MotoGP shows F1 'customer' is not a dirty word

There has been a lot of talk about Ross Brawn being a potential saviour for Formula 1 in recent years. That F1 needed a fresh leader, who knew the championship inside out, to sort out the sporting and technical sides of things.

Last week, that happened. Liberty Media completed its deal to purchase F1, gave Bernie Ecclestone an honorary title on his way out the door and brought in Brawn and ESPN man Sean Bratches to work with new CEO Chase Carey.

Cue fresh waves of optimism. Brawn is the right man for that job. But if he is going to create an F1 in which a small team can 'do a Leicester' - a phrase now as over-used and boring as adding 'gate' to the end of the name of a controversy - I'd suggest he peruses MotoGP's current framework.

And one standout item that is a dirty word in F1: 'customer' machinery.

Only with KTM's entry this year does MotoGP have more manufacturer bikes on the grid than customers, with 12 out of the 23. Last year, the split was just on the other side, with 11 bikes run by satellite teams or customers on the grid of 21.

(Small bit of housekeeping, for the purpose of this, we are counting Aprilia as a manufacturer, even though it isn't quite classed as a 'factory' by MotoGP, given its collaboration with the Gresini outfit.)

But would anybody have said MotoGP wasn't outstanding entertainment last year? Or that the satellite teams took away from the overall product, or devalued what the factory teams were doing?

I wouldn't have thought so. We finished 2016 with nine different winners, and between Cal Crutchlow's two wins and Jack Miller's victory at Assen, three races were won by independent teams. Yes, two of those three races were shaped by weather - that great leveller - but underdog success is excellent news for nearly everybody.

Even the factory outfits can win when they lose. Crutchlow's Phillip Island victory in a race an injured Dani Pedrosa watched from home and Marc Marquez crashed out of was even key to Honda winning the manufacturers' championship ahead of Yamaha, as its top scorer in the race.

The point is, the independent outfits are valued in MotoGP. Promoter Dorna is smart enough to realise it is never going to have 10 or 11 manufacturers involved in the championship, building their own motorcycles from scratch. That said, six is an excellent outcome and a testament to the strength of the championship.

For a long time that number was a lot lower. It was four at the turn of the decade, for instance. With Ducati having only entered in 2003 and Suzuki and Aprilia both having had time away, Honda and Yamaha are the only two genuine constants.

All six of MotoGP's factories are key players in the motorcycle world, global manufacturers in the literal sense of the word. Not since the ill-fated Team Roberts and Ilmor projects in 2006 and '07 respectively has any entity tried to go it alone in building bikes, which is a key distinction with F1, where DIY is the done thing.

With sights on a strong grid beyond the manufacturers, there has always been a healthy focus on ensuring customers are there. We have also had eras in which well-run outfits with Hondas and Yamahas have been semi-regular race winners, even mounting the odd title challenge.

The level of competition in MotoGP has grown significantly and will continue to do so this year, and - unlike F1 - the independent outfits are considered a big part of that. The top satellite rider gets a spot in parc ferme with the top three on Saturday and Sunday, and there is a separate sub-title to fight for over the season.

But beyond those gestures, the satellite teams are welcomed financially. A new price cap on leasing machinery has been introduced for 2017, at €2.2million per rider, excluding damage. Tech3 Yamaha boss Herve Poncharal says the €4.4million he'll spend this year on gear for rookies Johann Zarco and Jonas Folger is about half of his budget of "between eight and nine" million euros.

Yes, you read that correctly, Poncharal has not missed a 'ty' at the end of either of those figures. Tech3 runs year-old Yamahas, and in the five seasons since 2012 its highest-place rider in the championship has occupied fourth, fifth, sixth, sixth and eighth. Last year was a relative anomaly running bikes designed for Bridgestones as Michelin returned, but Moto2 graduates Zarco and Folger have looked good in testing so far.

And the kicker on that €2.2million per rider figure is that it is now covered by Dorna, as part of the latest, improved deal for teams.

