Before the World Championship decider kicks off in Abu Dhabi, it is worth considering the question of double points which may or may not help decide who wins the title. The first thing that must be said is that there is no such thing as a perfect system. You can take any close season in the history of the sport and say this would have happened and that would have happened if the points system had been different. There is not much point in examining all of them, because they are all OK and they are all flawed. However, the goal of a points system should always be to reward the man (or woman) who wins most events. Titles that are won more with reliability than with speed are never popular. And thus this year we have the odd situation of Lewis Hamilton having won 10 races, having to fight for the title with Nico Rosberg, who has won five. It does not seem right. Rosberg is still in the game because he has been second 10 times, to Hamilton’s three. Nico goes to Abu Dhabi 17 points behind, which would normally mean that he would need to win and Hamilton would have to be sixth to win the title. If his car broke down, Hamilton would still lose if Rosberg was first or second. Double points means that Rosberg has more chance, although he has no chance at all if Hamilton leads from the front and wins. If Nico wins Lewis needs to be second to guarantee his second title. Fans have railed against the double points idea, but one must look at why this came to pass. Last year the World Championship was done and dusted in India, with three races still to go. TV viewing figures plunged. Once the title is done, who wants to watch? The key point, one has to remember, is that F1 survives (or not) as a commercial entity. It is still a sport, but money comes from TV and so it is in the interest of everybody that the World Championship finale is a high-rating, prime-time, humdinger, along the lines of the great Sao Paulo showdown of 2008. It doesn’t get better than that.
Runaway success is all well and good, but it means that numbers are down. And numbers matter.
Look around the world at different sports and see that many of them have changed fundamentally because of TV. Cricket is barely recognisable to how it used to be, rugby games take place at all kinds of hours and so on and so forth. In order to keep the excitement up to the end, lots of sports have adopted the concept of play-offs, which are either a single game, a series of games or a tournament, with various formats to knock teams out of the running, rather than using simple point scores.
It is a concept that dates back almost 100 years to the days when American football had different geographical divisions, the winners of which would get together to decide who was the best team of the year. That developed into the Superbowl in the 1960s. Baseball has its World Series, the NBA has its post-season games and so on. They even exist in football these days in England with play-offs to decide who is promoted into the Premier League.
The problem with play-offs is that they can be manipulated as was seen last year in NASCAR when all kinds of shenanigans went on in the final pre-play-off race as team-mates assisted one another to get through.
This year NASCAR decided to go for a completely new system, designed to favour those who won races. Well, that was the theory. It was anything but simple and involved 16 drivers being selected for “The Chase” after 26 races, based on races that they had won and then the points that they had scored. Once that was decided, there was a system in which four drivers were eliminated in each of three different phases of three races. Race winners automatically went through to the next phase, the other positions being decided by points. The result of all of this was very bizarre because the four drivers remaining in the hunt after the ninth (and penultimate) race in The Chase were Kevin Harvick (Stewart Haas Racing), Joey Logano (Penske Racing), Denny Hamlin (Joe Gibbs Racing) and Ryan Newman (Richard Childress Racing). Of these, the most successful was Logano, who had won five races in the course of the season. Harvick had won four, Hamlin just one and Newman none at all. Those who had been eliminated included Logano’s Penske team-mate Brad Keselowski, who ended the year with six wins, and Hendrick Motorsports team-mates Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr all of whom won four victories.
So was the system really about rewarding those who won races?
The finale yesterday in Florida ended up with the scoring system just about getting away with it. Harvick won and so added a fifth victory to his tally and so the title does not entirely ludicrous. However, Newman was just half a second behind Harvick at the finish and could so easily have become the champion with one win (or perhaps with no wins if the two had been beaten by Keselowski, who was just a second behind in third place). It could so easily have been Keselowski winning the race with Newman second, which would have given one seven victories and the other the title without a single race win. And that would have been an absurd travesty of justice.
The key point, however, is that the fans watched the race all the way to the flag and the TV viewing figures will reflect the success of the system.
F1 cannot live in a vacuum, pretending that viewing figures do not matter. Despite the best efforts of Bernie Ecclestone to market the sport to retirees only, the numbers and the demographics are important, although perhaps given Bernie’s strategy it would be best to keep the excitement to a minimum lest fans drop dead with the excitement of it all…
joeblogsf1 
I think the best system would be to count the number of first places, second places, 3rd places etc, and determine the winner according to that. That way a first place is still worth more than 5 2nd places.
Like an Olympic medals table?
Using this system, the title would have been decided with three races to go…
Picking up the earlier comment by Jem “the person who performs the best over the course of a defined period”: going into the final race of the NASCAR season Jeff Gordon had the highest average finishing record of all the drivers, but was ineligable for the championship – that speaks volumes for whether the entertainment vs sporting endeavor argument is fair…
From recent personal experience: I was initially against the concept of double-points at the season finale for this year’s F1 season, but now I’m not sio sure. Having raced all season in my local karting championship I went into the final round in 3rd place – unable to catch second place, but due to double points being awarded I might have finished 4th! The title was decided in a winner-takes-all showdown, which would not have been the case if not for double points. Completely fair it may not have been, but it was indeed exciting. If motor racing is not exciting, we all lose.
Something like that, but how it would be resolved if the drivers would have been tied on points. Look at the amount of wins, if they are the same, you look at second places, and so on.
The main problem with that is, if you get a totally dominant car/driver combination, as with Schumacher in the early 00s, the championship is over even earlier…
The key is to try to establish what the gap is between points scored for 1st and 2nd places. It’s been tweaked over the years and until this double points finale, I thought the balance was close to correct.
As Joe says, it’s never perfect. Those of us fans in the know (not “fanboys”, but fans) will always be pretty good at knowing which driver is the most deserving over a year. It doesn’t help that driver, of course, if he loses the championship, but it does add a level of fascination / frustration which makes us keep on watching to see if he can nail it the following year.
It’s been said many times and I believe it’s true: the fact that Stirling Moss’s name is not in the list of champions says more about the list of champions than about Stirling Moss…
Yes, the current system is the best one we’ve had.
Interesting point that last paragraph of yours. Following his death recently, I was reading a lot of things about and by Jack Brabham, and some of the most interesting were his assessments of Stirling Moss’s abilities.
It was a frequent refrain from interviews conducted in period and his later comments, that often he (and presumably other drivers) would let Moss hare off at the start of a race, confident that Stirling would eventually break something on his car through pushing too hard. The most famous of these occasions was possibly the 1959 USGP at Sebring. Going into the event, the last of the season, Moss was second to Brabham in the Championship, on 25½ points to Jack’s 31. There were 8 points for a win an extra point bonus for fastest lap, and only the top 5 results for each driver counted, so Brabham was eminently catchable.
