes, that jump would still be huge as lower classes tend to use the customer chassis framework. But at least most of the other elements would be in place and hopefully the budget wouldn’t be too shabby so they could spend on the R&D side of things.

Stewart Racing were another great example of this. Both Stewart and Jordan grew their teams into competitive squads. Sure, the Stewart success was a bit of a fluke, but they ran regularly in the points. And Jordan did very well until it all came unraveled towards the end.

Clive, I agree with your assessment of the problem and also how the assistance from other teams could be a way of preventing the customer role becoming more than what it once was in a era gone by.

Great comments so far, and some well thought-out ideas. Anybody else wanna chip in?

In those days there was no problem, not only because it was rare for a customer team to win races, but also because they were genuine customer teams - they bought a chassis, stuck an engine in it and went racing. In other words, once they had bought the chassis they were on their own and sank or swam according to how good their engineers were at developing the chassis. And they thoroughly deserved whatever success they had as a result.

The problem is now that the customer teams are developing into more than customers; they are evolving into works B teams and F1 looks at a future of six manufacturer teams with four cars each. That is anathema to any F1 fan, I think, and the problem needs to be addressed now before it is too late.

I believe that customer teams are the only way for the diversity of F1 to be maintained but they need to be prevented from becoming B teams. So it should be made legal to buy in a chassis but no assistance from the manufacturer to the customer should be permitted thereafter. In this way, the skill of developing F1 cars would be maintained in depth and some of the original drama of small teams taking on the big guys be retained.

How you police such a rule is another point entirely and not one I’d like to have to decide…

Ideally, GP2 would be the place for those not ready to make their own car. However, the gap between GP2 and F1 is so large financially that the only compromise I can see is to allow time-limited participation by non-constructor teams (3 years, perhaps?). They would be allowed to keep their positions and, if they’re lucky enough to get there, they could go on the podiums. However, points and their attendant benefits would go to the top 8 cars of constructors. The three years would allow the teams to build up the manufacturing and financial capability to make their own car and fully enter the championship thereafter.