ICE is dead, and none of the developments make it to road cars anyway. Meanwhile, battery/EV tech needs all the development it can get and F1’s have been frozen for years.
Make F1 road relevant again, not just aerospace on bubble gum tires. Let teams compete on the tech that actually matters to the motoring world.
Do they really though? I know they say they do, but I don’t think the mean it.
At the end of the day, manufacturers participate in F1 because of marketing. Not because of the opportunity to develop technology. Since F1 is a marketing exercise for them, they care more about the image their teams portray. Just like how F1 wants cars to project a particular image.
They want their brand associated with people seeing the car and saying “wow, now that’s a racecar.” ICE in F1 won’t be going away until the general public divorces ICE from the image of high performance racecars. It has nothing to do with speed or technology development.
It’s harder to market overpriced electric and hybrid cars with a race series that acts as if E10 fuel was a massive innovation.
(Additional reply) According to an interview with an DTM representative, car makers contacted them to pave a path for electrified cars (DTM is currently GT3-based).