Sure enough, Moss qualified on pole and shot off into a significant lead even by the end of the first lap, with Brabham in second. However, over the bumpy Sebring circuit Moss’s gearbox soon gave up the ghost, and Black Jack settled back to cruise to the Championship. It didn’t quite work out like that, with Jack ending up pushing his car home to finish fourth (although he dropped the points anyway, so although heroic it made no difference…) and take the World Championship.
Did Moss deserve to win a Championship because of his speed, or did his win-or-bust attitude betray a deficiency in his abilities that stopped him ever reaching that height?
Analysis of non-finishes in the 1950s suggests that Stirling Moss failed to finish owing to mechanical failure as often as his contemporaries. In some long distance races, where it was unexpected for cars to race for six or 24 hours without problems, Stirling Moss drove the “hare” car for others to chase. All the same, Moss had a good finishing record.
At the time, Black Jack (Brabham) had greater mechanical understanding than other drivers, so perhaps Jack had an advantage in F1. When he started to work at Cooper, he welded the tubes for his car. He was smart enough to exploit his technical knowledge when racing. Sometimes Jack had an edge, at other times Stirling’s instinct was enough to look after a sick car.
If it was plausible to argue that Stirling was a car breaker, that was contradicted when Moss won the 1960 Monaco GP. The Lotus 18 was a fragile car but Moss drove a private entry for Lotus’s first GP win. That race comprised 100 laps lasting nearly three hours.
Its a decent suggestion, but there still need to be a way of deciding in the case where drivers have the same number of first,second,third places etc.
Perhaps they could count pole positions, or number of laps in the lead.
In that scheme, this year the championship would have been over in Sochi , round 16. Lewis with 9 wins, Nico with 4 wins and only three races left.
p.s. checking this on Wikipedia, someone has hacked Lewis. He’s called “Williams Pulsebeat” in all the records!
So one win only and no other places whatsover would lead to a driver beating someone with 16 second places. Equally ludicrous. Joe is right, all systems a flawed but every driver has the same opportunity in all of them.
That would be my choice. However I would score the constructors championship differently with points down to last finisher.
I think the key thing when looking whether double points is necessary is how often in the last X years it’s actually been needed. I see the double points as being a typical reactionary measure after the dull end to last year which isn’t really necessary if you look a little further back and realise last year was the exception rather than the rule. Most championships go to the last race without any gimmicks.
As for the more general question of consistency versus outright pace I’m not sure one is always more deserving than the other. I do think Hamilton deserves this years crown more than Nico but I think Nico’s Dad was fully deserving of his title in ’82 despite it coming mainly from reliability and other troubles for the turbo teams. What he managed to do was repeatedly put his car ahead of where it should’ve been to capitalise on the failures of others.
Reliability is not always out of the driver’s control either. In Canada where both Mercedes had the same issue, Rosberg came second driving to protect the problem as instructed, Hamilton overworked his brakes trying to force a win with an ailing car. Rewarding a driver’s ability to ‘bring it home’ is not necessarily bad.
Superb comment.
Definitely. Well said Gavyn.
The championship should not be decided based on which Merc had the best reliability. Going back years when reliability was an issue didn’t they use a system of counting your best x races and not counting some ??
Yes, in 1988 Senna won the WDC because you only counted your best 11 results. Had all the results counted then the title would have been Prost’s.
– which wouldn’t have been right! The best man won in1988. Let’s hope that the best man wins this year as well however, although I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Lewis, I feel that Rosberg’s 1st WDC is more than a ‘possibility’ In another post, someone mentioned the 1982 season. I remember that as a desperately unsatisfactory year for all sorts of reasons not least because of the sadness of the GV & Pironi accidents.
Selling tv rights to pay tv companies is hardly going to keep the viewership up. It may make money for the deal-makers, but it seems bad for the fans, the sponsors and therefore the teams too. But then again, if your job is to make money for yourself and your commercial partners, and you don’t really need a long-term plan, then making money like that is doing a good job, right?
I don’t like the double-points. It doesn’t seem like a sporting way to allocate points for a sport. Yes, the sport must entertain, as every sport must, but here we go from sport that’s entertaining to entertainment based on sport. And there is a difference between those two things.
Completely agree. Its one thing to tweak a structure (as in introducing a different style/format of competition), but to shift the goal posts removes the integrity of the sport.
The EPL toyed with the idea of the a 39th game to take the English Premier League to new audiences and therefore boost tv ratings. With pressure from the supporters, they then realised this was a step too far and long term it would devalue the sporting competition and therefore the credibility in the competition itself.
The short one et al don’t listen to motorsport followers, had they done so – they’d have realised long term they’re devaluing the integrity of the series which would ultimately devalue the brand of F1. I’m not the only one who has turned to alternative forms of motorsport due to my disenfranchisement of the current status quo of F1 – declining audience and attendence stats prove it.
I agree it should be decided in a fair and sporting way. This for me is too much like WWE wrestling maybe they should change the name to sports entertainment rather then an actual sport.
I presume next season if someone is losing they can just smash another driver over the head with a steel chair on the driver parade lap to take him out of the race. Only for that driver to turn up driving an ambulance half way through the race and miraculously win the with a last corner overtake.
You jest however let’s not forget the sprinkler’s idea.. Agreed on the sports entertainment definition – the lack of transparency of revenue/prize money distribution only reinforces the notion.
The Rosberg family has experience with winning undeserved world titles…
So who was the deserving champion in 1982?
Hard to argue that anyone who wins just one race deserves a world title.
Five men won more races that season, including Pironi who missed the last few events through injuries.
But no one won more than two races.
Mike Hawthorn was a worthy World Champion in 1958, and Stirling Moss helped him win, as although Moss had I think 4-1 on wins, he said he didn’t want to win the title just because Hawthorn might have been disqualified. Mark of a great Champ who didn’t get the title!
That’s a very good question. It was very sad year 82 and hard to pinpoint a ‘deserving’ WDC…..
Didier Pironi.
Heck, I think John Watson and Alain Prost would have been deserving champions, too. Not saying Rosberg did not deserve it, mind you, even if Lauda seemed to think so at the time.
I’d though of Pironi however, I then thought about the infamous GP at San Marino that year and the controversy that surrounded it. I don’t think you’re wrong though; and you’d be in very good company – legendary company, in fact. One Enzo Ferrari thought so. I read somewhere many years ago, that Ferrari visited Pironi in hospital after his leg-shattering (and ultimately career-ending) shunt in practice at Hockenhiem. He presented him with a superb sculpture of a prancing horse with the inscription, ‘to Didier Pironi, the true 1982 world champion’. Despite San Marino and my love of Villeneuve, I find it difficult to argue with that.
Nonsense. Keke was an extraordinary driver. Car control like few others I have seen.
I was lucky to have been present at his first two wins at Dijon & Monaco and he was great to watch.
“However, the goal of a points system should always be to reward the man (or woman) who wins most events.”
This is an opinion with which I personally disagree – to my mind the goal of a points system should be to identify the person who performs the best over the course of a defined period (i.e. a season).
