Wednesday, March 18th, 2009...2:28 pm
FIA rejects FOTAs new points for Bernie’s Medal system
The new rule for this season and new seasons going forward is that the driver with the most wins becomes the FIA Formula 1 World Champion. If in any season more than one driver has equal the number of wins then the champion will be the one with the most points. So this is basically Bernie’s system minus the medals which I think makes sense as the system is a ‘hybrid’ a dear colleague put it - rewarding risk taking for victory whilst rewarding consistency BUT not rewarding non risk takers happy to stay in 2nd all season.
This comes to a blow to FOTA’s proposed system of 12 - 9 - 7 - 5 - 4- 3 - 2 - 1.
I believe the FIA would have done studies to see what the outcome of previous world championships would have been using the proposed system and the outcomes probably didnt look that good.
Bernie Ecclestone reckons we’ll see real racing and I think he’s right as it will certainly reward more guile, clever racing and more risk taking manoeuvres which is what fans want to see. We only hope that we don’t see it come to a point where the leaving driver has 10 wins whilst the nearest championship contender only has 5 wins with only 3 races to go - wouldn’t be much of a climax like the 2008 Interlagos showdown would it?
3 Comments
March 19th, 2009 at 8:54 am
The old system gave 10 points for a win and 6 points for second place, which effectively gave more incentive to win the race. I thought it was stupid that they changed that. Now they want to give more incentive to the win again, but don’t like the idea of criticism by changing back to a system they should have left alone in the first place.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:10 am
Hi Jon - Many thanks for the comment - how are you?
Well, we all know the system changed to make the competition closer. I understand why they’ve reverted back to winner takes all - trouble is how do we reward consistency yet make drivers take more chances?
I think the new FOTA system of making the gap in points between 1st and 2nd 3 points instead of 2 strikes that balance.
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Or why not just have 10 for first and 6 for second place, like it always used to be.
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