It sounds from the little bits I've seen recently that the V8 supercar series in Australia is facing the same kind of escalating costs that are hitting F1. Could someone who's been following the series over the last few years provide some insight into what's been going on? Will they make a better job of retaining the spirit of racing and could F1 learn something from them?

Costs are escalating, but the cars have identical suspension, brakes, control tyre etc, and there are only two manufacturers (Holden and Ford) to choose from, so what the teams can do isn't as varied as F1.

It shows in the racing as well, where in qualifying the top 10 cars are seperated by .2 seconds, and the racing is also quite close most of the time. However, the last few years have seen HRT dominate with Scaife, just like Ferrari has with schumacher, but since half way through last year, SBR started dominating. Since the begginning of this year when suspension was made common, along with other restrictions for both cars (called project 'blueprint') there have been several winners. There is still the top teams (aka level one teams) up front, but the cars are so close that there isn't one car dominating. These changes seem to have worked but I don't think F1 can do anything similar without wrecking the technical nature of the sport.

The nature of F1 racing is very differant so I don't see how anything like the changes seen in the v8 series coming about unless f1 gets really bad.