I’m a fan of the consistent and conservative second places over the flash-in-the-pan victories, it’s a personal thing but I don’t think Rosberg is any less a deserving champion than Lewis and the fact that he’s picked up some form of trophy at so many races this season (as well as the new Pole Position trophy) is testament to that.
The difficulty is, of course, that you can’t really correct for the performance of the car – reliability is a fickle thing and can strike even the greatest talents.
The best X of Y results systems from the late 80s do have the advantage of “correcting” somewhat for occasional reliability issues or when a first corner idiot ruins someone’s day. They’re a bit complicated for people to write out and communicate the permutations of, but I’d happily defend them as being miles better than a “medal” system.
That’s fine, it’s your opinion, but I do believe a lot of racing fans would disagree with that stance. Racing is, and always has been, about winning. The idea of a championship came after the idea of a Grand Prix. So, I’m going to have to disagree (sorry!) 😉 Someone who wins 10 GPs is far more deserving that someone who has 5 wins.
This is of course a problem that Nico faces – most racing fans will already consider Hamilton champion, regardless of what happens at the final race – in the same way that most racing fans think Alonso 2012, Mansell 1987 etc. So history will make him WDC, but he’ll still have much to prove to your average racing fan…
So Martin D, Massa was 2008 World Champion? He did win 6 races to Hamilton’s 5, so Massa won the most that year…
Lots of ifs and buts there – on paper you could argue yes, but don’t forget that ridiculous decision at the Belgian GP where Hamilton was stripped of the win.
This is why no system is perfect – you can’t have a system that is 100% based on races wins (medals table etc.) – what you do have to do is find a balance, which is why the 10,6,4,3,2,1 system was so successful.
A 6/5 race win ratio is very close, but a 10/5 ratio isn’t. That’s my view anyway, I know others believe differently and that’s fine, but as a racer, I want to see people putting everything on the line for wins, giving us exciting races, not playing the percentage game and finishing 2nd or 3rd all the time.
The extreme of the “reward the race winners” idea is a medals system, for which I have the following concerns :
a) It allows the championship to be entirely (or mostly) won far too early in the season – I’m not going to quote the extremes of dominance, but you can be almost certain that the championship won’t come down to the wire.
b) it encourages dangerous driving – with a race win worth 38% more than second place (the current situation) mad aggression isn’t worth the risk. F1 drivers are a brave and proud bunch so they’ll try to win if they can, but if race wins were worth 2001% of second place (a medal system) then there would be some worrying driving on show.
c) it encourages team orders – combine (a) and (b) and you have a recipe for team orders, no driver would accept a serious rival in the same car. Situations where Webber led home Vettel (rare, I know) would never have been allowed because where 18 points is a reasonable haul (especially if rivals have retired) a race win becomes all important under a medal system.
Obviously there’s need for a balance to be struck – a suitably cheeky sod might point out that the other extreme awards everyone the same points for taking part and at the end of the season everyone shares the Participation Championship Trophy, a presentation watched by nobody since we’d all have fallen asleep.
It’s part of the reason there’s been so much tinkering with the points systems in F1 (which it makes it laughable to compare “old money” and “new money” points) as the sport continually tries to iterate a formula to balance sporting integrity with viewer numbers.
The relative points-difference from a win to second place is a tough one to settle on, F1 has gone through 33%, 50%, 67%, 25% and now to 38% – but only the last three have been used in systems where all race results counted towards the championship.
I can see the value of a “best X of Y results” system, as I mentioned above, but it possibly allows drivers who’ve had a nightmare in qualifying to park the car (especially late in the season) and just write off a bad result waiting to happen.
Personally, about the only thing I’d like to do with a points system is extend it down the grid further – in this era of almost supreme mechanical reliability, the fact that the bottom teams are stuck in a sort of medals system (one 11th place is worth more than a whole season of 12th and 13th places) is bizarre and (in my arrogant opinion) entirely unfair.
Agree with this. My memory of 2008 is that, for his performance at Interlagos alone, Massa deserved the WDC. He qualified on pole; led the race from start to finish and didn’t put a foot wrong. Under the most intense pressure imaginable (home GP, WDC at stake) he was utterly brilliant. What a finish that would have been – I remember he was in tears on the podium. For a few glorious seconds, he was the 2008 WDC. The Lewis ‘limped’ home, overtaking Timo Glock and secured the WDC! I know there were good performances earlier in the season but……..
Massa was a champion that night in all but name. She showed how great sportsmen lose with grace. If only the sport could be like every fortnight!
If it is only about winning why should Caterham and the other small teams fight to survive. You don’t care about those in the back of the field.
It is not my opinion. I like to see the fights to get last point. I like the current point system (except the double points), if the system should be changed then there should point to even more cars that finish a race.
I MASSIVELY care about the guys at the back of the field – with my racing I am one of those guys! Hence in a different post I suggested points going further down the field – I agree fighting for points is great and part of it – I just think that you should me more for a win, that’s all. I want to see people fight for race wins, not settle for 2nds or 3rds because it’s safer for the championship.
Can you name any sporting competition that is NOT about winning?
If you have to ask the question you won’t understand the answer.
Agree with plenty that you state. I too, find myself drawn to those drivers who can drive around a problem and get their car to the finish line, no matter what. One aspect I’d contest is whether a driver can correct for the performance of the car – some drivers are/were very good at ensuring they drove in a manner that conserved the engine/tyres/fuel or whatever. Gerhard Berger was known to be particularly hard on engines which may have been a factor to all the retirements he experienced at McLaren. Ivan Capelli was a superbly smooth driver and that ability enabled him to grab a second place at Paul Ricard in a March. Likewise the example posted earlier with regard to Canada this year – Rosberg not only nursed his car to the end but only permitted a single car to finish ahead of him. Such drives stand out to me just as much as one where the driver wrestles every ounce of performance from a car to finish over a lap ahead of the competition (assuming he doesn’t break his vehicle or bin it into a tyre wall or gravel trap).
Prost won the 89 title with less wins than Senna. I felt that was wrong. I’m sure there are other examples. I preferred BE’s Gold medal system to double points. Alternatively all races should have equal points. If someone wins the titke in August then well done. But this us F1; not the BTCC. And this double points race strikes me as an Akan Gow idea.
Nelson Piquet won every one of his 3 titles with less wins than his nearest challenger.
I don’t think that I am alone in thinking that the best system F1 ever had was the 10,6,4,3,2,1.
It had (in my opinion) the best balance between winning and consistency. The problem with it now is that the modern cars simply do not break down, so to finish in the top 6 is arguably harder that it has even been. The 25 point system does try and help that, but a second is now worth 72% of a win as opposed to 60%.
I’m thinking out loud, but maybe a 50, 30, 20, 15, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1 would be better, or perhaps points down to 15th like they do in bike racing, but as you say, no points system is perfect. Especially as points mean prizes, meaning money, a lot of the time and a top heavy points system could alter the financial awards between large and small…
In a word. Difficult.
