What's even funnier is the moment before this photo when Massa has half his car in the grass cutting the corner!
Agree, they should just go back to 10 for a win and 6 for second ... makes winning worth while. The current 2 point difference is what stops passing attempts. Pete
Sadly that is not a good example of "taking out." IIRC Hamilton escaped unscathed and finished the race. We are talking about Speed Racer style take outs.
Ferrari was ready to pull the plug on F1 if they couldn't have "their" car. F1 was a battle between two teams so how could the rest of the teams be financially accountable to shareholders. Back-mark teams didnt stand a chance against factory teams. This ruling along with the real innovation of KERS and further cost constraints has brought life back to the sport. That is until Bernie wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with his next revelation.
No reason why factory teams couldn't straddle the fence and have one of each, a mega-budget fixed wing and a back alley Old Yeller for the Jim Clark Trophy class ( in case steerage happens to be the quick ticket).
Go back to 10-6 is a no brainer. The FIA wanted to award points to lower scoring teams, hence till 8th place. I think it's actually a good idea, but then, in the same process, they made winning not important. They can award the points till 8th place, but, IMO, they should go for 12-8-, etc points scoring format. This consistency thing isn't right for F1 at all.
It is an example of high efficiency: Massa's move destroyed Hamilton's race and robbed him of any chance for victory and Massa got away with a slap on the wrist. The mark of true evil genius or some friends at the Ferrari International Assistance.
+1 and the ironic thing is that when Hamilton cut's the corner without touching anybody he has the win taken off him!! now under the new rules if this happens, I will switch off for good!!.
After giving back the position AND asking the stewards TWICE whether that was a good enough distance and being confirmed TWICE all was ok.
I do hope that the FIA made an effort in cleaning up/training its stewards as they said they would. I don't care who wins the title this season, as long as it is not a tainted title based on results changes after the flag drops. Unfortunately deciding the WDC solely based on number of victories gives the FIA a much bigger hand at picking a champion: All they need to do is one lousy after the fact adjustment and the WDC winner becomes runner up. Even if he had more points overall than the newly picked WDC. Hence my concerns. As you say: We shall see.
Totally agreed.. And I have a keen interest to see if the FIA will stand by there word ,as stated they will declare how they arrived at there decision's, and these are to made public!!.
And maybe there is a sort of potential backlash to all this - what if a pretty obvious violation of the rules takes place - the perp going on to WIN, and the stewards are just plain too afraid to act because of all the implications? We have unfortunately seen this happen a few seasons back in NFL football. It would seem to me that they are not giving all the parties involved nearly enough time to really think through all the effects of these actions.
FOTA have now issued a statement challenging the legality of this move as essentially its too late for 2009 and they did not agree it
And rightly so, the FIA have less sense of direction that F1 should be ,than a box of fire crackers would have.
That could happen and it would be perfectly fine by me: The less ruling and regulating the action on the track, the happier I am. Many years ago we had a series of start accidents (IIRC Ralf flying over Rubens in Melbourne) and the FIA put the hammer down: Anybody else causing an accident at the start will be punished severly. IMHO total nonsense. Yes, they drove like lemmings in the following races, but what fun is that? Not that I'm hoping for a crash derby, but if it happens, it happens. I don't want a parade of intimidated F1 drivers taking no risks because they could loose their license.
New points system is canceled. http://fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/pressreleases/f1releases/2009/Pages/f1_points.aspx
Not quite dead yet but I doubt that the teams will give the needed approval. Didn't someone suggest this would happen?
This is so typical of Bernie and Max to pull some crazy stunt like this and get the teams' and drivers' attention diverted from something else that they are trying to sneak in, or use it as a made up matter which they can horse-trade away in favour of something else.
