The F1 Medal Proposal

November 27, 2008 · Posted in Sports

Bernie Ecclestone - he has some ideas!

What is Bernie Ecclestone thinking?

He has come up with another madcap scheme that will see a very radical change to the way that the F1 World Championship is won. Bernie’s proposal was announced yesterday and it is one of his “best” yet!

The idea that he has come up with is to replace the current points system with a system of medals, where the top three drivers would get gold silver or bronze medals, as athletes would at the Olympics. The thinking behind this is that the driver who won the most races would be the World Champion.

Under this scheme, it would have been Felipe Massa, not Lewis Hamilton, who would have won the title in 2008. Massa having 6 wins to Hamilton’s five. Although if it had not been for that controversial penalty at Spa, it would still be Hamilton’s title.

The rationale that Bernie has used to try to convince us that this is a good idea is that it would encourage overtaking, because the drivers know that 2nd place would count for nothing.

If this proposal comes to fruition, and Bernie wants it in place for the 2009 season, we could have the situation where one driver wins 5 races, and then doesn’t finish in any other race, would beat the driver who had finished 1st in 4 races but then finished second in the remaining races.

I can see that his reasoning has some merit, it may well encourage the drivers to be a little less conservative and be a little more aggressive. But the same idea could also be acheived within the points system. Up until 2003 there was a bias towards winning races with the winner receiving 10 points, while the second place driver received just 6, and so on to 1 point for 6th place (10-6-4-3-2-1).

This was then all changed because of Michael Schumacher’s dominance of the 2002 season where he won with plenty of races to spare, the points system was overhauled and the points gap between 1st and 2nd was reduced to just 2 points, but the points going down to 8th place (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1).

I believe reinstating the points difference would bring about the same result. Increase the number of points for first place and that will give more of an incentive to win races.

Bernie Ecclestone has said:

It’s going to happen, all the teams are happy. The whole reason for this was that I was fed up with people talking about no overtaking. The reason there’s no overtaking is nothing to do with the circuit or the people involved, it’s to do with the drivers not needing to overtake.

Firstly, I cannot believe that ALL the teams are happy with this proposal. I don’t think that the likes of Force India, who drive around at the back of the grid and hope to pick up the odd solitary point during the season, would agree to this. It would give them nothing to show for their efforts during the season.

Secondly, the real reason that there is no overtaking is because the way that the cars have been designed. For years, there has been an increasing reliance on aerodynamics, which has led to the cars not being able to follow each other through corners, and hence get close enough to overtake.

Now, hopefully with the new 2009 regulations this will make it easier for the drivers to get into positions to overtake. They are not the prettiest cars, but if anything improves the overtaking then I’m all for it. The new cars will have larger front wings, smaller rear wings, and there is also the return of slick tyres.

I can’t see the plan being implemented, and there are reports that the FIA will not approve the proposal, at least not for 2009. The proposal has got it opponents, including former JordanF1 owner, Eddie Jordan, who think the whole idea is “nonsense”. I do tend to agree with him.

It will be interesting to see if this does come into effect, but I am waiting to see how much of an influence the new 2009 regulations have on the racing. Perhaps next season there will be a shake up as everyone is starting from a clean piece of paper.

Until next time... Signed by Gareth
© http://garethsblog.com - Visit the site for more about what's going on in my life.
Tags: <Bernie Ecclestone, F1, Formula 1>