2018 Teams

[mknight]

Some potentially big news in MN which impacts the driver market.

The WRC commission are discussing whether to implement a rule which allows teams to have three points scoring cars for the manufacturer championship from a possible four nominated drivers. (Right now it's 2 from 3). Which means it will be in the interests of teams to run a fourth car.

That does seem as a rather drastic push that will increase costs, but obviously manufacturers can still keep running 3 cars, it also partly blocks other teams from points if all 3 finish.

I'd first implement what Nandan suggested, that is M-nominated cars that don't score points (because they are 3rd from same team), block other M cars from these points.

Example from Germany:
- Evans and Lappi were M-nominated but since both were 3rd car from their team they didn't score points and didn't count in results which is why Paddon got points for 7th M-place, and Sordo for 8th

- with "blocking" Paddon would get M-points for 8th and Sordo for 10th

There is always also the option of allowing 4 cars to be nominated but only count 2 best places. That gives some incentive for 4th car but doesn't make it necessary.