you want to limit the costs, simple in thory, but I bet you won't want to do it!
Each team signs up to a race series, pay a sum of money to the race organisers to provide engines for each team for the season (someone would have to work out what the running & maintenance costs for that many engines would be!).
But to make it even more fair, the engines will only ever be in the possession of competitors for the duration of an event. The organisers would be responsible for maintainance of the engines, whether that be themselves or through outsourcing.
I suggest that as part of this process that all engines must be dyno'd to a predetermined performance curve +\- some amount before they are released to competitors for racing.
The organisers would then allocate engines on the day randomnly ensuring that no competitor ends up with the same engine in a season.
The question is, will organisers really want the extra effort, will competitors really be happy with whatever engine they are given. What about the JJ's, RPM's, UFO's etc of this world who do the engine prep work - where would they stand?
Well, I guess the engine prep companies could become redundant, they might find organisers choose to use them anyway, engine prep work maybe reduced ending the viability of the business. Who knows, probably wouldn't be popular though.
I can't see the idea being appealing on so many grounds, but it is the only idea that I can come up with to level the engine playing field and keep costs down.
Fundamentally, I still believe that spending huge amounts of money on engines is completely pointless until you are genuinely fighting for the last fractions of a second to take you from being 2nd to 1st in a series.
Most time gains are and will always be gained by chassis set-up and driver ability, engines are just the very expensive fine tuning once you have the rest right.
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