POWER

Let’s start with the first and biggest issue, in my opinion: competition and number of entries 

It’s been years now since the number of cars participating in the championship has dropped dramatically, mainly due to the high costs; most of them, even some historics names like Williams and McLaren, are forced to fight at the centre or the back of the pack and with financial constraints.

This has generated a weird balance of power among constructors and between them and the authorities and management (F1 and FIA).

We have a team (this case is Mercedes) that owns directly or indirectly almost half of the participants. Not only this could generate unpleasant episodes during races but this allows the Germans to be in the position of blackmailing both F1 and FIA, threatening to leave, every time they’re not happy with something. Same approach RBR had some years ago when they were the centre of the circus.

Then we have Red Bull, who is not a car manufacturer, it is not interested in developing car technologies or in making races interesting. They’re investing, no longer as sponsor but more directly, to promote their products.
There is nothing wrong with that but thanks to it they are also always in the position to blackmail the management, too, menacing to quit.
And they own 2 teams, plus they are one of main promoters of surrounding events and drivers academy.

In addition we have Ferrari (which now controls also Alfa Romeo, former Sauber), which for some reason accepted to be politically inferior and powerless against the 2 blocks above in exchange of keeping the financial advantage of the historic bonus; being controlled by FCA has this downside.

The other teams are not even in the conversation. They keep changing names, owners, sponsors and they’re more and more used by the top ones to develop young drivers, technical solutions.
The most unfortunate ones (i.e. Williams and Racing Point) are kept alive by billionaires with the support of the management to make up numbers, keep participants up to 20.
They get their sons racing as a reward.

The balance of power was even when Williams, Ferrari and McLaren were at the top.
The competition between the three was fierce and FIA and F1 were intervening only to stop one of them from taking a too big supremacy.
The other teams were not controlled by them, so they were free to fight if they were good enough.

With the cost increase the situation had quickly and irreversibly gone out of control.
FIA is no longer able to create rules as an independent authority but needs to satisfy who really owns the circus. Engine and aerodynamics rules and strategies are clearly arranged to keep happy who is at the top. They’re not producing anything for entertaining during races nor suitable for being used on cars.
F1 creates fake artifices to pretend balancing values; but BOP, budget caps etc. are not changing anything on the actual performance and they have the terrible side effect of killing the spirit of the sport, which is R&D, testing and experimenting to prepare the fastest car.

In all of this we have other suppliers, like Pirelli, who accept to put their reputation on the line in order to deliver some of the tricks to generate the chaos that is sold by the TVs as uncertainty on the end result, which is actually never in doubt since 2011.

If we want to have a truly interesting and competitive sport, the rulers and the judges, FIA and Formula 1 management, need to be more powerful than the competitors.
They should be able to create rules to encourage new manufacturers, big or small, to bring their ideas and solutions to the track.

Turnover of manufacturers, costructors and suppliers should be facilitated, not feared.