Points system to be scrapped for 2009

[dumbdave]

Sounds like a terrible idea, i really hope he fails pushing this one through - though somehow i doubt it.
Revert to proper F1 circa Damon Hill/Mika Hakkinen era - 10-6-4-3-2-1 points, 1 hour open qualifying - it used to be sooooo much more fun to watch qualifying, now i dont even bother

[wesley123]

This idea is terrible, with the medals the teams at the back race for nothing while now they race for 1 point, it will be totaly useless for teams like FI to enter as they have 0 chance of something. If they will count like this this year there will be a big 0 on 12 of the drivers as most of them cant go for the podium

[Conceptual]

Keep the points the same, and have a low fuel Q3.

If you want more overtaking, let the race fuel strategy be figured AFTER a low fuel quali, then the weight of the fuel will differentiate the cars enough for more overtaking.

But if you line up fastest to slowest, without any changes between quali and race, you are going to have a procession almost by default. I just don't get the need for such things as changing to a medal system when 2007/8 were by far the most exciting finishes to the season that I have seen.

[Metar]

The medals system is just plain bonkers. Imagine this: A whole season of average results, everyone finishes where they should, and then rain strikes on the last GP, and Adrian Sutil's FIF1 wins the race. Suddenly, he's second in the championship?! Completely biased towards one-off results (especially as far as lower teams are concerned), and really, very unfair and a matter of luck.

Lets look at this year's championship (using stuff I remember - I can't double-check at the moment)? Ferrari and McLaren are obvious, but Alonso would be ahead of Kovalainen and Kubica, Vettel just behind those two, Rosberg would be at the top on the merit of his two podiums, and Sutil's almost-4th at Monaco could've set him up with a cozy 8th-9th in the championship.

Suppose a guy finished every race in 4th spot - and now a one-off podium visit by another driver sees him get a better position? A midfield team could put all their efforts towards one single race, get a podium, and beat every driver that didn't get one. Likewise, a team could be stronger than another throughout the season, but never quite lucky enough to podium while the other lucked out, and thus get beaten in the driver's standings.

Why?

[jon-mullen]

Seemed to be a pretty good championship this year.. no?

I'd say so. Hamilton was an obvious favorite going in, but who knew it would come down to the last corner? I nearly s*at a brick when Varsha starting yelling "That's Timo Glock! That's Timo Glock!"

[AeroGT3]

Horrible idea. The current points are one extreme (no emphasis on wins) while that would be the other extreme. Why not just take the current system and spread the point further out? Exponential decay or something. Someone needs to kick these senile --- out of the sport.

[vasia]

I really hope this does not become final.

[andartop]

The funniest bit is that he (Bernie) justified the medal system because that's what happens in every other sport!!! My thoughts on this are:
-Did he suddenly discover all the other sports just now?
-Is there any other sport where the organizer keeps changing so many regulations every single year? (well, yes, there is. that would be the WRC, which FIA have been trying to kill for years...)
-Should anyone be comparing apples and oranges? Or would it be wiser to compare F1 with other MOTORsports?
-If that's valid for the WDC, then why not for the WCC as well?
The second funniest bit is that he (yes, Him again)justified it as well to make things simpler!!!
-So, after the 14th race we might have 4 drivers with 3 Golds each, 2 of which have 2 Silvers and 1 Bronze, the other one has 1 Silver and 3 Bronze and the 4th has no Silver and 2 Bronze, and their Teams have 98 points, 97 points and 46 points for the other 2, but the last team is ahead of the third because its second driver has one Silver as well whereas the other one's second driver only has one Bronze, or is it? Does it matter how many medals their drivers have if the Teams have equal points or not? Daddy! I'm confused! And how about the other 2 Drivers who only have one Gold each?!!!

[WhiteBlue]

good point. just imagine the cost of the lawyers that have to sort the driver contracts out with this new system.

[myurr]

Should someone who lucks into a single win through rain, a crash or some such finish the world championship ahead of a driver who finishes second 5 or 6 times but never quite has the car under them, or the luck, to finish first?

For me the answer would be a definite no.

And Bernie is just plain wrong about all other sports doing this. I can't think of any that look at the number of medals won over the course of a season to see who is champion. All the sports I can think of right now that are played over a season, such as tennis, have the same setup as F1. Trophies and such like for individual races, but positions over the season are determined by a points system.

[Conceptual]

So much for the term "Mathematically eliminated..."

Maybe that is what Bernie is after? Or is it simply lip service to shut up diMontezelmo?

[woohoo]

no, he is simply getting senile.

Pretty soon he will tell the marshals to get off his lawn.
(stupid kids...)

[Ian P.]

If Bernie truly believes that "most other sports" follow the Medal System then maybe, just maybe, he needs to get out a bit more.
We can only assume he doesn't count Nascar, NBA, Baseball, NHL or even Premier League Football as sports since they all follow some kind of a points system.
If he wants competition all through the ranks then spread the points out further down the field. The opposite of where he is going.
One only needs to look to the Olympics (I can only guess that Bernie has been watching too much of this) and check out the cycling. In the Road Races or the Mountain Bike races, competitors that were out of the top three in the closing stages had no incentive to push to try to finish higher for any other reason than National and personal pride.
In F1, if it is only the podium finishers that get "points" then why risk a three race engine to finish 8th instead of 9th. This means less competition, not more.
We can only hope that the strange afliction that has plagued Mad-Max has not jumped over to Bernie. I fear it may be too late though. Either he is completely off his nut or there is more to the overall scheme than we have been informed of. I doubt it though.

[ISLAMATRON]

you forget they would still be racing for WCC points...8th pays 1 while 9th doesnt.

If Bernie's system only alocates "medals" for the top 3 positions it is flawed, especially in light of the 3 race engine life rule. IMO There should be points for all positions to better guage the quality of drivers(coulthard had more poins than webber in 2007, absurd).

I'm all for a system that garuntees the driver with the most wins is WDC. AN I also hated to se a title contender cruising around looking for 5th rather than attacking for wins. But as proposed the system put forward by bernie is inherently flawed.

[Rob W]

In the end they need to decide - do they want the F1 championship to be more down the season-long-championship end of the spectrum or the single-race end.

I shudder to think of a scenario when a driver who's won three races but otherwise has only two 3rd places is considered a more worth champion than a driver who comes 2nd in all 17 races of the season... who rightly so is the most consistent driver of the 'season'.

Under a theoretical 12-8-6 points system it would show the first driver on to be on 50-odd points and winning the WDC, but the other driver on over 100 points and missing out.