That means Poncharal and his fellow satellite team bosses are in the marketplace looking to find half of a year's budget, rather than the full freight.Their right to a spot on the grid is also secure and exclusive through to 2021 in line with a cap on the number of bikes and non-factory teams.

There is a big element of apples and oranges when you are talking F1 budgets compared to just about anything else. Manor has operated at the lowest end of the food chain since it was formed in 2010 as Virgin, and an operating budget in that "eighty to ninety" million pound bracket was not enough to save it from administration for a second time.

I don't think anybody in the F1 paddock would be able to keep a straight face raising the notion that an owner or promoter should foot half of that sort of bill. Incidentally, half of Manor's 2016 budget would have worked out to a little bit more than the £40million cap that was put on the table for 2010 to attract it as one of F1's new teams.

A budget cap is working its way back onto the agenda, but surely one of the better ways to cut costs would be to look at other ways of doing things? You know, like customer cars.

For all of the bravado about 'designing and racing cars is our DNA', would you rather be successful and in business or proud but closing?

The biggest thing it would require would be a shift in attitude. One from the top teams to be willing to share intellectual property - but Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault already supply engine partners, so a car would surely just be an extension of those sorts of protocols, procedures and commercial exchanges.

In MotoGP, there are even financial incentives for the factories to comply with those cost caps as part of the supply of two bikes, in addition to what comes in from customers.

And, although hand-me-downs might not be as elegant a solution in F1, what's Ducati really going to do with 2015 and '16-spec bikes this year? It might as well let them run wild and free with customers. Part of Ducati's jump with the new electronics introduced last year actually came from a willingness to work with its teams in the now-defunct Open class in 2015, learning software that was the basis for the new ECU.

One other element is obviously the perception and attitudes of the teams that might benefit from a supply. But surely you would rather have a more sustainable business and have a greater chance of success - look at how Haas benefited from its Ferrari tie-up as a new team in 2016 - than struggle along and hope to survive.

If the potential suppliers and clients were all on board, you would think that even F1's seriously-perplexing structure would be able to get it through as permitted. Red Bull and Toro Rosso would surely love to revisit the days of Red Bull Technology building an Adrian Newey design for its junior squad, and other mutually-beneficial synergies exist elsewhere in the paddock.

And fans? Personally, I wouldn't be complaining about a more competitive field, with more potential storylines. Not to take anything away from Toro Rosso, but imagine if Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr made their debuts in 2015 in a car that was basically the same RB11 Red Bull was racing at the same time, run by a team that used to be Minardi?

For the most part, I don't know that too many casual fans really get caught up in the notion of 'factory' or 'satellite' in MotoGP anyway. The fanbase is so attached to riders, that when they hear 'Pramac Ducati' they think, "Oh, it's a team racing Ducatis" and in a lot of cases would not even know the bikes are older.

F1 has a bit more at stake with the identities of the teams, but would Force India not win more fans taking the fight up to Mercedes in races using cars Mercedes developed? Conversely, could Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon help Mercedes develop its current F1 car this year, with their feedback from a Force India-liveried version in this alternate universe?

What makes that different to the quick and experienced Crutchlow testing things for Honda, or Ducati entrusting Pramac's Danilo Petrucci with one of its 2017 bikes this year, to offer a third voice alongside Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Dovizioso during grand prix weekends?

With Marc VDS and LCR, the same number of satellite teams won MotoGP races last year - alongside the Honda, Yamaha, Ducati and Suzuki factory outfits - as teams of any variety in F1 in each of the three seasons since the turbo-hybrid era was introduced.

MotoGP is in rude health, and last year in particular was must-watch. Yes it rained, a lot, but Mercedes won all three of 2016's weather-hit F1 races - there was more to MotoGP's upsets than weather. That satellite teams were in the evenly-spread mix helped make MotoGP the unpredictable spectacle it was.

MotoGP itself has been a big part of making that happen, creating a business model and environment in which the satellite teams can not only survive, but also thrive. F1's new owners could do a lot worse than to check out what their two-wheeled cousins are up to.