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Formula 1 relegated?

Formula 1 has a radical new idea, borrowed from the World of Football – relegation. Max Mosley has stated that he would like to see relegation as part of the 2008 season to push out the slow backmarkers and make way for better teams.

Mosley is introducing the system into Formula 1’s new five-year Concorde Agreement which begins in 2008. With Prodrive entering the grid, it will bring the team tally to 12 – the maximum allowed. Rather than having the limit increased, Mosley wants to relegate the backmarkers. “You do need some sort of system for bringing people in and bringing them out,” he said. “If there is a team that is consistently 11th or 12th for three, four or five years and there’s a brilliant outfit that wants to come in, it can’t be right not to let it. We need a mechanism.”

Mosley has said that it will ‘certainly’ be in the 2008 Concorde Agreement because if it isn’t included, it could be a further five years before it anything similar could be implemented.

Mosley has hinted at a two-part relegation scheme – if a team are consistently running at the back of the field, they may be forced to drop one car so that another team can be bought in. If the remaining car still fails to perform, the team will be booted out of Formula 1 altogether.

He also said he believed that the relegation system would gain car-makers rather than lose them. “My feeling is that we are more likely to gain a manufacturer in the next three years than we are to lose one,” he explained.

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