Quote Originally Posted by Mirek View Post
That's a million Dollar question. Anyway reducing cost works as a measure to keep those already in the sport from leaving but it will not help bringing new ones. What you need is to give them a reason to join and they wil never join anything just because it's cheap. On one hand it's quite obvious what reason they need and want - exposure and a story to sell. That's the simple part of the answer. On the other hand the difficult part is how to bring it. What to sell to global audience of 21st century 20' and 30'? I think that large part of the problem is in the common uncertainty of the car market future. Will it go full electric? Will there be a CE ban? Will everything change again because the plans turn out to be unrealistic? Will the car owners turn to be only passangers? What percentage of car buyers will seek driving excitement and will that even be a thing in the future? What if different continents opt for a completely different way? Will there be a global marketing possible? Plenty of questions, few answers.
What I see is that all succesfull series have some sort of cap, be it financial or performance, to ensure an interesting championship. I think that the "old" fully open model of development is dead because the current technologies are at a point of diminishing returns (big spend for small gain). Either you embrace new technologies or you put some cap and aim for entartainment. WRC is as usual behind the times so it's a big question what they will do in the future.

Will some UFO going 200kmh flying above my head in the forest make me buy the car, personally probably not, but it will raise awareness of the brand.

An option, go the WEC route: put any car in the windtunnel and put a maximum limit on downforce/drag, put the engine on the dyno and put a maximum limit on power and torque, allow any bodywork and any engine configuration. Set a target maximum limit, this helps any new manufacturer analyse costs/return and know that it won't end up in a spending war. Then it's a business case, otherwise the budget is always open, Hyundai probably spends 10x or 20x to advertise in footbal compared to WRC so if the value rises costs can easily rise too with the current setup. The future of motorsport does not lie in formulas that worked in the past.