Quote Originally Posted by seb_sh View Post
About cost cap: While true that financial "optimisations" can be done and most likely are already put in place by most teams in F1 there is a limit of what they can actually do. Moreover the teams watch eachother like hawks so it's somewhat self policing between them as well. The result, while it's true that Red Bull are dominating at the moment, in fact it is the tightest difference between the first and last car ever. The ATR/windtunnel restrictions and show and tell rules will gradually work to reduce that difference. Also keep in mind that 20 years ago teams were being sold for a nominal $1 whereas now they are worth hundreds of millions going towards a billion. Audi is paying hundreds of millions for 75% of Sauber. If that's not a healthy championship then I don't know what is.

To those that suggest the cost cap is innefective because it can be bypassed I suggest you educate yourselves on how it works in detail. Now if you suggest to me, like an acquaintance recently did, that it's just for show and just a giant conspiracy between the teams the FIA and the 3rd party international auditor and that in fact the cost cap has no effect than I will not reply anymore since I'd rather not waste my time

About BOP: BOP has the effect to limit spending because it stops chasing diminishing returns for increased costs. It's not just to help unsuitable cars in GT3 it's also a hard cap on performance. Yes it takes some budget to get to the reference but afterwards it's a hard limit on outright performance. Afterwards you need to have the best team and execute the races well. Yes it's very political and controversial. Still, I watched Group C fall when it became to expensive, then GT1 then LMP1 Hybrid (not to mention other categories or series). I'd rather have BOP than nothing. Also WEC is incredibly successful. This year there was record or near record crowd at Le Mans with over 300.000 tickets sold out half a year in advance. There are more manufacturers than almost ever. Because so many people want to race in the top category they are having to drop LMP2 from the WEC because they don't fit in the pitlane anymore. This year's Le Mans went down to the last 30 minutes or so between two teams with 5 different manufacturers leading the race at some point on merit. If that's not succesfull I don't know what is.

I'm not saying the WRC needs to take one of these and implement it, they need to find their own way or adapt one of those. But doing nothing will just make it lose out. Again.
I appreciate your argument for BOP but still rallying stayed true to straight regulations for so long and had a working championship competion wise (=> most/all cars being on a similar level most of the time) almost all of the time in the last 30 years. Also I don't think that the cost of the cars or their fairly limited development is the big budget factor, otherwise M Sport wouldn't be able to come out with a competitive car on a shoe string and than stay in the hunt for at least 2-3 years. Rallying is just hugely expensive when you consider what all goes with it compared to running a similarly "complicated" car in a professional circuit racing championship for 13 races.

The reason the cost cap increased the value of teams is because there is revenue in F1 which thanks to the cost cap is now in many cases bigger than the cost, but that revenue doesn't exist in WRC. So we would need the foundation first to achieve a sort of franchise status that F1 now has. Of course a cost cap could still work even without that, but would it entice manufacturers on its own?