Double points though is just terrible, which ever angle you consider it. Yes, it may prolong the ‘excitement’, but what people hate in sports most is injustice, and that is a sure way to increase the likelihood of that…
No, you’re not alone. As Joe says, no system is going to be perfect. But at least it had the merit of being simple and easy to follow. The trouble with trying to make it fairer is that they usually end up making it more complicated.
I too preferred the 10/9, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 system. While reliability has indeed improved in recent times, its worth remembering that back in the late 80s/early 90s you had as many as 39 cars competing for those 6 points scoring finishes…some didn’t even make it out of pre-qualifying let alone, then go on to ensure they were not one of the four slowest cars in regular qualifying that were also sent home packing.
We could potentially have a situation next season whereby more than half the grid will score points which is a little ridiculous in itself.
People of cite that points mean prizes but that is only because of the current structure/perception. One could very simply use a count back of highest finishing places (as they did to determine whether Caterham/Team Lotus, Marussia/Virgin or HRT finished 10th, 11th and 12th) to determine the championship position of non-points scoring teams as they did in the 80s/90s.
Awarding points makes it easier for the casual follower to understand which tail end team is in front however does joe public really worry about who is 8th versus 9th or 10th?
+1 Some good points in there re: Grid sizes etc. James Allen published a post a while back discussing the points systems, and the idea of how ‘valuable’ a world championship point it – the conclusion was that although there are more points now, with the added reliability factor it was just as hard to score a single more now as it was then. What I don’t remember it discussing at all though was grid size, so that’s an interesting point.
I agree regarding attaching monetary value to points – the count-back system works the best, if for no other reason that every entered team is automatically ‘classified’ in the championship – perhaps with a proviso that they compete in a minimum number of rounds?
If TV viewing figures are the most importent thing, should Formula 1 go back to free-to-air TV?
Clearly
So the most obvious solution is ignored and the one chosen is the option that *could* exacerbate the decline. F1 shouldn’t think itself above potential ruin. For an example of a sport that “chased the money” a little bit too hard, one only needs to look at how professional boxing has gone from being a mainstream sport pulling in millions of viewers across the globe for title fights to one that is marginalised and followed by only hardcore fans. Who now could answer who the current heavweight champions of the world are? Who cares?
F1 ought to be careful of turning itself into a true ‘circus’…people will vote with their remotes when its obvious what they’re watching is no longer a sport but merely entertainment.
A fantastic point there about the lessons F1 could learn from boxing, if you shut yourself away behind paywalls then it’s ever harder for the casual fan to stumble across a new sport as no one pays for something they’re not already a fan of. Fortunately there is still be bbc sharing half the races but I can see that easily disappearing the next time the rights are up for renewal. Another example would be moto GP this season they moved to BT sports and while I was never the biggest moto gp fan I often watched races on the BBC as the races were often thoroughly entertaining, however i haven’t watched a single race this season and don’t even know who won/is winning the title and I expect many other people are the same.
It will be a sad day for F1 when the only people watching are the anoraks and the casual fans have all left.
+1
There is an old saying “points means prizes” and whatever may be said in favour of “most wins” or even “most best places” a points based championship system will reward most the competitor who is always there or thereabouts, rather than the shi* or bust merchant who lacks consistency – either by his/her own fault or equipment failure, perhaps brought about due to their own style of competing. The hare wins the individual prizes for the races won, but the tortoise accumulates points for the races finished and wins the overall championship.
Points work because they reward speed and consistency, the double points however is wrong, no Grand Prix is any more or less important, so Double Points is a farce. I am a informed fan, not a casual fan, and where I do understand the marketing, I think that it just spoils the Championship. Formula 1 has always been a Sport that has consistently changed, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worst, but it has to be careful not to be seen as a Mickey Mouse Championship. As a fan I don’t appreciate the TV figures dictating everything, I watch on TV, but I haven’t missed a race for 15 years, regardless on when the championship was won! Don’t even get me started on Bernie’s Medals idea! F1 should however use modern technology and give fans a vote on the sporting regulations, so they have a influence of the sport they love, but not to give silly ‘Extra Boost’ like in Formula E. I am sure that a vote would have stopped this points rule from been implemented in the first place!
The point about marketing is key.
Yes, but when have the marketing men gone too far…as you say, the viewing figures will reveal all.
I’m obviously one of the few that watched the remaining races of 2011 or 2013, despite knowing that Sebastian Vettel had already successfully defended his WDC.
IMO – viewing figures are important, but even more important is a point-system that is consistent. There is no explanation why a singular event should be worth the points of two; It just poses a bigger problem, that being that a DNF is twice the cost. It also has the unwanted effect to perhaps sway the title to a driver that is less worthy, artificially prolonging the battle when it should have been over already. Sadly, it’s something many fans have argued right when it was introduced and I’m quite frankly surprised that it’s only now that people who were originally in favor of it (or neutral) are coming around to see the daftness of it. F1 is lucky that the point difference between Nico and Hamilton is “only” 17 points – and not 31 – or it would make the double points finale an even more obvious scam, if it were to influence the title race.
F1 needs to think about the consequences of their decisions; Introducing double points (and then successfully doing its job by prolonging the fight) would always have the potential to sway the title fight in a direction in an unjust manner. The question is; if Nico does win because of the double points, how will his WDC title be perceived? How will fans react? What will the impact to F1 be?
Ultimately, such a gimmick devalues the achievement in the eyes of the viewer. This in turn if left unchecked, long term, devalues the integrity of the sport which in turn will have viewers turning off their sets and doing something else. It may not happen overnight but once that negative inertia gathers momentum, its VERY difficult to arrest such a trend. Just look at snooker, boxing or professional wrestling (which saw UFC & MMA largely replace it as marketable sporting commodities).
To finish first first you have to finish. That goes over the whole season, of course. It is reasonable to award reliability as well as speed, to a point.
I don’t agree with double points in the finale, but I can see the thought behind it. There is a sharp drop in interest if there is nothing to compete for (but I still watch).
But hey, I’m just one guy and not a particularly influential guy at that.
I would argue that if Lewis cannot come 1st or 2nd in Abu Dhabi then the pressure got to him and maybe he doesn’t deserve to win the title.
If he is hit by mechanical problems then it would be likely that even if the race was based on the normal scoring system that he would not win.
I hope Lewis win’s because over the season he has deserved it however the fact is Nico has driven very shrewdly this year even if it is debatable if Nico has yet to beat Lewis in a straight fight.
But that (your first sentence) would mean that Nico won it, and most would agree that the “pressure got to him” a lot earlier and more often (Monza, Austin) – so how would he be more deserving?
Any notion – including double points – that puts one event as more important than the others just feels wrong from a sporting point of view.
That is a play-off!
