Now the big one:
Sporting regulations
To avoid making this too long, a few bullet points:
- Remove almost all restrictions on tyres. Teams get a set allocation of number of sets per weekend and can fill those in however they want during the weekend. Every compound can be freely chosen. Like MotoGP, every car can start the race on whatever tyre they wish, they can decide right up until the warmup lap. And as stated before every tyre can last the entire race so the rule that two compounds need to be used is scrapped as well.
- Decouple the ICE+Turbo from the rest of the PU rules wise. Teams get 5 or 6 or 7 engines per season depending on the number of races. If you go over that you start from the pits. All other components can be freely exchanged. No more grid penalties. Again this is pretty much a copy of MotoGP rules (sensing a pattern here!) Also, every manufacturer must supply identical power units to both factory and customer teams, hardware
and software. No exceptions. This can be enforced by the random pool idea someone mentioned in this thread already. Which is what happens in Moto3, incidentally
- No more 'driver stewards'. Same two (or three, one reserve) stewards at every single race, paid and well read. Penalties only decided based on a breach of the rules, not on the outcome. No more micromanaging. Either it's bad enough to be a drivethrough or worse or nothing.
- Stop worrying about track limits so much. The yellow sausage kerb that was put in at Singapore is good enough for every other track where this is an issue.
- Get rid of VSC and replace it with FCY system that WEC uses.
Consessions
Oh look, another thing stolen from MotoGP! This was also considered by WEC to entice new entries into LMP1. Put simply: a manufacturer who doesn't score podiums (or top 10 results, or top 8 or whatever this can be tweaked) gets breaks on the limits imposed above. So like MotoGP, in F1 Honda would get 10 or 12 engines per season
and unlimited testing days. Once they score enough 'podium points' or regular points, they lose these advantages. This sounds like a kind of BoP but it really isn't because once you can build a car that's fast enough to get a podium with unlimited testing you can build one that's close to it without it. If the current manufacturers don't like it, tough luck. This may sound like a huge advantage to Honda in this example, but we have real world proof that it works. Suzuki in MotoGP got a podium last weekend and have scored enough 'podium credits' to lose all consessions. They made a mistake with their engine last year and only the unlimited testing and extra engines allowed them to correct it. They're still not at the same pace as the leading bikes at every race and don't feature in the championship but they're there, thereabouts. In the right circumstances they can win races now. It's sort of a catchup mechanism, but once you're close enough it won't help you anymore. This will help to entice potential new manufacturers. And this leads us to:
Testing
The testing ban sucks. It needs to be lifted, but in an intelligent way. I propose the following: a manufacturer can organize a test during the season. However, every other team has to be invited as well, and every private team that turns up will have to have the expenses for the test paid in full by the organizing manufacturer. Manufacturers with consessions are exempt as explained above. Done.