Quote Originally Posted by steveaki13 View Post
Sad state of affairs with only 18 cars showing up. Caterham & Marussia both missing and I for one will miss them.
I won't really miss them because they were never a factor. The biggest news either team has ever produced was one ninth place finish. The only time you see either team is when they are getting lapped.

Of course, I feel really back for everyone who might lose their job, be it drivers, mechanics or engineers. I am certainly not callous about that aspect of this mess.

The problem for these teams is that they can't generate the kind of funding it takes to compete at this level. In fact, it's more than they can do just to merely show up. Is this because they are inept at raising funding, or is this because the cost of F1 is so ridiculously high?

The problem of teams coming and going is never going to end as long as Bernie has an attitude that as much as amounts to "**** 'em." All the money that cat makes and he let the original Lotus and Brabham teams disappear. Certainly it's not Bernie's business to burn money on teams that are going broke, but if he will let those two teams slide off into history, don't expect him to help Caterham or Marussia.

In fact,. I think Bernie wants all the small teams to go broke so he can have his three car teams. Maybe he thinks it's better than all we have in F1 is big, glamorous names, even if it's only two or three of them. You know, Ferrari, McLaren and Williams running seven car apiece.

It is not hard to imagine Sauber or Lotus dropping out in the off season, and who even knows what kind of financial trouble Force India has. Those three teams are probably on the teetering point, and if you take them out, we're down to 12 cars.

Basically, there is not enough money out there to finance 22 cars on an unlimited budget. The world economy sucks right now, so it's not like the 80s when there was so much money we had to have pre-qualifying before qualifying. That would be a nice problem to have, but we are never going to have that kind of grid again even in good times if it's still too dammed expensive.