HI Forestial,
If you watched the 2007 season you could argue that Lewis deserved the title more than Kimi. However those last 2 races at the end killed Lewis and no-one says now that Kimi doesn’t deserve it everyone thinks Lewis and Mclaren blew it.
If Lewis manages to lose the title through not finishing 1 or 2 then people will also look back at his mistake at T4 in interlagos and say in the last 2 races the pressure again got to him.
I really hope Lewis doesn’t read this negative cxxp and goes and does the job!!
Thank you for the final comment, brightened my day with a chuckle.
The current Constructors championship scoring system does not represent a fair assessment of a whole season.
If an exceptional turn of events during one race of the season had allowed for Caterham to a score a fifth place finish, they would now stand in 8th place of the constructor’s championship, ahead of Lotus, Sauber & Marussia. This would not be a reflection of their performance over the whole season, but merely an underlining of a stroke of luck.
I have devised a new scoring system for the Constructor Championship. This would be even more relevant should 3rd cars ever come into play (whereby the top 9 positions could be monopolised by 3 teams). It would also save teams such as Sauber from have such a miserable embarrassment as they have had this year.
Scores of 25, 18, 15, 12, 10 etc. points would be handed out to the top 10 teams of each race. Thus a 1-2 for Mercedes would be worth 25 points to the team. If one of the Drivers failed to finish due to reliability issues and Williams came in 2nd & 3rd, it would be Williams that would get the 25 points. This would reward a whole team for their effort.
Likewise, at the lower end of the field, a 20th & a 21st place finish would be worth more points than a 19th and a DNF.
The System would also allow for the backmarkers to fight for points in every race, rather than rely on a vague hope of half the field falling out of a race. It would penalise bad reliability, and it would emphasise a need for two good racers rather than one racer (for the points) and one pay driver (for the money).
Funnily enough, apart from William / Ferrari, the order (2014 season so far) would remain unchanged, but there would still be quite a fight on in Constructors Champioship going into Abu Dhabi:
Mercedes 361
Red Bull-Renault 252
Ferrari 240
Williams-Mercedes 234
McLaren-Mercedes 217
Force India-Mercedes 183
Toro Rosso-Renault 110
Lotus-Renault 67
Sauber-Ferrari 59
Marussia-Ferrari 47
Caterham-Renault 36
The post made it very clear that all points systems have flaws.
An interesting suggestion – in some bike racing the team championship the system in similar except that only the top rider’s points is counted towards the team – so if Ducati finish 1, 2, 3, they don’t get points for 1st 2nd and 3rd, they just get it for first. Then the next team get just the 4th place points.
It’s an interesting system, and it designed the way it is as in a lot of bike racing you can have teams of 1 2 or 3 riders, unlike (currently!) F1…
What kind of a social media sh** storm would Surtees get nowadays with his championship? Only the best 6 (out of 10) races counted (with all races he would not be champion) and let by his team mate on the last lap on the last race in order to get the title.
I’m not a fan of double points, but everyone could prepare for it so it is the same for everyone. And as always in F1, it is not about being the best or fastest driver, it is about getting the most points.
The ‘best of’ rules were necessary in those times as the cars were incredibly unreliable. I understand the point you’re making (and lets not forget Moss’s sporting gesture to Hawthorn in 58 – imagine Rosberg doing that if Lewis DNFs!), but I think the ‘best of’ was necessary back there.
It’s still used in many Karting and lower-formula championships, due to reliability and the costs of racing a whole season.
Your comment on Bernie marketing F1 to retirees was hilarious! Made my day, on a snow-filled morning in Ohio, thanks.
Living in Orlando, I’m in the epicenter of the NASCAR world, This series has tried to compete with the bat and ball sports in the US. They’ve expanded the series deep into the football season. The NASCAR playoff system has evolved into this present one of elimination rounds. But they are still being dwarfed by the NFL, which kills all the other sports on the US landscape. The racing series experiencing a loss in television ratings and attendance. NASCAR took advantage of the very competitive cable sport market to land an outrageous TV deal with Fox and NBC Sports.
But my conflict is the following, excellence rewarded! The F1 adage of the best car with the best driver is being deluted by these different scoring system. With full disclosure, I’m LCH fan, so I would be very diappointed with him losing out to Rosberg on Sunday. But you are correct, it has kept my interest from the summer to now with double Dhabi looming. So you are correct about creating a points system which can balance with rewarding excellence and audience attraction. Maybe the crazy old fox is correct with having the final 3 races becoming double points! But there should be a financial reward for these races, which would offset the development cost commitment required by the teams.
But at 8am Sunday, I’ll be on the edge of my seat with my fingers crossed for a LCH WDC!
Like anything in life, there are pros and cons to altering the championship decider. To take American football as an example, a few years ago the NE Patriots only lost one game in the entire year. Unfortunately for them it was in the Super Bowl and their undefeated season meant next to nothing.
Conversely, I think racing needs to award consistency. I am not a fan of neither double points or Rosberg but he deserves the shot based on his consistency. I just think that the double points sways it far too much. Lewis’ retirements are hurting him right now, as they should.
I’m in the U.S. so I normally watch the races off my DVR. This is one race that I will make sure to watch live. (I guess it worked!)
2010 was great. Four drivers from three teams in contention at the final race. That came about partly because of pretty good engine parity. Happy days.
As regards possible alternatives to what we have now, we could have a system whereby we simply count the race wins to decide the drivers’ championship, but a possible drawback is that teams might have team orders from the beginning of the season (big boo).
Incidentally, there is no point in applying a different points system to past seasons in order to see who the champion would have been, given that drivers and teams use tactics and strategies with the existing points system in mind.
Has there ever been any official explanation as to why “double points” .
You’ve alluded to why, but I’m looking for something I can use to explain to the “next gen” fans I’m trying to cultivate.
“Erm… its an artificial construct to promote people watching right to the end of the season, son”
“But you’d watch anyway, Dad”
“Yeah, but thats not the point. Its to make it more appealing to casual fans”
“By meaning they need to find an anorak to explain why?”
“Yeah”.
It was a daft Bernie idea to spice things up and keep interest until the end of the season. He wanted to make 3 races have double points. He was looking for gimmicks.
Sometimes I think its just his sense of humour, or he is doing it to win a bet.
Just tell him that until he can afford a Rolex his understanding F1 doesn’t matter.
Remember….F1 is for the oldies, youngsters don’t matter (apparently)..
Yeah, and if any of us oldies keels over with a heart attack from double-points-induced fake excitement – or rage – upon a Nico win in Abu Dhabi, it will be Bernie’s fault. He should be more careful to look after his key demographic.
Wouldn’t it be better to change the technical regulations in a way that it’s almost impossible for a driver or team to runaway with the championship? That way the sporting regulations / point system does not need to be changed in a way that feels too artificial…
And just to be clear there are several ways of doing that but I haven’t got a clue on which ones would work for F1 and which one is the best for F1. I like the balance of performance rules used in WTCC (adjusting weights) but I don’t know how that would work for F1.
