Points

The points system for 2009 has been amended, and the result is a compromise between Bernie Ecclestone’s controversial ‘medals’ proposal and the current points system. Basically, the current 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 system will remain in tact, but the Drivers’ Championship will be awarded to the driver with the most wins.

I have long been in favour of a radical change to the points system, and I am quite receptive to a “medals-style” system. But many other fans were not so keen.

This compromise solution isn’t one that I have seen suggested before. But on the face of it, it seems like a fair enough compromise. I would still prefer a more radical change to the points system, rather than having the championship automatically going to the driver who has had the most wins. But this could have been much, much worse.

Testing

From now on, teams will be allowed three young driver training tests between the end of the championship and the end of the year. I believe that such tests were unlimited before (correct me if I’m wrong). This represents yet another barrier to the young drivers that Max Mosley purports to be helping.

Straight-line testing is also facing further restrictions. Between 1 January 2009 and the end of the championship, teams will be allowed only eight days of straight-line or constant-radius testing. As pointed out by @sidepodcast on Twitter, this could leave McLaren in trouble given the amount of straight-line testing they have already done this year.

I’m not opposed to limits on straight-line testing. It seems fair to limit it just as other testing is restricted. However, applying this retrospectively does seem to be rather underhanded, and is especially unfair on those teams that took advantage of straight line testing a lot over the winter. Is it yet another FIA anti-McLaren conspiracy? Don those tin foil hats! Say what you like about Max and Bernie, but they sure know how to stir up a fuss!

Qualifying fuel loads

The weights of all cars after qualifying will now be published. This will give the geeks (like me) a lot of interesting data to analyse on a Saturday evening. But I’m not sure how this will improve the show. Personally, the suspense surrounding a driver’s fuel load is the only good thing about having race fuel loads during qualifying. I quite like not knowing when the leaders are going to take a pitstop.

People talk about F1′s script writers. Well now we will have a “spoiler” long before the race has even begun. This is a shame.

I assume this is a response to those who lament the fact that qualifying no longer shows who the fastest driver is. But the real solution to this would be to get rid of the ridiculous race fuel load idea altogether. It has never worked, and it adds nothing to the show.

Tyres

Just a small one this. Wets are now officially “intermediates” and extreme wets are “wets”. This seems rather uncontroversial to me, because I normally refer to inters and extreme wets. Since inters became such good all-round wet weather tyres, this problem has existed, and it’s good that the FIA has tried to inject a rare bit of clarity into the regulations.

Media

Drivers will now have to make themselves more available to sign autographs. And there will be no running away in a fug of embarrassment after a poor performances. All drivers must make themselves available to the media for interview after the race or after they have retired.

Senior team personnel will also have to make themselves available to TV crews. Fota had proposed a similar idea anyway, and it’s a good idea to ensure that the fans get more out of the sport.

Changes to the 2009 Technical Regulations

You what? Yes, apparently the FIA have changed the 2009 Technical Regulations, details of which will be published later today. Haven’t they left it a bit late?…

The batshit-crazy zone

Mind your step. This is where we enter the realms of nonsense. It wouldn’t be the FIA without a nice dose of nonsense, and they certainly haven’t disappointed this time round.

From 2010 onwards there will be a budget cap of £30 million per season. But it’s a voluntary budget cap. So to give teams an incentive to stick to the magic limit, the FIA will allow these teams to have more technical freedoms. Essentially, there will be not one but two sets of Technical Regulations. Maybe from 2010 onwards the sport will become known as “Formulae Ones”, “Two Formula Ones”, “Formula One.1 and Formula One.2″.

In all seriousness, I think this is a recipe for disaster. For one thing, the FIA reckons it will be able to work out when “the cost-capped cars have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage when compared to cars running to the existing rules.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I quite like the idea that in F1 some cars are better than others. It’s called competition. It’s what sport is made of. And too often motorsports go down the route of trying to equalise performance between the cars by restricting the best cars. Then that series goes down the pan (hello, BTCC). That’s because people watch motorsport for the competition between teams and drivers. The moment you try to neutralise that, you start to alienate the core audience.

Besides, it’s all very well to do what they do in Touring Cars and add extra ballast to race-winning cars. But it’s a different thing altogether to try and work out how to manipulate cars when they are being run to separate sets of regulations. The FIA can’t even create one decent set of unambiguous technical regulations, never mind two of them, and with the aim of having the two types of cars performing equally!

For me, this just stinks. The FIA would be able to penalise cars for very little good reason, other than something vague about equalising performance. Decisions would probably be made in smoke-filled rooms, obscured from the fans’ view.

Believe it or not, F1 just got even more political.

