Bernie Ecclestone has given insight to his dream for the future of F1... and it's not pretty.

With three, maybe more, teams in financial difficulty, and recent proposals by the Strategy Group likely to drive up costs even further, Ecclestone believes the future of F1 is a split championship, one featuring the main manufacturers and the other featuring teams that have bought off the shelf packages.

"I’ve been pushing, pushing, pushing for single chassis, single engine, and run it exactly the same as now," he told reporters in Monaco, "but they (the teams) can’t muck around with the car.

"You do that with four or five teams and you leave the constructors alone. You let them do what they want to do. You would make all the chassis the same, and then we would do a deal with one of the engine suppliers. It should work."

Note the use of the word "should".

"We'd supply two chassis complete by the first of January for $15 million," he continued. "We'd pay. If it costs more we have to pay more, if it's less that's good for us.

"And they have to race," he added. "The lowest team gets $50 million anyway, so they would have two cars, plus $35 million."

Ecclestone argues that such a move would end the issue of pay drivers.

"Instead of having to run around and find a driver who has money, they could look for a talented driver and put him in the car. You would then get a lot more new drivers with a lot more talent."

Or perhaps a very rich young man (or woman) who could start a team and buy said customer package.

"I want these teams to go racing for $70 million," he insisted. "Most of that money they already get from us.

"We should stop mucking about, asking opinions," he added, at a time much is being made of two fan surveys. "The problem is we're too democratic… we should say 'These are the rules of the championship, if you want to be in it, great, if you don't, we understand."

Some will argue that this is pretty much like the 60s/70s when teams could buy a chassis and Ford DFV and go Grand Prix racing, indeed, it's how some of today's teams started out. But does such a retrograde move take the sport forward?

Fact is, this is not the way forward, and Ecclestone and CVC have to realise that despite the myriad of trademarks, lawyers and whatever, F1 is not their personal Scalextric.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by bfairey, 06/06/2015 19:06

"Just like CART?"

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2. Posted by KoosOos, 25/05/2015 12:35

"
The problem in F1 today is most of the fans F1 has comes from the 2000 era. They believe they now what F1 is about. The only things they now of the eras before to 2000 was that there was better racing but they do not now way and they are not interested in finding out way the 60 and 70 was such great eras in F1.

F1 was great back then because teams with little money could take part in F1. Teams where aloud to buy parts from any one and there was no rules that told you that you had to design any part by your self. Now F1 is so expensive because every team has to make there own car.

As far as i have seen there will be no rule that exclude any team from taking part against the manufactures.
The rule will also give the smaller teams a bigger changes to take on the bigger teams. If you take a look at the trend at the moment. If a midfield teams have a changes to take on the big teams like Lotus in 2013 and Force India in 2014 you will see that they come out of it with financial problems. Lotus for completely blowing there budget in 2013 to come 3de and Force India trying to compete with Mclaren in 2014. This rule changes would give the teams away to recover and then go back to manufacturer there own cars.
"

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3. Posted by Mugmug, 24/05/2015 14:21

"Bernie is a greedy, self serving POS.

If you count the number of times the words "millions", "money", "pay", "cost", "buy", are in his conversations, instead of "fans", "sport" "racing", you can see that the man would do the sport a favor and wilt away. Quickly."

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4. Posted by Jonno, 24/05/2015 5:48

"F1 is in a mess because Ecclestone has got away with manipulating the sport, from the circuits down to the tea lady. He keeps on saying that F1 needs surgery, it actually requires an amputation. Bernie should be removed from F1 ASAP.
Once F1 is free from his hands, it stands a chance of getting back on track. Everybody knows where the problem lies, sadly only CVC have the power to put things right, but until the money dries up, they won't give a fig.
Those who believe F1 needs a single person to run the sport are swallowing the PR and not accepting the true facts of the situation. Cut the greed and fix the sport - simples.
"

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5. Posted by Oldbuzzard, 23/05/2015 15:25

"If F1 is not Bernie/CVC's Scalextric, whose is it?

The team owners? It's been proven throughout racing's history that that dosen't work. CART. IRL. And, the current F1 situation.

The drivers? Absolutely not, for the primary reason that they are worse at agreeing on anything than the owners.

The engine manufacturers? Isn't that why we have the disasterous situation of today? The engine manufacturers dictated the engines they would supply to F1 and the owners and the FIA came running like whores to a sailors' convention.