I’ve followed motorsports including F1, since circa 1965, and for around 30years the pts for both titles were a very simple 9-6-4-3-2-1, there were some changes like best of X races in Pt1 & Pt2 of the titles, which I never liked.
I don’t see why every American idea always has to be followed, not that I’m anti-US, but I really don’t like silly scores of 237, 569 or whatever, I’m happy to see a title sorted with say a winner on 72pts and 2nd with 68, I don’t need to see pts in their hundreds to appreciate that someone has worked hard to win a title, and I think both the current system and double pts this weekend are just purile and stupid, and they sully the careers of really great drivers from the past. Just my view, private opinion…rant etc etc….the best saying I know that Americans are always using is…if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
The only way you would do that would be by making F1 a single make series…which would make it GP2.
F1 is about technical brilliance and ingenuity as much as driver excellence. Every year the FIA do try to curb the level of development in certain areas to ensure as much parity (and restrict costs) as much as is possible. The teams employ clever people to exploit those rules to their advantage to make their cars go faster. Some are cleverer than others, spotting loopholes others didn’t.
“Wouldn’t it be better to change the technical regulations in a way that it’s almost impossible for a driver or team to runaway with the championship?”
Seasons where one team runs away have often been followed by ones with great racing. Lotus were streets ahead (and unreliable) in 1978, but 1979 and a few later seasons were brilliant. Tech disruptions (eg ground effects, turbos) or rule changes give temporary advantage to one team, but the catching up process delivers great sport.
Technocrats cannot fix a set of regulations for a racing series that guarantee close sport, unless it is a spec series. Rule changes create a short lived disruption; engine and chassis manufacturers all have their own ideas about how to beat Mercedes-Benz next year. Teams with money will have a chance to display new tech and ideas in testing.
If you seek continuous or continual disruption of F1 tech, loosen the regulations but impose tight limits on expenditure beyond engines/power units (loaned at a capped price). Allow free use of tyres (any safe combination) brought to the circuit.
When regs for engines are next reviewed, make them more adventurous. The rules about material use in F1 engines are more restrictive than for a hot hatchback.
Limit access to in-car data to engineers working in the pits; allow mirrored data to be sent back to base (into a parc ferme repository, accessible on Monday).
“However, the goal of a points system should always be to reward the man (or woman) who wins most events.”
I disagree, F1 has never been about winning the most races and always about the most points.
The problem is that points are distributed in the same unfair way as the prize money. A far better, closer, more interesting contest, with more opportunities for all, would be for the points to be awarded according to the number of cars in the race, then decremented by one each position so that last gets one point. (eg 1point per finishing position from the back) Then we should have more teams with more points and the gap between the leaders would be very much smaller, the possibility of ties greatly enhanced. Much closer scores for at least half the season.
Otherwise lets give Ferrari ten points to start, just because they are Ferrari and the obviously need the help!
In Ye Olde Days, teams were paid “starting money” for taking away from the start line (cough, splutter, BRM) and for achieving a certain number of lap intervals. Prizes, and points if it was for a championship, were paid out on finishing.
In modern F1, almost every car finishes the race. If there was a single point for finishing, more of them could be patched up for the end.
Mind your gearbox by the way; if a £1 O-ring fails, we’ll have to change the whole thing, which will cost you starting grid places in a month or so. I’ve changed my mind; keep the car in the pits.
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rpaco: “I disagree, F1 has never been about winning the most races and always about the most points.”
More or less, I agree. I’d give every driver (but not constructor) a thousand extra points for winning his/her first race of the season. 1025 points for the first win, but back to 25 points for any others. To win the championship, you have to win at least one race.
Joe,
I get that your thesis is that ALL points systems are flawed, but Bernie has suggested Double points at the last race is flawed because it should have been the last three races. Do you buy in to the Bernie hypothesis that this would have made a less flawed system or is it an old man simply deflecting criticism?
I think the biggest thing with any points system is that it needs to be fair and consistent. Double points for the last race is neither.
Trying to devise a points system that favors wins over consistency, but still have a championship that is alive in the last race, is almost impossible. I just think Bernie (or whoever) needs to realize there will be some seasons like last year where Vettel ran away with it and then there will be some seaons like 2010 where one of three guys could have won the WDC in the last race. You can’t manufacture that kind of thing, it just happens and that’s the beauty of sports. Trying to manipulate events is just contrivance. It just turns me off, and I would hope it turns off anyone who is truly interesting in sport, as opposed to a “show”.
The NASCAR crowd at Homestead was very thin yesterday. I would say less than 50% capacity. The race wasn’t broadcast on the main Fox network which makes me wonder how the viewing figures are.
My greatest fear is that the last senence of the rules will one day read… ” and the World Champion will be the last driver to get voted off the island”.
Whatever points system is used, it should give points down to the last finisher in each race. Some scoring system is obviously being used to rank the tail enders, because the second last finisher overall gets more money than the last place finisher. Why don’t the point scores for each team reflect this? Shouldn’t Caterham and Maurssia fans have been able to tell who was beating who, even if neither of them scored a point? As an F1 fan since 1950, (when I was 10) I have always felt that everyone who finishes should score points. Obviously, finishing first should be worth way more points than finishing last, but finishing last should be worth something.
It seems to me that the points system that everyone likes is the one that best rewards the driver they support. You can’t please all of the people etc.
Knee jerks reactions to periods of dominance have usually been the precursor to points system changes. It is the way Bernie works. Crisis management.
However, what always seems to be overlooked is the fact that every points system, not matter how it works, applies in the same way to every driver. They all start with zero in March.
As Joe’s former colleague at Autosport (NR) used to write (frequently), ‘these are the conditions that prevail’.
Get over it.
FWIW it was in 1933 that the NFL (founded in 1920) expanded from 8 to 10 teams, split into 2 geographic divisions and held a championship game. Nowadays it is 32 teams, with 12 in the playoffs. Baseball’s World Series (funny name for a league that didn’t have any teams outside the USA until 1969) dates from 1903 although that involved a merger between two rival leagues.
I’m not crazy about double points but I don’t think it is a major travesty. A major travesty is NASCAR’s system, introduced with Brian France using the word “winning” 25 times. The tv ratings have not come out but the previous two had double digit increases and the final race in Homestead, Florida (usually a tough sell) was a sell out. At the end of the day, the public decides.
If Homestead was sold out then about 50% of the purchasers were at the concessions every time the tv cameras panned the stands.
I understand the concept of keeping the title race exciting (I can still see the looks on the poor Massa family’s faces change when Lewis crosses the line). However, I can also remember the early 90’s as not being particularly exciting: Mansell’s and then Prost’s titles were something of a foregone conclusion, but I remember the races after the title had been clinched as being much more fun, because team mates were let loose in a way that was impossible when there was still a title to be decided (however trivial that might have seemed; Toto Wolffs comments about needing to clinch both titles to avoid looking absolute fools was right on the money). Admittedly that never happened in the Schumacher and Vettel snooze-era, but there can be more to racing than just the title (and desperate attempts to keep it from getting clinched).
