Yeah, 9 teams on the grid, 18 cars, less competition and less interest, not having Ferrari wouldn't make any difference at all next year. Reality check, F1 doesn't need Ferrari specifically, IE if they were replaced by a company willing to spend 300mil a year or more on their team then absolutely fine. I don't think the name Ferrari is at all important to the sport, it's like saying if utd got relegated the premier league would be over. It wouldn't but that is because football has a system where by Utd being relegated would mean a new team coming up in their place.
F1 can't cope with one less team basically at all, let alone a big team. If anything what F1 desperately needs right now is a payment structure in which, a more even share of money is gotten right now, but if 3 more teams came in they ALSO got money. One of the biggest issues to having more than 10 teams right now is the problems with very little money that teams below 10th get which is absurd frankly. You can't encourage more teams even of Sauber budget levels to come in, make a commitment of likely ~100mil or more to buy in when if they come and finish 11th they get utterly boned in terms of income. We've had two teams leave because they came out of the top 10 and simply couldn't afford to continue, so right now which smaller group of people who have enough money to consider funding a team and covering the gap between the team and sponsors for a few years till established when they know that they have the highest possible chance of finishing last and as such getting very very little income.
For me what they need to do is even up the money, take the extra money from some teams, have it set aside with a lets say 13 team payout setup but in the event of having less than 13 teams the absent teams money gets redistributed evenly to the other teams.
They need to do this with any potential change so that the money doesn't immediately change for most teams but in the event we get new entrants the Liberty don't have a huge struggle to take that money away from teams to give the new teams some cash for being involved.
9 teams right now would make F1 significantly worse regardless of which team folded/left, but if it was Ferrari it would be a bigger hit than any of the teams outside the big 4.