Yesterday, the FIA announced that US F1 would not be participating in the 2010 Formula One World Championship. They also announced that it was too late for a replacement teams to be drafted in for the American team. This announcement came despite repeated statements from Stefan Grand Prix that they had a package ready for the first race of the season. This debacle has shown that the entry process that the FIA is using for Formula One is flawed.

I’ll start by recapping how we got into this mess in the first place. In 2009, the FIA held a tendering process where applicants filed a business plan to the FIA for entry into the 2010 F1 World Championship. From the pool, three teams (Manor House [now Virgin], Campos Meta [now HRT], and US F1) were selected in June. They couldn’t really get much started for 2010 because the Concorde Agreement (the agreement that governs everything in Formula One) wasn’t signed until July. That left teams with about 6.5 months to design, build and test a car for the start of the season. Add to that the fact that these teams were applying for entry into the 2010 season under the assumption that there would be a $100 million or so budget cap in place to put them on a level playing field with the rest of the grid and you have a complete disaster for any team entering in 2010.

With or without certain rules that were finalized under the 2009 update to the Concorde Agreement, there is one rule that seems to be perpetually there. That’s the rule that says that entrants must enter two cars at every Grand Prix in a season. (Technically, teams are allowed to miss three races under the Concorde Agreement but the FIA says they can’t miss any so we’ll just run with the governing body’s interpretation.) I think that this is and will continue to be the one rule that holds Formula One back.

Back in the day, there was no such thing as mandatory two car teams or having to enter every event or even having to be approved by the FIA to participate in the championship. In the 1970s and ’80s, it wasn’t uncommon for teams to give a rookie driver a race or two in a third car or to run an extra car for a home race. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, there was something called pre-qualifying. The slowest cars were put into a pre-qualifying session. The fastest of those cars would advance to qualifying where they would have to race their way into the field proper.

With eight unsuccessful applicants for the 2010 season, we know there is a desire for teams to get a piece of F1. We also know that the financial issues experienced by HRT (formerly Campos Meta) and US F1, and to a slightly lesser extent, the former Brawn GP and Williams, forcing two car teams and every race on teams isn’t doing everyone good. That rule keeps the car count up but it seems like a TV and other commercial rights based idea. It just doesn’t seem like a rule that was created with the teams in mind.

I think that a team should be allowed to participate in F1 as its resources dictate. If a team like Ferrari can easily field three cars for every event, let them. (I wouldn’t let them have four cars at a race session because that just starts the slippery slope.) If HRT can only get one car to Bahrain but can field two for the other 18 rounds of the year, let them. If Prodrive, Lola and Stefan all want to run this season, they can as well.

So for my little proposal, let’s keep the race starting grid at 26 cars. Under the classic system, the Top 26 cars over the last 6 months that were entered got into qualifying. The rest of the entrants had to pre-qualify with the fastest four of those getting to the qualifying session where they would have to run as one of the fastest 26 cars to make the grid. Think something similar should be done under my expanded field proposal. The Top 20 cars should all be given an automatic entry into qualifying. The remaining cars must pre-qualify (for the sake of the scenario, let’s say it’s run for 45 minutes before the first free practice session) with the eight fastest making qualifying. From those 28 cars in qualifying, the 26 fastest in Q1 advance to the race but qualifying would carry on as it usually would. (Before anyone says anything about the WDC, give the top 10 drivers an automatic race entry.)

The question that will be raised by my proposal will be how do you control who can race? I think it should simply be whoever has a car that is compliant with the regulations can come to the track and race. Of course, you can’t just ship stuff in without telling anyone. Teams would have to submit entry forms for each car in each race and pay an entry fee per car. Think of it as a deposit. If you enter a race and don’t show up, you forfeit your entry fee. Similarly, to prevent the NASCAR epidemic of start-and-park cars (cars that will retire from a race early on so they can make a profit on prize money), any team suspected of doing that must prove that they didn’t just park a car for the prize money (yes, teams would be paid purse money for each race entered under my plan) otherwise they would forfeit their entry fee. Teams that didn’t qualify for the race or ran the race in good faith would get their entry fee refunded.

So there’s my sort of “Back to the Future” plan for Formula One. It would mean that fans of how F1 is run now will need to accept an overhaul based on a tradition they aren’t familiar with. It’s kind of like the IRL’s Delta Wing concept car. It’s radically different from the current status quo but it’s well intentioned. So what do you think? Leave some feedback in the comments.

2010 Formula One Entry List

McLaren-Mercedes
#1 Jenson Button
#2 Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes Grand Prix
#3 Michael Schumacher
#4 Nico Rosberg

Red Bull-Renault
#5 Sebastian Vettel
#6 Mark Webber

Scuderia Ferrari
#7 Felipe Massa
#8 Fernando Alonso

Williams-Cosworth
#9 Rubens Barrichello
#10 Nico Hulkenberg

Renault
#11 Robert Kubica
#12 Vitaly Petrov

Force India-Mercedes
#14 Adrian Sutil
#15 Vitantonio Liuzzi

Toro Rosso-Ferrari
#16 Sebastien Buemi
#17 Jaime Alguersuari

Lotus-Cosworth
#18 Jarno Trulli
#19 Heikki Kovalainen

HRT-Cosworth
#20 TBA
#21 Bruno Senna

Sauber-Ferrari
#22 Pedro de la Rosa
#23 Kamui Kobayashi

Virgin-Cosworth
#24 Timo Glock
#25 Lucas di Grassi