Tech Draft: Time to drop the F1 constructors' title

The process had reached the down-selection stage but cancelled because it was blocked by Mercedes and Red Bull Racing.

I must admit that my initial reaction upon reading the news was that it was some sort of editorial blunder because I simply did not believe that the FIA was pursuing the path of specifying pit equipment, but it was when I took the time to look into the matter further that not only did I realise that it was true, but that my greatest fears for F1 were coming true.

The FIA had indeed approached the market with an RFT for the supply of standardized pit equipment for F1 teams and had selected well known Italian manufacturer Dino Paoli for contract award before the process was cancelled.

Even more concerning for me was that in researching the RFT I discovered that in the pursuance of fairness and clarity the FIA publishes a list of all of its approaches to market on a little inconspicuous website named Invitations To Tender https://legal.fia.com and when I looked further into many of the items in the list it became evident to me that F1’s future looks more and more likely doomed to become a control series and not a championship for bespoke constructors.

Not only did the FIA want to limit the supply of pit equipment to a specified design from a sole supplier, it had also unsuccessfully attempted to do the same for braking systems and materials, batteries, skid-block materials, tyre-blankets and, in 2022, but all F1 wheel rims will also be controlled, as will tyre pressure sensors.

Given that the teams are already bound to an extensive list of controlled components that they must use, along with an extremely prescriptive set of technical regulations that allow them increasingly limited scope for innovation that they must abide by in designing an entry for the 2022 season and beyond, I am concerned about the restrictive direction that F1 is going in.

The rationale behind this is one of cost, but if the teams are already operating under a stringent set of financial regulations and a cost cap, it seems overly restrictive to be further directing them in how they are to spend their money, whilst doing so at the expense of technical innovation.

In 1958 the FIA awarded the first F1 Constructors World Championship to Vanwall, but it is important to acknowledge that the reason why they decided to run the WCC in conjunction with the Drivers Championship was that they wanted to harness and promote the competitive bespoke innovation that was becoming more evident between the teams at the time, and throughout the decades ever since F1 has been recognised as being at the forefront of automotive technical innovation.

If the FIA wishes to continue its regulative convergence towards a more specified and controlled competition, then surely the F1 Constructors' title is no longer valid, and rather a prize awarded to the winning team, because in the absence of innovation, they will no longer be constructors anyway.

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