The template for great F1 racing in 2021

Will the balance of power really change if plans to level the Formula 1 playing field come to fruition in 2021? That's the hope of the seven teams that are currently struggling to rein in the established top three players.

In 2018 Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull are fighting for supremacy at the front of the field, but behind them another battle is raging for the honour of being 'best of the rest'.

It's been great to witness so far, and the winners of this unofficial contest at the first three races have been McLaren, Toro Rosso and Renault, while somehow Haas has failed to shine on race day, despite consistently good pace in qualifying.

Force India and Williams, who led the chasing group last year, have fallen away a little, but both have the resources to help them bounce back. Then there's Sauber, cut adrift in 2017 but now able to challenge for points, helped by Alfa Romeo backing and more support from Ferrari.

This fight may be as unpredictable as the battle for the world championship itself, but none of these seven teams signed up just to challenge for fourth place.

And yet that's all they can realistically hope for at the moment, given the huge gulf to the top three. That's demonstrated every weekend, not just by the race results but by qualifying - consider the apparent ease with which the top guys can get through Q2 without using the quickest tyre.

When Williams announced its 2017 financial results last week, CEO Mike O'Driscoll pointed out that it was the only team outside the big three to score a podium finish in 2017 - with Lance Stroll in Baku.

"This illustrates the large gap in competitive expenditure between the leading teams and the rest of the grid," he says. "We are hopeful that Liberty Media's long-term vision for the future of the sport can deliver a more level playing field, on which all teams can compete more fairly."

This was not a throwaway line in a press conference - it was a formal statement aimed at shareholders and the wider financial world.

"We have grown used to having a front pack of six cars and then the rest" Paddy Lowe, Williams

It's the wish not just of Williams but the other six midfield teams that F1's bosses can push through their financial plans. The theory is that the big three will earn less and be allowed to spend less, helping the second group catch up. At the same time income for those outside the top three will be boosted, further enabling the closure of that gap.

Nobody expects Haas or Sauber or even Williams to be winning races on a regular basis in 2021, and that's not the intention of Ross Brawn and his colleagues. There will always be teams who do a better job than others, and can afford the best drivers - and driver salaries won't be subject to restrictions.

Brawn simply wants a tighter field, one that's close enough that on their day all teams can at least aspire to earning a podium finish without having to rely on freak circumstances.

It's no coincidence that finance is the key to Liberty's blueprint for F1's future. Under the current contractual arrangements, the rich have grown richer. Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull have not only earned the lion's share of the F1 prize fund, they've also benefited from the bonus payments they negotiated with Bernie Ecclestone last time around.

Those three teams would have been doing most of the winning anyway, but over the past few seasons we've seen them pull away from the rest, and the gulf in spending - even relative to the likes of McLaren and Renault - has made a big difference.

"There is some good data around," says Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe, "that has shown the progression over the past five or six years of the number of podiums scored not by the top three teams related to the differential in teams' incomes. And there is a really strong relationship.

"I was looking at this the other day. We have grown used to having a front pack of six cars and then a midfield and then a bunch quite a lot behind. The last of which was Sauber, who got left behind quite a lot in the last few years.

"Credit to Sauber, they have done a great job this winter to close that gap. We now have essentially two groups: the front six, and then the rest."

Lowe, like his Williams colleague O'Driscoll, hopes that the post-2021 financial arrangements will automatically close up the field. And he sees the current fight for fourth place as a template for what we could see all the way through the field.

"If you could have the whole grid working within a performance range of 1-1.5 seconds it would be terrifically exciting," he says. "If you take that group over the first three races this year and look at variations of competitiveness, it is pretty variable isn't it?

"The Toro Rosso was incredibly quick in Bahrain, and then not so quick [in China]. That is a terrific prospect if we can create rules and a commercial structure that puts all the teams into the same bracket.

"The two elements of what is proposed are more equal distribution and a level expenditure. Those are structural components of close and competitive racing. That is the direction, and it is perhaps regrettable that it's taken this long to be accepted."

Lowe, who spent several years at Mercedes with a generous budget at his disposal, is adamant that restricting income and expenditure will make a difference.

"Things like getting rid of test teams and restricting the number of windtunnels have been very effective to not take cost out, but control the escalation of cost, because costs have grown year-on-year," he says. "But really it's attacking it from the wrong end.

"If you have half a dozen teams that have podium potential, it's going to throw up that mix of results that you want" Bob Fernley, Force India

"The direction you need to approach this problem is from the input end, which is what is the money coming in, and what can you do with it. With the cost cap, it doesn't matter how much you bring in, that [cap] is all you can spend. That will generate close racing."

Lowe's optimism is shared by Force India, a team that can only aspire to reaching the proposed $150million cost cap. Deputy team principal Bob Fernley also believes that restricting spending by the big boys will close things up.

"You're never going to have a completely level playing field, nor would you expect one," Fernley says.

"But if you look at the fight for fourth place - Toro Rosso did a fantastic job in Bahrain, Renault has consistently been doing a good job, Haas has been fast on occasions, we're beginning to come back into the fray again - it's all very exciting, and you're not quite sure where it's all going to end up.

"If you took the fourth-place team from the past three races, you'd have three different winners.

"If you have half a dozen teams that have podium potential, it's going to throw up that mix of results you want."

In essence, Brawn wants an F1 in which it's not about how much you spend, but how wisely you spend it. Fernley is a big supporter of the concept that F1 should be about being smart.

"I've always tried to think of F1 as an intellectual challenge, not a 'how much money can you spend' challenge. For example, whether I agree or disagree with the way the Ferrari/Haas programme originated is irrelevant. What was clever about it was that it embraced F1, in that there was a loophole, Ferrari took advantage of it, and then it was closed. And that to me is what's exciting about F1. It's not how big a cheque you can write."

Force India is often characterised as a team that gets a big bang for its buck, and technical director Andy Green is an ace at making the most of limited resources. In practice that means not wasting money on R&D that doesn't pay off, and testing fewer bits in the windtunnel and on track by getting it right earlier in the process.

"It's not necessarily about doing a lot with a little," says Fernley. "It's about being able to focus the programme. If you only have $100, you have to do two iterations of something, and make sure one of them works. If you've got $1000, you can make 10 iterations - you don't care. More money creates sloppiness in the process.

"We're not necessarily any better than other people, but we're more focused because we can't afford to make mistakes as frequently as other people can. That's what you're looking at - to be able to say that you can manage your process.

"Also, if you have a $50m development budget - in any business - it's a phenomenal amount of money. A million a week. How much more do you want? There's an element of sending the right messages, not only that F1 is creative, and it's the pinnacle and pushing the boundaries everywhere, but it's also responsible."

It all sounds good in theory, but we are still some way from Liberty pushing its financial plans through. Inevitably there are doubts, as there have always been, about the policing of cost controls and spending.

The aces up the sleeve are Nigel Kerr, the former Honda, Brawn GP and Mercedes man hired by Ross Brawn as F1's financial wizard, and ex-McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh, who is consulting for the FIA on the subject.

Both understand every aspect of how an F1 team operates, and how the money flows. They are the men who ultimately will make sure things happen as Liberty hopes.

"They're very experienced in terms of knowing where all the wrinkles are," says Fernley. "You've basically got poachers turned gamekeepers, which is really not such a bad thing. And I've got enormous respect for Martin; over the years when we had a relationship with McLaren [over gearbox supply], we got to understand how he works. He's a straight shooter.

"If there's a possibility of being able to expand on development, F1 teams are going to take it, if they've got the resources. So we need a strong governing body and strong commercial body to keep us under control."