How Formula 1 has made itself unattractive to new teams

There’s always a flutter of excitement every time a brand-new team decides to throw its lot in to go and play in Formula 1.

Silly season is a glorious time of year as it is, as the anticipation over which drivers will fill the seats on the grid hits fever pitch. Throw a new team into the mix, and the level of suspense reaches a different stratum as there’s a legion of additional elements to be decided.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened in F1 since 2016 when Haas joined the fray. That brought its own excitement in employing a model of operation that had been seldom seen at that point, in which it elected to outsource the car build to Dallara and rely on non-listed parts from Ferrari to keep its operating bill down. It even managed to successfully lure Romain Grosjean - arguably at his pomp - suggesting that it was aiming to be competitive in its first season rather than simply make up the numbers at the back.

With the application of the $145m budget cap in 2021, F1 should theoretically prove more alluring to manufacturers and racing teams looking to make a splash on motorsport’s biggest stage. But, as ever, nothing in F1 is quite that simple. Now, any prospective new entrants have to pay the eyewatering sum of $200m, which would be distributed between the teams, to join F1.

For the existing teams, it’s a good thing; Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff explained that the fees protect the current teams and give them “franchise value”. That ensures that the current 10 teams have a significantly higher resale value and encourages prospective entrants to purchase a fully functioning operation. Plus, it ensures that the teams are compensated for any dilution in prize money caused by an additional entry on the list.

What it doesn’t do is provide a new entrant the means to go racing the way it wishes to. Buy Haas, and a new entrant must stick with outsourcing its development for a bit longer while it gets its own infrastructure in place. Buy Alfa Romeo/Sauber, and an owner has a location that has proved notoriously difficult to attract top-line engineers and staff. Take on a team, and you also take on its inherent problems with little chance to root them out.

Guenther Steiner, Team Principal, Haas F1

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

It’s hard to see the $200m as anything more than a deterrent for new teams to join F1. In the past few years, the usual whispers of a new team fancying a tilt at the big-time have largely become a silent lull. The occasional mention of a Monaco-based team or the 695th attempt from Stefan GP to join the grid sporadically pepper the news, but rarely is there anything of substance.

Before the $200m entry fee, F1 had for a time operated new team applications pursuant to a $48m entry bond that would be repaid to the team over instalments if it remained in the championship. Enacted for the 2000 season, this was introduced to spare F1 from the plethora of entries that had come and gone across the late 1980s and '90s with little-to-no success.

The only two teams to enter under the $48m bond structure were Toyota and Super Aguri, as other manufacturers saw the value of buying up existing entries. The bond was abandoned ahead of the 2010 season, when F1 wanted to wave new entries through the door as the global financial crisis and threats of a walkout from the Formula One Teams Association affiliated entries posed serious risks to grid numbers. Of those, the Virgin/Manor lineage had the best time of it, scoring three points across the seven years it spent under varying guises. Neither the HRT squad nor the Lotus/Caterham outfit ever troubled the scoreboard.

On the face of it, then, those entries suggest that perhaps F1 closing its doors and encouraging would-be entries to buy up a going concern would be good for the competitiveness of the grid. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Both Stewart in 1996 and Toyota in 2001 had spent the year before their clean-sheet F1 entries building up and conducting behind-the-scenes tests

Instead, those three entries (plus US F1, which never even made it to the grid in 2010) were crippled at the start by a lack of time to prepare. Virgin and HRT only got the call in June 2009, giving them half a year to put together an entire Formula 1 team ready for the following year’s opener in Bahrain. Lotus’ entry was only accepted in September following BMW’s withdrawal later in the year, giving it even less time to put the pieces together.

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Haas’ entry for 2016 was actually deferred a year, as the team spent the whole of 2015 getting itself in shape to do more than simply participate – and both Stewart in 1996 and Toyota in 2001 had spent the year before their clean-sheet F1 entries building up and conducting behind-the-scenes tests. Something like “fail to prepare, prepare to fail” comes to mind.

Since F1 and the FIA tightened up its belt and was more selective over who was permitted to join the championship, the number of new entries has fallen dramatically. The graph below shows the number of new entries added to the championship in each season since 1980; this does not include privateer teams running purchased machinery (a practice that was stopped at the top of the '80s), purchases of an existing team, or teams that returned to the grid after time away. However, it does include the BAR team, as there was very little carryover from the Tyrrell team that preceded it other than the entry itself.

 

The boom of entries in the late 1980s and early 1990s came as F1 was becoming more globally recognised as a top-level sporting discipline, rather than simply the pursuit of the overtly wealthy. In the late '80s, a number of the teams that entered F1 either had the backing of, or were owned by, Italian industrialists – and this also partially explains the profusion of Italian drivers at the time. The country suffered a financial crisis through 1992-93, after which the number of teams and drivers declined heavily.

Back then, the swollen grids necessitated that the least successful teams ran the gauntlet of pre-qualifying. Of course, the 40 cars crammed into the pitlane at its peak eventually had to decline as the teams mired in the Friday morning first hurdle couldn’t derive much value from not making the races, but the increased numbers of entries opened the doors to more drivers.

There was certainly a lot of dross, granted, and few would have been there had they not sweetened the pot with additional cash, but it also gave a chance for the up-and-coming drivers to impress in sub-par machinery and potentially work their way into a top-line drive. And, of course, it also gave a home to the refugee drivers who had been dumped out of decent machinery but still had something to offer a new team looking to learn the ropes.

