There are a number of issues with today’s Formula One. Viewership is steadily declining and talented drivers are finding it harder to make it to Formula One because of a lack of sponsorship. There have been a lot of criticisms about the way that the sport is being run, but not nearly as many rational solutions. Could something that happened in the past be the solution to our current issues?
GP2 is the feeder series for Formula One, meaning it is supposed to produce the future Formula One drivers. However, there is a kink in the F1 driver production hose. Because the sport of Formula One has become so expensive to compete in, the current teams in the sport are placing a heavier requirement on funds from sponsors. This means that drivers who want to race in Formula One need to get more sponsorship contracts than they did in the past. As a result, the wealthy drivers are managing to find their way into the sport easier than the truly talented drivers that may not have the funds required.
Could a GP2 and Formula One partnership be the solution? Although it may seem like an outrageous idea to have Formula One cars racing in the same event as GP2 cars, it’s not that uncommon. In fact, in the earlier years of Formula One, many non-championship events were held in which Formula One and Formula Two cars could compete. This didn’t only happen for non-championship races, but there were also some events in the championship where Formula Two cars were welcome to compete, like in the 1969 German Grand Prix. Sure, it happened in the past, but how could this fix the issues today?
The way that the currently feeder structure is setup, new drivers pretty much require a lot of financial backing that they can use to get a contract with a low ranking Formula One team. The drivers hope that by racing with a Formula One team, they can get their foot into the door and be noticed by other teams. Having Formula One and GP2 cars racing at the same time could potentially give the future Formula One drivers a way to get exposure without having to collect as many sponsors or spend as much of their life savings. Currently, the F1 bosses sort of have to be in the process of looking for a new driver before they notice a GP2 driver, but when GP2 drivers competing in the same event as you, it would be quite difficult for team management not to notice a driver in GP2 that is performing well.
This would also benefit the team and sport sponsors. The sponsors in GP2 would have their brands exposed on a larger scale, as the global Formula One audience would now also be watching GP2. This also gives Formula One sponsors a cheaper alternative without losing as much brand exposure. This also brings me to the next benefit, regarding a larger audience size. Although this would probably benefit GP2 more than Formula One, seeing as many GP2 fans are also fans of Formula One, combining both GP2 and Formula One fans has the potential to attract more viewers to broadcasts and create a larger fan base.
The races could also be more exciting. In any motorsport that races in classes, you are always overtaking someone. Part of the excitement in Formula One is when you come up to overtake a backmarker. It also provides more competition at the front by preventing the leaders to create a sizable gap, as they will need to slow down to navigate through the backmarkers and GP2 cars. However, the GP2 cars are not that much slower than Formula One cars, so they wouldn’t be a hazard to the faster Formula One cars.
Finances can also be improved. In the current financial situation, Formula One is seeking ways to cut costs. GP2 cars are considerably cheaper than the current Formula One cars, so it’s possible that the current Formula One teams could learn from GP2 and find various ways to cut costs and save money. Don’t get me wrong: this layout wouldn’t be all positive.
Every idea has negatives and this idea is no different. One of the main drawbacks of this plan would be the way that GP2 is currently organized. Unlike Formula One, GP2 has a feature and a sprint race setup, meaning that they participate in two races per weekend. This would mean that GP2 could only merge with Formula One for the feature race and hold the sprint race after the Formula One race or drop the sprint race all together. Race length would also be an issue, as GP2 races are a little more than half the distance of a Formula One race. This means that fuel consumption could become an issue and reliability could also play a factor.
Unfortunately, there are also too many cars. With Formula One’s grid size of 22 and GP2’s 26 cars, the grid would increase to a staggering 48 cars! You may be able to race at the larger circuits, but it would be virtually impossible to race with all of these cars at the smaller street circuits. This would mean that some of the GP2 cars would not be able to take part in the events or certain circuits could not use the F1-GP2 combined events.
Although you might think that this is a complete ridiculous idea, there would surely be a good and a bad side. However, there would probably be too many hurdles to overcome to implement this idea, not to say that we couldn’t find a way around these challenges.
So could be have some non-championship races like in the past? Probably not. The current schedule is far too hectic for teams to spend time racing in events that won’t count for anything in the championship. Not to mention, the expenses associated with entering a car in an event without championship gain would be an obstacle for teams.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
