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Originally Posted by apexit4
While I agree that the prize money structure does contribute to the issue, the lack of strong leadership has largely contributed to their current situation.
Look at Mercedes for example. While they did buy out Brawn after their championship winning season, they hung around the upper part of the midfield before making the jump to the top of the field. They invested their time and money wisely and have been rewarded for it. They do have large financial backing from Mercedes, but that doesn't guarantee success. Take a look at Toyota for that. They invested many millions of dollars into their F1 program in the 2000s and had hardly anything to show for it. They didn't succeed despite the financial backing of a manufacturer because they had the wrong approach to investing their time/money.
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From my link above, prize money is one issue but column 5 seems completely out of line. Basically they pay the premium teams even more regardless of how they do, just because of who they are.
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On top of that five teams receive further payments – a ‘constructors’ championship bonus’ is paid to four teams; three other teams receive bonus payments ranging from $10 million (Williams) to $35 million (Mercedes and Red Bull); and a special Long-Standing Team payment is made to Ferrari alone. Worth $73 million this year, the LST payment has ensured Ferrari has consistently received the most money of any team since the current prize money structure was introduced in 2013.
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I agree money doesn't guarantee success but having more of it makes your odds go up. I believe all of our professional sports have some type of revenue sharing to give the small market teams a little better chance but if we came up with a system where we paid the Cowboys an extra $73 million because they are the Cowboys (like Ferrari in F1) nobody would consider this fair. Revenue sharing is anti capitalism but as much as we like to think of the teams competing with each other, the combined "show" suffers when the owners (Liberty) can't put on a good event. I would argue the event isn't as good as it could be when we know before the season starts that it is highly unlikely teams 4-10 have any chance of winning even one of the 20+ races.
What do you think the odds are of Haas winning a race next year or even in the next 5 years, even with the best leadership available? Liberty wants me to cheer for them an their possible 7th place finish in a race if they do everything just right? Maybe we can hope one of the top 6 wrecks, as Haas has close to zero chance of beating them in a race? I guess pray for rain as it is one of the few things that mix up the results.