Has Motor Racing lost its way in a sea of Bull? What do you think? Part 2

After posting part one of "Has Motor Racing Lost It's Way In A Sea Of Bull..." I took a couple of weeks to reflect on all the comments, replies and opinions to this very question. There seems to be only one common thread and that is uncertainty over where we are heading. Most replies were considered and often very passionate about our wonderful sport and not forgetting our planet. I honestly get the feeling that, all that we love about racing is in the past and as we know we can't go backwards. Can we find new aspects to love in the future?

I started the last post with the following: "Last week Porsche ditched its WEC entry and confirmed it would not be defending its Le Mans title next year. Earlier in the year it claimed that sports car racing was the future proving ground for new road car technology, and the company had spent the last year using its considerable influence to help write the new rules for 2020. Well that was a waste of time and complete load of bull, as it now claims Formula E is the future with electric cars soon to be common place in our towns and cities. Yeah right!"

Well to me astonishment yesterday's Autosport headline was Porsche kicks WEC when it is down! It certainly is as it is claiming an interest now in Formula 1! What is even more staggering is that Porsche claims it can only become an engine supplier if the new rules for 2020 adopt a cheaper less environmentally friendly, less hybrid and further from electric engine formula!

Rather like politicians they just come out with contradictory bull.... and expect us to believe every word. The sad thing for us is that with manufacturers lurching from one stance to another it leaves Motor Racing in a terrible void. We have Le Mans and WEC with no real championship, Formula E as an interesting fad and Formula 1 treading water.

So what should the future be for the pinnacles of our sport. I write these articles and I believe I am fairly well informed but I have no idea! I was going to write up a complete follow up to the first post but I can't see a glorious future for the sport, full stop. The public is too divided.

Tell me what you think. What should the WEC do?
What should Formula One do?
Will Formula E float your boat?
Let see if we can find a direction in your replies!

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Motoring-Man is a lifelong fan of Motor Racing and has a memorabilia passion / business
And loves to write!

BELOW IS A SERIES OF REPLIES AND VIEW TO THE POST ABOVE

Anthony Offen-james The WEC concept us good, however they brought in the fixed engine selected chassis rule because they didn't enforce their own rule that each chassis muzt have a minimum of 6 entries, F1 ia becoming a joke with 14 of 20 cars having no hope of winning.F1 needs to cut costs by restricting number of staff at each race banning remite monitoring of cars AND SHARING INDY CAR ENGINES and reducing aero like indy has done . Formula E is crap slow misrrable go-karts racing around mickey mouse circuits .

Joe Era Fama Agree with you there and look at Indy Car nowadays big grids and they got it right

Peter McDonald I think motor sport would be better off with no manufacturers at all. The car has been developed to the point that the driver is secondary.
So clean sheet every thing and let the people who want to race, race what they want. And if people want to watch. Than they can come and watch. Let's not have the spectators determine what the driver and mechanics do in the sport. If they don't want to take an active roll, than they can watch PlayStation.
Cheap car racing is catching on and the competitors are hooked. And quite a few have proper race cars sitting in their garages unused. It's the basic racing with out the bull that's appealing

Simão Pedro Hydrogen engines should be considered. Batteries and electricity production will still produce a lot more pollution and wast than hydrogen would. And an Hydrogen engine is much more interesting than an electric one. We are totally in the wrong pass...

Motoring-Man For some reason manufacturers and oil companies are not keen on Hydrogen?

Peter Bowyer Agreed regarding the manufacturers - they see anything to do with motor sport as marketing material only and, if they do well will pull out once the goal of sales of road cars has been achieved.

Just look at Honda, pumped loads of money into their F1 team then, when it didn't work because it was run by a committee and market conditions also toughened up, they pulled out (only for that team to win both championships the following year)...

Mercedes will pull out if F1 sooner or later, possibly to do the same as Porsche with Formula E, but that too will be but a passing fad - when they have achieved their goals.

The problem is basically one of money. It is now so expensive to compete at the top levels you need a manufacturers' budget in order to get anywhere, or a company like Red Bull who make a lot of profit out of their product which they can invest into promoting sports generally.

Real racers, in F1 include Mclaren, Williams, Sauber etc, some obviously more successful than others but they carry on regardless - Sauber taking back the team from BMW who did the usual manufacturer's dalliance with F1 for a couple of years then left.

