A few days ago I finished reading Jackie Stewart’s autobiography, “Winning Is Not Enough”, and that combined with recent happenings in F1, IndyCar and NASCAR, got me thinking.

Like many F1 fans I was sad to see the demise of the Super Aguri F1 Team, and disappointed that Dave Richards ProDrive project never even made it to the grid this year. The reason for both being the turn around by the F1 teams on the concept of customer cars. Without being able to use someone else’s chassis start up teams are never going to survive in modern F1.

(Anthony Davidson in the Super-Aguri /Honda)

It seems that F1 has forgotten it’s own, not so distant, past. Reading Stewart’s book reminded me that he, and the Tyrrell organization, started out running “customer” cars, as did people like Frank Williams.

(Piers Courage in a Frank Williams entered Brabham BT26 at 1969 British GP)

When I first started watching F1 in the mid 1970s (during a time of fuel crisis and cost cutting – doesn’t that sound familiar?) customer cars (such as March) were common the grids were so full that they held pre-qualifying sessions. Yes you had to qualify to even get the chance to qualify for the race itself!

(1976 era March F1 car)

Wouldn’t allowing top teams to supply other less well budgeted teams with chassis, help spread the cost and due to economies of scale reduce the costs of development and spare parts?

Limiting customer cars to being at least one year old would make it easier for new teams to enter, build experience, and make the move to becoming constructors as the desire to become more competitive overcame budget constraints.

Wouldn’t this be a great opportunity for some of the manufacturers to run multiple teams under different brands while sharing R&D costs? – That’s the thought that bought me around to NASCAR and IndyCar. With stories of Danica Patrick and Kyle Busch having “courtesy” F1 tests lined up at the end of the season – wouldn’t it be cool if they were real tests with real chances of race seats?

Imagine a USGP at Indy with Kyle Busch in a Toyota, with Danica and Marco Andretti teamed up in a Acura branded American-Honda team? Or Jenson Button and Dan Wheldon in a Aston-Martin livered Pro-Drive McLaren?

Ah I can dream….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 2:12 am and is filed under Formula One. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.