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I wish I had been able to put more thought into this, but it has been a busy week for me. Also others have some great ideas that I agree with and maybe just didn't duplicate below...
Identity and Marketing
The cars should be the pinnacle of design and speed within the global racing community.
F1 should remain a competition of both constructors and drivers. So that means technology remains important. However, just as today, technical regulations should try to keep the teams within a box. I firmly believe that wide open “run what you brung” plus no cost controls is a recipe for disaster.
I believe Bernie wanted F1 to be a glamour event. Movie stars, powerful people, movers and shakers, etc. to be walking through the pit lane. I think to a degree that is fine, but that should be the result of real popularity vs. artificial scarcity. Focus on race fans first. Make it cheaper to attend races.
Don’t put the fans behind walls.
Placing the races behind pay walls is just trying to squeeze the last few drops of juice out of a dying sport. If they care about the long term viability, do what you can to get young fans involved. That means free content and modern distribution platforms. A freemium model might work well. Ability to view the basis race for free, but pay extra for things like access to multiple in-car views, etc.
Who is in Charge?
Currently the teams have too much power. They should have a strong voice, but as it stands now they are a dysfunctional group that requires a nearly impossible consensus to get much if anything done. Additionally, the large manufactures wield way too much strength. Neuter them, even at the risk of them leaving. An absolutely nothing such as the current Ferrari veto.
Stewards
Permanent stewards to ensure consistency.
Aerodynamic regulations
Create areas of exclusion to reduce downforce created by the upper body (including front and rear wings). But I think we should consider increasing (creating) the underbody wing if that can produce downforce that is less turbulent for following cars (not sure if this is doable). Stop using DRS.
Chassis regulations
Open up the regulations around suspension design by allowing for active suspension. But, to prevent excessive cost, use a spec ECU just for the active suspension as well as a fixed number of sensors and actuators. The sensors and actuators could even be spec parts. This should result in more parity as it will rely upon improved software design (which should be cheaper) vs. costly and “trick” mechanical designs. I think the current suspension setups are overly complex because they are expensive and intricate mechanical watches trying to live in the age of cheap and accurate quartz watches.
Power Unit regulations
Other series already focus on pure electric. So I don’t think that is where F1 should go, but I also think moving to a pure hydrocarbon based ICE is also the not answer. I think the current regulations are very technically interesting, but also maybe too complex. The cost is just not sustainable and given the tall mountain that is required to be climbed by a new entrant, I think the height of the mountain needs to be lowered. So a less complex energy recovery system is a start.
Customer cars
Allow customer cars in whatever way is required to make it work. I guess that means relaxing the amount of IP each team must own, but it has worked previously and I don’t see why it can’t work again. Thought will be required to prevent the creation of a firm two tier system. I hope that some of my chassis and aero suggestions may make it easier to create competitive cars.
Tires
A single vendor with a small set number of compounds. I don’t like the idea of tire wars to “spice things up”. Tire wars is just an element of unpredictability used to disrupt a system that is stagnant. This may seem contrary to my comments above, but I think a limited set of compounds should result in making it harder for teams to optimize for every track.
Testing
Find a way to allow for more testing. I am not sure how that can be done without creating exploding costs, but as it stands now, teams are jumping through hoops to test and validate in other way when maybe it might be cheaper to allow more track time. I know some large teams actually don’t want this. I think that is because they have gotten good as jumping through the hoops while they know the smaller teams don’t have the resources to do so. Basically keep the game expensive because we can afford to play it (see “Cost Caps” below).
Cost Caps
This is a touchy subject as many think it can’t be done. My opinion is that the larger and well-funded teams don’t want to try this because it might actually work. If the required level of funding to be competitive is pushed down and the ability to be funded remains roughly the same, then by definition more teams will be competitive and that the top teams will be less competitive in relation to the status quo. Are there difficulties in make this work? Yes, but I think with work it can be made successful. Generally speaking, this is going to result in a smaller workforce for teams. For those in the industry… sorry. As others have mentioned, I am fine with driver salaries being outside of the cap, or handled in a different way such as pooling a subset of senior management and engineering in with the drivers.
Most importantly… As others have mentioned, a number of other high profile, high budget sporting series have figured this out. Lots of working models to use as examples.
Profit Sharing, Prize Money, etc.
The current system is extremely broken. I would replace it with one that does away with bonuses for historic teams (I am sure this would not be popular) and focus on a base distribution for all team with some bonus for finishing position in the championship. Even teams that finish at the bottom should be money, but there should be a mechanism prevent the F1 version of NASCAR’s “start and park” abuse.
Richard
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