Toro Rosso STR3
Are customer cars such a bad thing in Formula 1? It is not as if it is something that we have not seen in the past, the Rob Walker Lotus which won the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix is a clear highlight but you do not have to delve that deeply into the history books to find more recent examples, the Super Aguri SA05/SA06 was a thinly disguised Arrows, whilst the SA07 and SA08’s were simply rebadged Hondas. The Toro Rosso STR5 was that teams first proper car, all of its previous offerings were simply Adrian Newey designed Red Bull’s which had been re-engined and fitted with a bespoke transmission.

These cars did not spoil the essence of Formula 1, indeed the added to it, allowing drivers who may not otherwise get a drive a chance at much needed track time Anthony Davidson and a young German boy called Vettel both benefitted, as did err Yuji Ide. I personally can see no issue with a few small teams running customer cars, lets not forget that there are two spare slots on the grid left by USF1 and HRT.

But who would actually want to run customer cars, certainly not any of the established front runners, but in the midfield there are some possibilities, Toro Rosso is the most obvious, Red Bull could save itself rather a lot of money by only designing one car a year instead of two, especially as next season both cars will use the Renault RS34 Energy F1 power unit.

Sauber will almost certainly remain a constructor in its own right but with funding seemingly hard to come by these days perhaps a Ferrari chassis could be added to the power unit and transmission the team already buys from the Italians.

Caterham would seem like an unlikely candidate for customer cars as it is trying to build its reputation as a car manufacturer up globally, but by the same token it would not be the first time a Lotus design has appeared with a Caterham badge on the nose.

Marussia too is trying to build up its reputation as a car manufacturer, something that would no doubt be helped by actually manufacturing more than a handful of street cars, but by the same token its target market would probably not know the difference between a customer car and an in house design, nor I feel would they care.
Super Aguri
Looking at those two empty slots on the F1 entry list makes me wonder if there may be a couple of new teams in the offing for 2015. Certainly Honda will want to have a Japanese driver in F1 but the only realistic candidate for a team of McLaren’s calibre any time in the next five years is Kamui Kobayashi (bet Jenson would love that – not!), but if Honda were to fund a satellite team with a McLaren chassis and run to develop Honda’s junior drivers as well as its new power unit and its young engineers then it would make a lot of sense.

But developing young engineers is critical and customer cars could further restrict the career prospects of the next generation of Bowlbys, Neweys, Byrnes and Restas. Indeed now the only categories where they can design a modern racing car are Le Mans Prototypes, Formula 3 (good luck finding a customer) and Formula 1. Right now each year there are x new F1 cars designed, the arrival of customer cars will inevitably reduce that number, and it is the smaller teams like Marussia and Caterham where these young racecar designers are learning the trade.

But that is a wider issue for the sport to tackle rather than an F1 specific problem, I feel that customer cars in F1 would actually improve the show, as long as the majority of cars on the grid were bespoke designs. I also feel that as this customer cars issue has been on the table for so long now it is almost certain that sooner or later customer cars will return to F1.