The fans? They always want the same thing - more passing, close racing, lots of noise, etc. They have little if any input into the technology. The motor sport fan base is changing rapidly, anyway. Motor racing as we older folks have known it is not appealing to much of the younger generation. My only suggestion to help remedy this is to develop new and more electronic communication with the young generation. Develop technology (it may already exist) that will allow spectators at the races and at home see, hear and follow the races, teams and drivers throughout the races. A spectator at an F1 race has little way of knowing what's going on with his/her favorite driver/team unless the public address announcer tells them, or they might see something on a large screen. That's ancient technology. Each team should be required to provide apps that will let a subscriber follow the team through the race. Strategies for each driver, pit stop plans, the whole race plan. So the other teams can see all that, too? Big deal.

Arguably, the most successful racing series in the world, NASCAR (also having attendance problems) has traditionally made all rules internally,and, until recently, the decisions were made by one person. No committees, no strategy groups, no forums, no voting. Here is the rule book. Wanna come race? No? Okay, have a good day. Since 1949, the NASCAR formula has worked fairly well. There have been hiccups, of course, but generally the benevolent dictatorship has worked.

Essentially, Bernie and Max did that in the '80's and '90's and it worked. What has happened now is the "sell out" to the auto manufacturers. You now have, for practical purposes, three (Honda hasn't had time to establish a presence yet) companies dictating the look, feel and sound of Formula One. And, it is failing.

My solution is simple, but will never be adopted because there is no one strong enough to make it happen. All the safety regulations stay in place, of course. The car regs are this: Prescribed height, width, length and weight parameters. Minimal aerodynamic appendages allowed. One tire allowed for all teams. That is, one size front one size rear, one compound only. One wet condition tire, say, the max design. The compound will be of a hardness to allow about half a race distance. That will make grip difficult to acheive and the racing will be exciting. There will be no changes allowed to the cars on the track except during pit stops.

Everything else is free. Run what you brung. Any engine. Any fuel. Any shape (within the regs).

One thing for sure, there will always be one, two or three teams that will dominate in any given year. It has always been that way. The Lotus era; the first McLaren era; the second McLaren/Senna era; the Williams era; the Ferrari/Schumacher era; the Red Bull/Vettel era; and now the Mercedes/Hamilton era. I don't see that changing.

One person must appear that can save F1 and that person must have total authority. Politics and money are destroying F1 and only a dictator can save it. "

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6. Posted by gturner38, 23/05/2015 12:22

"If it were still the 1960s, this would be a decent idea since teams could buy a car, get their toes wet in the sport, then start building their own for relatively little money. In the current situation, I'm afraid it would just cement the position of the teams as haves and have nots. I'll grant you the teams will never be on 100% equal financial footing and probably never should be, but the effort should be to even out the FOM money and cap the engine prices so that the small teams have a puncher's chance.

The comparison with MotoGP isn't really valid. Ducati is essentially a works team taking advantage of the regs while the real privateers continue to run at the back. The MotoGP system is closer to what Max proposed in 2009 with teams getting added benefits in exchange for certain limitations (ie budget) while still having the freedom to make their own vehicle. "

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7. Posted by Darvi, 23/05/2015 12:13

"A step too far for me - well, several steps too far. We already have GP2 - that is the spec formula, F1 needs to allow teams to create their own chassis. As the comment below says, it hasn't really worked for Indy and I dissagree with the comparison to MotoGP where the manufacturers build their own engines, gearboxes and chassis but are able to sell them to customer teams.

One thing that MotoGP has shown is that careful attention to fixing what is wrong with the regulations can result in growth and strength for the championship. The issue here is that the FIM and Dorna (who control MotoGP) are very different than the FIA and FOM in that they listen to the teams, engage with the public and make things happen. Contrast that with FOM, who don't seem to be bothered about the fans and seem to be only engaged in making money, while the FIA have gone MIA."

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8. Posted by phantom, 23/05/2015 11:19

"Works for me. Put them all in Marussias and tell them to go for it! They're not terribly quick, corner eccentrically and seem difficult to drive, so that might give us excellent racing. :-)"

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9. Posted by Canuck, 23/05/2015 10:55

"This must be a joke - Bernie wants to emulate Indy cars? And he calls it a dream? I call it a nightmare. The man has lost his marbles."

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10. Posted by nonickname, 23/05/2015 10:05

"The concept(with very small changes) works perfectly for MotoGP. Ducati are all over the works bikes with a different engine rule and the works teams are closing in.Kawasaki are looking at coming back.
In moto 2, ALL the engines are Honda and the chassis are free. The racing is excellent in both series.
The best years of F! were the years when the factory teams race the private teams with off the shelf engines and chassis.Please let's stop this 'purity' crap and get back to racing."

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