Today’s F1 has half the seats to offer; while it certainly cuts out the possibility of sub-standard drivers being a nuisance on-track, it also leaves a wealth of talented youngsters and experienced professionals seat-less, without a chance to prove they can put in a shift at a better-funded operation.

One such example from 1989’s new entrants was Stefan Johansson’s starring turn at Onyx at the Portuguese Grand Prix. Left out of a drive, perhaps unfairly, after looking decent at Ferrari and doing a good job as Alain Prost’s number two at McLaren, Johansson was left to toil in pre-qualifying with Mike Earle's outfit that had been a winner at Formula 2 and Formula 3000 level throughout the 1980s.

Although his F1 career never really recovered, despite Footwork’s best intentions as it sought to keep him on board in 1991 after Alex Caffi’s road accident left the Italian on the sidelines, Johansson scored one of the most underrated feel-good results in F1’s history, snatching third at Estoril in 1989.

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Perhaps F1 is too expensive and bloated for a team like Onyx to come in and secure a surprise podium today. Times change, after all, and the relative mechanical simplicity of F1 back then meant that little teams could chalk up a big result if the circumstances were right.

How did you get here? Alain Prost attempts to hide his surprise as Onyx driver Stefan Johansson joins him on the rostrum at Estoril in 1989

Photo by: Motorsport Images

However, with three extra teams on the current F1 grid (as the FIA has defined a maximum of 26 cars per grand prix), more youngsters and experienced hands would have the chance to earn an ascent up the grid – especially with a stirring back-of-the-grid drive. Big names currently on F1’s sidelines include Nico Hulkenberg and Daniil Kvyat, and both would be valuable assets to a new outfit serious about cracking F1.

Although the current constructors were instrumental in locking out the grid, a team like Alpine would ironically also benefit from additional entries. As the Renault powertrain programme no longer has an additional team to supply after McLaren’s defection to Mercedes, at least one extra entry on the grid would yield the French manufacturer the opportunity to double-dip on the data available to it at each race.

After all, every other manufacturer has at least two teams running its power units; Mercedes supplies four teams across the grid, Ferrari has three, and Honda - at least for now, until it departs upon season's end - has the Red Bull-owned pair of squads on its books. Renault has only Alpine’s operation giving it numbers to crunch.

Plus, Alpine’s young driver programme is brimming with talent but no clear path to F1 at the current time. Drivers Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso are both signed up for next year and, with no other teams to theoretically farm the younglings out to, it means that the likes of Oscar Piastri, Guanyu Zhou and Christian Lundgaard have no real chances to find an F1 seat for 2022. No wonder Lundgaard has been flirting with IndyCar, in which he impressed in his Indianapolis road course debut.

F1 has stated previously that it could potentially waive the $200m entry fee if the right team came in, presumably if a manufacturer wanted to join the party. But in that case, F1 would be worryingly doomed to repeat the failings of the 2000s

The lack of available seats has also, or will also, affect drivers from other junior teams. Callum Ilott has had to spend 2021 being content with his Ferrari test driver role and taking in the altogether different GT racing, while Red Bull has nowhere for Liam Lawson and Juri Vips to go if their impressive Formula 2 seasons yield strong finishes.

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It creates something of a logjam in the Formula 2 conveyor belt, and capable young drivers are forced to either abandon or consign their F1 dreams to the backburner as there are no seats available. And sure, you can blame the pay-drivers if you want to, but they’re as much of a part of F1’s history as the title winners.

Minardi wouldn’t have survived as long as it did without them, and hence would not have been privy to the Red Bull take over in 2006. Williams would probably be dead without them too; the 2018 pairing of Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin hardly pulled up any trees, but offered the Grove squad enough money to keep chugging along into the next decade.

Alpine has precious few options to place Lundgaard and Piastri at small teams

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

F1 has stated previously that it could potentially waive the $200m entry fee if the right team came in, presumably if a manufacturer wanted to join the party. But in that case, F1 would be worryingly doomed to repeat the failings of the 2000s. Then, multiple road car giants jumped into F1 to mixed success, but most of them packed up their involvement before the turn of the next decade, leaving the grid looking decidedly short-staffed prior to the 2010 entry process.

Formula E is now going through a similar degree of pain, as its own collection of manufacturers are pulling out one at a time having felt that the series doesn’t justify the expense - Mercedes announcing that it will follow Audi and BMW through the exit door at the end of the 2022 campaign.

Now F1 runs to a budget cap, however, it should be able to capitalise on any additional interest. Arguably, the current teams have picked the wrong time to be worried about reduced prize money, especially as the cost cap moves down to $135m from 2023, and should really have been more concerned when teams were previously at death’s door. Perhaps it does give the likes of Haas, which is probably the current team with the smallest budget, more value to a worthwhile investor – but keeping the grid penned in at 10 teams limits F1 in a variety of other ways.

Perhaps there’s a compromise to be had: open the door to another two teams, allow them the time to set up and be competitive from the off, and then re-introduce the entry fee for a 13th team. More seats available will introduce more value to the junior categories, more interest if they have proven quality in other series, and lure new major players to the F1 circus.

Or F1 can just try to leverage the “franchise value” and lock the same entries in year after year. That’s fine too, but it’s just not very interesting.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B leads at the start

Photo by: Alessio Morgese