Formula 1 has never been without its issues, but this season has an issue glaring more than ever. Teams. Formula 1 has built a barrier to entry that is larger than it has ever been. As the years pass, teams at the back of the grid barely scrape by and eventually drop out of the sport. If you look at the last few years, you will see that multiple teams have removed themselves from the sport but only one team has joined. This team also joined on the backs of Ferrari, which is not a bad thing but highlighted that purchasing roughly ~50% of your car from a then top tier team is the only way to be in the pack. If Formula 1 can solve this issue, the sport will regain its competitive status with more teams and more drivers fighting to the top spots.

The first thing that needs to happen has sort of already happened. The FIA recently implemented a cost cap to help the teams further back on the grid be able to keep up with the ones at the front. With a cost cap, the smaller teams don’t really gain anything, but it handcuffs the top tier teams like Red Bull and Mercedes to budget similarly to the small teams. This restriction will drive innovation at the back of the grid and force the big teams to think twice about what they spend on. Gone are the days when large teams could invest in every aspect of the car. Now they need to gamble on where their money is needed most. While this is a huge step giving smaller teams a better reason to join the sport, it doesn’t make it easier to jump into it, just easier to stay in it. 

The biggest thing the FIA can do is help subsidize the first 1-3 years of a team. Now I’m not talking about a full subsidy, but some sort of stipend to help them if they finish in a lower tier on the grid. The way I see it is that new teams would be into a sort of probationary period. During this period, if they were to finish in the bottom tiers, say last of second to last, they would receive a higher-than-normal payout at the end of the season. This would help cover some of the initial costs to ramp up into the technical costs of building these cars. I am a firm believer in capitalism and survival of the fittest, but at this point in Formula 1, the costs are too high to not be immediately successful. This plan would help lower that bar while new teams assimilate. I think this type of help could help those teams right on the cusp of joining take the plunge. While I think this implementation could work, it would need some sort of barrier to keep current teams from dropping and then rejoining to get this probation period. This could be remedied easily with a minimum time required to be removed from the sport, i.e., if you drop out, you can’t rejoin for 2 years. I would hope the FIA wouldn’t need this, but nothing that happens in Formula 1 surprises me when millions of dollars are on the line.

Once the FIA makes entry to the sport easier, teams will come in droves. When you bring in new teams, you bring in the fans of that brand. If Ford were to join Formula one, all the ford fans boys will follow as well. There is a trickle-down effect here. New teams means new money and new fans. The key will be creating a policy that provides ease of entry while maintaining the hard-fought competition that the sport was built on. Hopefully the FIA can figure out a way to help drive additional teams to expand the grid and keep the sport relevant. Plus, I would love to see a Late Brake team in the pits.