Quote:
Originally Posted by Casper
So this year it is acknowledged that the RB car is a bit of a dog and not able to cut it at the pointy end of the field. OK, they will improve it somewhat during the year but not enough to get the leap they want to be first or second. I have a couple of questions...
Who would buy it next year as a customer car?
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i would hope no one but given the financial realities of F1 my fear is that many would buy it and worse would be justified in doing so.
for example if i am already running at the back of the field what incentive do i have to buy anything other than the cheapest/weakest chassis?
heck RB might even further subsidize my purchase by requiring me to run some RB logos. get a couple of pay drivers, some other small sponsorship deals, one or two bigger B2B deals, write off the losses via my other business income and try to stay in it for as long as it takes to gather some prize money. F1 is now profitable for me.
and given that prize money is lighter on the dull end, why would my next nearest competitor on track want to outspend me for a relatively small gain in prize money? they would have a similar incentive to buy the same cheap/weak chassis as me and trust that their drivers or some small tweak or even just dumb luck will see them finish ahead of me on the ladder.
look at this year points table...is there a good financial reason why Force India and Lotus are paying for merc power when they could have gotten a cheaper deal buying the inferior Renault power unit. if they had they would still effectively be sitting in the same positions relative to Toro Rosso? sure STR have a better chassis so FI and Lotus would move down a peg...question is would a drop of one place actually be more profitable for them?
when a team spends 200 mil a year and wins its all then its all good but when they spend that much and lose or worse come up with an massively inferior product how do they justify spending that much money?
answer is by creating a market for inferior goods and thats exactly what the customer chassis market will become. its classic car manu logic.