Formula One- Why customer cars is a step backwards

It has been suggested that customer cars should be considered in a bid to stop spiralling cost for F1's bottom teams.

Formula One is currently at a standstill due to ongoing events of the coronavirus, with the teams looking to cut cost costs as the lack of racing is seriously affecting their incomes.

One suggestion being flouted is that Formula One toys with the idea of allowing 'customer cars' to be part of the regulations.

The concept was very popular in the 1970s, with the biggest constructors building cars with smaller customers buying the car and running a team for a fraction of the cost.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has called on F1 to allow teams to buy cars from their rivals as it would slash their costs to just £63 million (US$80 million) and help to keep their wheels turning during the coronavirus shutdown.

Since the 1981 World Championship, F1’s regulations state that every squad “must design and manufacture certain key parts of its cars itself, including the chassis, which means that each team’s cars are unique.”

It has driven up their costs to an average of £190 million annually as the teams try to outspend each other in a bid for victory.

Their biggest cost is R&D with Red Bull Racing’s parent company spending £118.1 million on it in 2018 alone according to its latest accounts, nearly six times the amount spent by the backmarkers so they stand little chance of success. F1 is due to limit team budgets to £138 million (US$175 million) next year but Horner fears that this won’t do the trick.

Driver salaries as well as the design, development and manufacture of the engines are excluded from the cap so there is no guarantee that it would make the minnows more competitive.

Ten Grand Prix meetings have been called off this season and with race fees a key source of income, there is genuine concern that smaller teams may not have the resources to survive, F1 fields 10 teams and has no plans for any new entries. Allowing backmarkers to buy their cars “would be the cheapest way to address their issue, their plight, and the quickest way to be competitive as well,” says Horner.

“You would save because you would just operate as a race team. You would have a limited development budget so you could quite easily operate, I would have thought very comfortably, at $80 million.”

“We need to think out of the box rather than just going round and round, beating ourselves up about numbers. If this is all about saving the little teams and improving their competitiveness, it would be a very difficult to argue against the logic of a small team being able to take a customer car.”

But is this what the small teams want?

With costs escalating, you would imagine the small teams would be in agreement to such a rule change but the early indications suggest these teams are not on board with the proposals.

The idea isn't without critics, with team principle of Haas, Gunther Steiner being the biggest vocal opposition.

Haas, a team that is favour of reducing costs within the sport would benefit from such a rule change but the boss of the American outfit suggests that the 'Big Three' will still hold all of the power within the sport.

We would then be customer teams and the larger teams could actually manipulate our performance,”

“It would be as if we had a car from last year, They will always stay ahead of us.”

He added: “With a budget cap, we still don’t reach the budgets of the larger teams, but we are closer.”

As F1 moves to a critical point in its 70th year, the idea of customer cars is once again going down like a lead balloon.

Formula One has some big decisions to make as the deadline for the proposed budget cap nears ever closer with a few teams on the brink financially.