I suspect a lot of revulsion is surrounding the “medals” metaphor. It is a good metaphor in that it allows for the system to be explained really easily and quickly (rather than using that clunky, ugly word “winningest”). It is a bad metaphor in that it seemingly has some bad connotations, and it has allowed for a few misconceptions about the system to spread like wildfire.

I have grown fed up with the amount of times I have seen it said that the new system would not reward anyone who finished outside the top three. As far as I know, drivers won’t be awarded actual medals. The top three get trophies already. The “medals” will simply be metaphorical ones, existing only on championship table.

In fact, drivers will be rewarded for finishing in any position. If two drivers are tied on wins, then the number of 2nd places decide it. If they’re still tied they look at 3rd places. What happens if they’re still tied? You guessed it, they look at 4th places. And so on all the way down to 19th place. Even if you manage to trundle home in 19th place, it can ultimately contribute to your final championship position.

This shouldn’t need to be explained though. Why? Because this system is already in use in Formula 1 — except most people don’t realise it. Did you notice that Giancarlo Fisichella finished 19th in the championship even though he didn’t score a single point? He got that for finishing in 10th place more often than the other drivers who were on zero points.

Kimi Räikkönen was 3rd even though Robert Kubica in 4th scored the same number of points. The Finn triumphed over the Pole because of his extra win. Indeed, this is the very reason why Hamilton needed to take 5th in Brazil rather than settling for 6th. Being equal on points with Massa was not enough, because the Brazilian had taken more wins.

This is a quandary then. Here we have a system that is currently in use in Formula 1, and has been since the first World Championship in 1950, is being described in some quarters as being antithetical to everything that F1 is about. That is clearly a nonsense.

I think the reaction can at least partly be put down to the fact that some people are simply used to the idea of scoring points. But the advantage of having a points system is not clear to me. If we were to face the opposite situation, and switch from the “medals” system to a points system, what would be the rationale behind it?

One thing that the points system has going for it is that it rewards consistency. It seems fair enough that a driver who regularly finishes in a strong position but never quite manages to win (let us call him “NH”) is rewarded in comparison to the driver who gets one flukey win (“HK”).

But this is also the biggest flaw of the points system. Why risk going for a win rather than 2nd place when it only gains you two points? Why, indeed, go for 2nd rather than 3rd when that only gains you two points? Why plough on for 3rd rather than 4th for the sake of one point?

The medals system would not make a win worth merely two points more than a 2nd place. It would make it infinitely more desirable. No amount of 2nd places can compensate for a win you couldn’t clinch. Indeed, each and every position through the field would be infinitely more desirable than the next one, not worth just one extra point.

The 2006 season is a model example of the flaws of the points system. Fernando Alonso blasted his way through the first half of the season, winning six of the nine races up to Canada and picking up 2nd in the rest. With a hefty lead in the Championship, Alonso could afford to take it easy, so he did. He won just one more race all season.

Michael Schumacher could have hoovered up the wins for the rest of the season — as long as Alonso settled for 2nd, his championship was safe as houses. Not exactly a recipe for spicy racing. If you want to increase the amount of overtaking, introducing a medals system seems like a good way of doing it.

The thing about this debate that confuses me is the fact that most people already generally judge drivers on their ability to win races rather than score points. Take Sebastian Vettel. What will you remember about his 2008 season? It won’t take too long to work it out. It will be his victory in Monza. Impressive though his other results are, they pale into insignificance. Yet they make up almost three quarters of his Championship haul.

How about Alonso’s victory, in Japan (let us use this one since there was a fluke element to the Singapore victory)? Was this not the towering achievement of Alonso’s season? Would you say it was equal to the combined achievements of Australia and Hungary (where he scored five points each)? Maybe you do, but I don’t.

Now let’s take Nick Heidfeld. He has a lot of fans, and I count myself among them. But I think it’s fair to say that the opinion of him among the F1 community at large is that there is nothing particularly special about his talents. And yet, he has sackfuls of points to his name. Despite his success in finishing high up in the Championship standings, it seems that many observers have their lingering doubts.

And where do those doubts stem from? It’s not a huge leap to assume that what he really lacks in the mind of most is a race win. How many 2nd places does Nick Heidfeld need to become as good as he would be if he could win a race? The points system says just 1.25, in which case Heidfeld vaulted it long ago. The fans, though, say otherwise.

I’m not completely won over on the “medals” system yet. But it is clear that the current system simply does not value a win highly enough. Two measly extra points? That is wrong. A system that values a win infinitely more than a second place, as the medals system does, might be a bit overboard. But I’d argue that the difference in value between a win and a 2nd place should be much higher than 2. In that sense, I’d welcome the introduction of the medals system with open arms.