The problem with the double-point last race is that either it will affect the championship, or it won’t.
If it does, most people will think it unfair, artificial and that the title is somehow ‘tainted’
If it doesn’t then, well, it might as well not have been there.
In short – there isn’t an upside*. The title would have gone to the last race anyway so it’ll either prove redundant or a travesty! Not great for such a high profile scheme!
*Come Sunday pm, Herr Rosberg might disagree with this of course.
P.S Joe, any truth in the rumour that next year, stung by criticism of this scheme, The Bernmeister General proposes to return Abu Dhabi points to normal and instead halve the points for the preceding 19 races? Controversy solved Mr E style 😉
Great article and some great comments. I was at homestead yesterday and there is no doubt it was an exciting race, although the whole system feels quite false. Bottom line is that whilst winning a race is mostly skill, winning a championship under any point system is as much about luck as skill, and I’m sure a statistician could explain why.
Being in Bernies target age group I will be watching with my nurse close at hand in case of too much excitement !
I imagine that plenty of other racing fans have started to watch MotoGP in the last few years for their racing fix.
We’ve been through various phases of dominance there but, even when the championship is decided, each individual is still worth watching because a) all sorts of things can still happen and b) the riders are so obviously committed to making THAT pass, forcing THAT mistake, etc.
They are racing for victory and glory (as well as risking life and limb) at any given circuit, not so much thinking longer term about the championship. It would be so nice if more of this attitude were evident in Formula One. Perhaps there’s too much focus on the victor and less on the individual perfomances – depending on your commentator?
It’s easy to be critical from the armchair, but maybe some brains out there have some good ideas about how to make F1 shine again. If you’ve got 20 races on fairly uncharismatic circuits and the ultimate goal being the championship, it’s fairly easy to see why individual events don’t count for very much.
I’m not a Hamilton fanboy but I would like to see him win it this year. I get the feeling Rosberg will be a lot stronger next year now he has a few race wins under his belt.
Hello Joe,
I am sorry, I don’t have much time to read all the comments and avoid being redundant, but I want to state this in case it is missed. I have been reading your blog for years now and I think I only asked you once a question, rest being silent because you are pretty much spot on the subject. I “use you” as the “factual voice” in LinkedIn sometimes and basically you are rock solid and upright in almost everything… BUT this:
I don’t mean the TV numbers. I agree with you on that and it’s an obvious result of the “entertainment” system. You don’t get money out of it, you stop offering entertainment… Nothing is free these days… BUT, I disagree on your belief of wins vs. consistency. Let me explain:
What makes a driver great is not really how fast he is once or twice… Many were fast over a lap and came and perished… From the likes of Ascari to even Hakinnen or Raikonnen or even Montoya all of them were fast. Possibly the fastest at a certain period of time. Where they all multiple World Champions though? Some had 2 and retired, others hold vaguely into 1 title and some left us with just a nostalgic temperament… Let me rephrase: Where they all DESERVING a World Championship? Although this could be an argumentative point, it is not all subjective.
To “race” has many forms and shapes. Is it who is the fastest… in… top speed? 1/4 mile? circles around a speedway? lasting 24 hours? or just in 50 laps? You see speed is relative and it’s easy to quantify over a certain condition but when it’s based throughout a season then you have to set-up rules and rules that make sense. So you… “quantify” it based on performance. If Formula 1 was about, who is the fastest in a lap then we wouldn’t need races… Just Qualifying would make the cut. The fact thought that THERE ARE races means that the definition of “fast” is over a certain lap mileage over a season. Else wise, then what’s the difference of claiming that whoever has >50% of the races wins, clinches the Championship?
You see to me, what makes racing interesting is the longevity and consistency of a win. I was always on the side of people that saw someone doing something stunning and calling it a fluke, until they saw it being repeated over and over and over again. May not have to be always perfect… but at least up there. Always. And the points system does exactly that. Now, I agree that changing the rules of the game itself (by awarding double points on an arbitrary event without changing its conditions per se – like 2x the laps…) is plainly stupid and unfair, but I STILL believe that at the end of the day its v=s/t and if you add the “v”s after each race to the total, Rosberg would be faster than Hamilton. It’s OK to like or dislike someone more than the other (and it doesn’t bother me that you have some liking to Hamilton), but as I see it now, Hamilton usually performs when all the stars and planets are aligned, he’s not feeling cranky and the car is shining. Something of those goes out of order and he crashes on qualifying, etc, etc. Rosberg is more consistent and albeit not insanely fast as Hamilton in a single lap or bunch of those, he is more capable of maintaining a car and keeping it consistent.
Hawthorn and Rosberg (Keke), won the Championship with ONLY 1 win in their tally. In the 2 wheel world Masetti won it with 2 wins in the season and more recently Nicky Hayden with 2 wins and a stunning 10 podiums (!!!). So you saying that these people don’t deserve it because they didn’t win enough? Well, I tell you their competitors didn’t deserve it either because they were flukes… If it’s either win or crash, then you are playing heads or tails and you don’t really know how to maintain or get the best out of your equipment. Not crashing, mechanically failing or jeopardizing your luck is part of racing. Look at the races over the years. GOOD racers know how NOT to crash. Look at Alonso for example: How many times have you seen him crash with other drivers? Eeeer… yes. Not many. So do you want a system where “Championships” are awarded based on the who has the most wins? That… Olympic-ization would be terrible. I raced in the SCCA in the past in America and when we were making bets with friends, rules were crystal clear. It was over a season. It didn’t matter if you won 5 times and the other guy never, but got all seconds. Because, to lose the bet meant you either crashed or you finished SO bad the other 5 that as to you Hamilton is a “winner” because he has 10, he is also a total “loser” to me that with such a car he didn’t put it to at least 2nd position 5 times… As I said before, points is the most objective system possible. The question here is to make a GOOD point system, adamant from commercial factors.
To sum up, I agree that if Rosberg gets the win with Hamilton 3rd or 4th or 5th, I would be shaken since this is an artificial result created by the media. But, if Rosberg gets 1st and Hamilton 6th or lower, I would GLADLY accept it (which would be more probable since usually when Hamilton doesn’t finish 2nd, he retires…) Who knows? Maybe Rosberg has his father’s genes to grabs Championships with less wins??? We will see… From what I know, it will be a thrill of a race…
While I agree in general that consistency over a season is what bags the WDC, I think in this particular case nobody can convincingly argue that Hamilton has been less consistent than Rosberg this year.
He had three retirements, none through error on his part. Other than that, out of eighteen races he has ten victories, three second places and two third places.
How is that less consistent than Rosberg’s?