Exclude the manufacturers, cut the budgets by 3/4 and also remove the promoters who take such a huge percentage of the take to cover the interest on the money they borrowed to pay Bernie etc... But that's never going to happen now, because the money "owns" the show and it will not allow budget cuts to reduce their take.

Motoring-Man Fantastic point about Honda! You could also perceive that the board had no understanding of what they had in the palm of their hand. They then let it go saw the results and thought it would be easy to get back to winning ways with Mclaren. It clearly has not been easy!

Joe Era Fama Take a leaf out of Indy Car racing few years back it was in disarray near collapsing they got together to get it back on track and what a job they have done cut cost and big fields of cars and kept the cost down

Gary Valente @ Peter McDonald - Bingo! Give the man a cigar! Manufacturers come and go at the whim of their boards. They pump unlimited truck loads of money into programs to pummel opposition into dust then turn their backs when rules go against them. I say kick them all out. Leave the racing to racers. Let them build their cars and power them with engines available to everyone.

Frank Gray I think top tier racing series should be on the cutting edge of technology, in the past it was the test bed for ABS, active suspension, brake by wire and so on. That being said I think there Wil be a place for formula e like it or not, I'm of of age of big hp and the mystery of mechanics and I would hate to see it go, but nothing last forever. Hybrid technology seems to be the way forward and even though I work in the industry and understand the reason behind it I'm not a huge fan. It comes down to economics the sanctioning bodies are going to do what they have to do to remain solvent and viable

Jon Bickford Here's how I'd fix formula one: 44 laps of spa, you've got 25 gallons of fuel, you figure it out. 

Need to do some testing to develop that technology? knock yourselves out. While you're at it new drivers can learn their craft behind the wheel so they don't just crash into each other. Top teams are spending more money than that on super computers and simulations that the smaller teams can never afford so let them develop better mouse traps along with their talents on both sides of pit wall in the real world again and remove all the absurd development caps so that MAYBE the team that is dominant in Australia isn't still dominant in Abu Dhabi. All these rules that are supposed to keep costs down just make it more expensive and inaccessible than ever before to any team smaller than NASA.

Stirling Moss's greatest drive in formula one was in a Rob Walker ran Lotus, Jackie Stewart and Ken Tyrell's first championship came with a customer Matra chassis. Half the teams of the 70's started with a March chassis. Why can't there be customer cars in F1? If there's only three companies capable of building at the top level why can't force India run a customer ferrari? For that matter why can't Ferrari run 6 cars at Monza like Enzo did in 1961? There has been a lot of talk about how competitive indycar racing has been this year. what nobody points out is that the top 3 teams field 4 cars each in a 20 car field! Penske is qualified 1,2,3,4 for tomorrows race in Sonoma but each car has a different title sponsor and paint job so nobody notices I guess! 
...as for Formula E... I'm a huge fan of the potential of electric race cars and it is the future and it CAN be amazing. But from the outset formula e has seemed like a joke. A half cocked plan to discredit electric cars. I mean it's Spec chassis with treaded tires running lap times similar to a formula Mazda with car swapping are you kidding me? What electric racing needs is about 5 years of a wide open "can-am" style formula so that the technology can really get pushed into the future. individual motors in each wheel giving perfect thrust vectoring each wheel individually scratching for grip like a 4 legged animal, absurd never before seen acceleration out of corners in a 4 wheel drift hearing all four tires spinning and laying rubber out of a hairpin under brutal instant torque, something that is genuinely a jaw dropping spectacle to really end the debate about what the real potential of electric performance is. Formula E is just a horrible mockery but that's the FIA's fault not electricity's fault... in the meantime you can go buy an electric sedan with more than 3x the power of what's supposed to be a cutting edge world class formula?

Jonathan Green Formula E sucks. The cars are slow, can't go a whole race without changing cars. I kind of like the new look of the new body style but get rid of all that Electric B.S. and put ice in, and go racing, or bring back Formula 5000. Loud as hell, fast, pretty cars. I'd love to see a Formula E vs Formula 5000, and let the green people see and hear what a real race car should sound like.

John A Grimley V10 turbo engines. Spending cap. Unlimited testing. If you figure it out AND stay in budget, you will succeed. Refueling? Yes. Tire wars? Yes.

Kevan Sutherns Scrap formula racing and make all racing at minimum 12 hrs, allow all fuel racing by setting the power limits not motor type but include multiple numbers of refuelling through the race, make it development by manufacturers but only by them financing and doing the design etc no input to the racing but they get the benefits of seeing how there products compare against the competition, speed, acceleration etc