What’s more, in wheel-to-wheel combat Hamilton has repeatedly beaten Rosberg, whereas Rosberg has not once beaten Hamilton.
Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely impressed by Rosberg this season and think he’d be a worthy champion, but Hamilton has been every bit as consistent and generally has the measure of him on the track.
Because Rosberg had just 1 less retirement but managed to put the car every single time on either 1st or 2nd when he finished. If it wasn’t for that 4th place in Hungary, it would be a direct battle in Abu Dhabi. Whoever would finish higher get the Championship… Now all that Hamilton need to do is just cadle his car and cruise… If he’s smart he doesn’t need to race at all. Just bring the car out of the grid to the finish line… He doesn’t even need to use the high rpms… Protect all your equipment and go for the Championship. Mercedes is just so faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar ahead from competition, that’s all he needs to do.
He really knew that this block in Hungary was vital… hahahha
Absolutely brilliant: Despite the best efforts of Bernie Ecclestone to market the sport to retirees only.
Priceless Joe!
I still think the key reason that fans rallied against is it was extra points for no extra effort, not that it was an attempt at a playoff style finale.
It was also such a large jump from the norm to offer 25 extra points when F1 hasn’t even offered a single bonus point for pole or fastest lap in the past.
I suppose another reason it was a bit of an insult that a bland easy track with no local fan or driver history was worth more than a blue ribbon event ,supreme test of difficulty, and steeped in motorsport fame like Monaco.
The silly thing is – its such an easy thing to fix – they can have double points at Abu Dhabi and still make fans happy.
Just make it a 600km race, or 2 x 300km Sat/Sun double header, or 3 x 200km sprint races.
– Fans get more racing to watch
– F1 is in the news for 1 extra day
– It still comes down to the last weekend
– It cant be manipulated easily – you still need to do well in both races – putting on extra pressure.
– You could even do this for the last 2-3 race weekends so it is a playoff and its not just Abu Dhabi that gets special treatment
Hamilton has already said that if the points system goes against him at the end of the season, then what will be will be. But everyone will know in the back of their minds – even those who refuse to admit it – who the better racer has been all season. To put it into further perspective, apparently Rosberg has not made a single passing manoeuvre on Hamilton stick all season.
But if Rosberg does end up winning the title, I wouldn’t want to be him next year, because he will have an even more determined Lewis Hamilton to deal with.
Simply – double points was introduced to stop Vettel and Red Bull Racing having both championships sewn up with several races to go. The logical progression to this is next years final race should have double points awarded to all non-Mercedes engined cars, just to keep the intrigue and entertainment going.
Everyone knows there’s another F1 “shoot-yourself-in-the-foot” scenario looming this weekend and already trying to cover the tracks, witness Mr E basically claiming it was nothing to do with him guv’nor..
One thing about the “grand final” concept as NASCAR tried was that British Superbike adopted NASCAR’s 2007 Chase system in a halved format (six riders, 3-2-1 podium credits for the Showdown, three weekends).
The NASCAR Chase system in 2014 turned into a “win to advance to the next round, but you can’t blow it” system. Jeff Gordon scored two podium finishes in the third round (Eliminator), had a chance to win the first race in that round, but no team orders, and he had to settle for a podium finish. In the middle race, he was leading, and a final two-lap restart situation resulted with Brad Keselowski cutting Gordon’s tyre and sending him into a spin, resulting in a safety car, resetting the restart rule back to two laps again. Gordon lost a lap while attempting to fix the car, and it resulted both in him losing that one position that would have allowed him to make the final round and losing an engineer for the first four races of 2015 after the Hendrick and Keselowski crews engaged in fisticuffs — the second time in the season the Penske team was involved in a brawl. Kevin Harvick also scored two podium finishes after a terrible first race, but one of his podium finishes was a win, which allowed him to gain the ticket to to final. As only one of the final eight drivers had won in that round, the three points scorers that were highest in points in just that phase advanced to the winner take all final.
Speaking of which, far unnoticed, was Gene Haas naming longtime NASCAR and former CART engineer Matt Borland (who was Mark Blundell’s engineer in CART for PacWest before joining Penske for both CART and later NASCAR) in management for Haas F1. He will simply report next door (the Haas F1 and Stewart-Haas buildings are next door in Kannapolis, about 50km from the Charlotte airport, which will make the August shutdown to be interesting since SHR is open and has a full staff. Might they send the F1 crew to SHR during the shutdown to evade the F1 ban? If Bernie says pit crews can’t even do training at a team shop, then Matt might find ways to evade Bernie’s idea.
Double points are used in INDYCAR for the 500-mile races, and even at the 24 Heures du Mans for the WEC, but those races are longer distance races than the normal distance races for INDYCAR and the WEC. Double points for a final, on the other hand, is a different issue.
It used to be the case a few decades ago that a NASCAR driver could win 42 of the season’s 43 races, finish second in the other and STILL not be champion which, to my untutored European mind, is utterly barking.
I am far from being a Hamilton fan but if he loses the title as a result of Mr Eccle$cake’s fiddling then I should feel inclined to slap the latter repeatedly with a large dead fish.
I still think the double points system is a disaster. I can understand why there was some thought around it to keep things alive until the last race and therefore supposedly keep viewing figures, however this is assuming it will be decided before then, there is no way to know this. The recent years where it hasn’t gone down to the wire have generally been dominated, for example it would have just prolonged our misery in 2013 with Vettel but could have potentially changed the final result with exciting title deciders in Brazil in recent years, (2006 Schumacher Vs Alonso, 2007 Alonso vs Hamilton vs Raikkonen, 2008 Hamilton vs Massa, 2009 Barrichello vs Vettel vs Button, 2012 Alonso vs Vettel) and that would have not appealed to anyone. Having silly rules like this puts people off and lowers viewing figures when it goes the wrong way. Many fans feel disillusioned with rules that seem to be unpopular being put in despite their protests.
I don’t think having Abu Dhabi as the final race is a good idea either, Brazil usually manages to throw up a good race where as Abu Dhabi rarely does. Think about it, Rosberg wins due to double points, or Hamilton wins despite double points, who will remember that fondly like they will 2006/7/8/9/12? This is what interests the fans and will make them come back next year, not some procession with different points to think about.
The best proof that double-points is COMPLETELY unnecessary, is that from 2006 through 2014 (the last 9 seasons) the title has gone to the final race in SIX of those NINE times – without double-points (I include 2014, since it is now clear the title would have gone to the final race even without double-points). That means the current ratio is that 2 out of every 3 seasons will see the title decided at the final race – without need of double-points. The ONLY purpose double-points can serve is to provide a realistic chance that the title will be completely tarnished and we will have a champion, viewed in perpetuity, as illegitimate. The rule should be scrapped with extreme prejudice, and must never return. No race win should be worth any more or less than any other, and if the only logic behind this rule is the desire to prolong the championship, the “six of of the last nine” reality proves this false.