The World Motor Sport Council met in Paris on 17 March 2009. The following decisions were taken: FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP A number of measures were agreed to help reduce costs and increase interest in the FIA Formula One World Championship. 2009 Formula One Regulations Points The WMSC accepted the proposal from Formula One Management to award the drivers' championship to the driver who has won the most races during the season. If two or more drivers finish the season with the same number of wins, the title will be awarded to the driver with the most points, the allocation of points being based on the current 10, 8, 6 etc. system. The rest of the standings, from second to last place, will be decided by the current points system. There is no provision to award medals for first, second or third place. The Constructors Championship is unaffected. The WMSC rejected the alternative proposal from the Formula One Teams Association to change the points awarded to drivers finishing in first, second and third place to 12, 9 and 7 points respectively. Testing Teams will be allowed to carry out three one day young driver training tests between the end of the last event of the Championship and 31 December of the same year. Drivers are eligible only if they have not competed in more than two F1 World Championship Events in the preceding 24 months or tested a Formula One car on more than four days in the same 24 month period. Teams can also conduct eight one day aerodynamic tests carried out on FIA approved straight line or constant radius sites between 1 January 2009 and the end of the last Event of the 2009 Championship. Media The FIA will publish the weights of all cars after qualifying at each Event. For greater clarity for spectators and media, wet tyres have been renamed "intermediate" and extreme-weather tyres renamed wet. On the first day of practice all drivers must be available for autograph signing in their designated team space in the pit lane. All drivers eliminated in qualifying must make themselves available for media interviews immediately after the end of each session. Any driver retiring before the end of the race must make himself available for media interviews after his return to the paddock. All drivers who finish the race outside the top three must make themselves available immediately after the end of the race for media interviews. During the race every team must make at least one senior spokesperson available for interviews by officially accredited TV crews. A number of further amendments were adopted for the 2009 Technical Regulations. Full details will be available shortly on www.fia.com. 2010 Formula One Regulations Budgets As an alternative to running under the existing rules, which are to remain stable until 2012, all teams will have the option to compete with cars built and operated within a stringent cost cap. The cost cap is £30m (currently approximately 33 or $42m). This figure will cover all expenditure of any kind. Anything subsidised or supplied free will be deemed to have cost its full commercial value and rigorous auditing procedures will apply. To enable these cars to compete with those from teams which are not subject to cost constraints, the cost-capped cars will be allowed greater technical freedom. The principal technical freedoms allowed are as follows: 1. A more aerodynamically efficient (but standard) under body. 2. Movable wings. 3. An engine which is not subject to a rev limit or a development freeze. The FIA has the right to adjust elements of these freedoms to ensure that the cost-capped cars have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage when compared to cars running to the existing rules. The Honda Racing F1 Team requested to change its name to the Brawn GP Formula One Team. The WMSC accepted this request on the basis that the team is, in effect, a new entry in the FIA Formula One World Championship. The contract the team had with the FIA was to run as 'Honda, which they are no longer in a position to do. However, the standard fee required for a new entry has been waived.
FIA/WMSC states: "On the first day of practice all drivers must be available for autograph signing in their designated team space in the pit lane" So how many regular fans have access to the pit lane???? The FIA/WMSC did this: "The WMSC rejected the alternative proposal from the Formula One Teams Association to change the points awarded to drivers finishing in first, second and third place to 12, 9 and 7 points respectively" FOTA's idea was much much better.
Finally WINS matter. Points are politics and money. This is a good decision. Wins make champions not finishing consistently second with an occasional win if any! From PlanetF1.com- "Had this medals system been used in 2008 then Felipe Massa, and not Lewis Hamilton, would have been crowned Champion as the Ferrari driver clinched six victories to Hamilton's five." Lucky for Mclaren!!!
In my view this isn't a good decision, being consistently quick should be rewarded. With this system a driver who wins five times and is on the podium in every other race would lose out to a guy who has six wins and who crashes out in every other race. It's not likely to happen, but a system that makes it possible can't be right.
Bogus. This isn't a series of sprint races, it's a season. Consistent performance over a complete season should be rewarded.
+1, this is a ridiculous and unneeded change. If something did need to be done then revert back to the 10-6-4 days or the FOTA's proposal, this is not helping anything.
What if some team started out stronger than dirt, won a few for their lead driver, and then just fell apart? Now the other teams kind of split the points, but nobody wins quite as many races as hero number one. Yet more than one driver beats our hero by a point or more - now what do we do? Such a thing would make the last races of the season pretty boring in principle... BTW - did I read this right - the stupid point for fastest pit stop is now near-totally meaningless and will be dropped?
WTF? The new points system would have worked perfectly well. It would have rewarded the driver who wins and scores consistently (with the system that stays now only rewarding the latter when it comes to the WDC). Although our guy would have won that way last year, I think it's ridiculous!
Interesting news. It will make handing out penalties much more political. It will certainly make this year more entertaining to watch.
"If you aint first your last" Ricky Bobby had it right all along. I dont agree with this at all. There is something to be said about consistency through out the season and this just blew it out of the water. Yes I agree that wins should be a HUGE factor but not the whole thing. Essentially a driver could have the possibility to lock up a championship with 3 4 or maybe even 5 races left in the season. So where is the fun in that when the top driver is out taking it easy because he locked up the drivers championship with 3 or 4 races to go. Granted a contructors title is still up for grabs but still.
Meh..I dont like it but i dont like the current point system either. Too many points awarded for the 2nd best.
Let me get this straight. Say suppose Massa finishes the season with 99 pts, with 5 wins, but Hammi finishes the season with 4 wins, but 100 pts, Massa is WDC?
Thanks for reconfirming this. Well, at least we can see top drivers going for wins, rather than 'settling' for 2nd or 3rd places.
You can be quick in practice and qualy, should he be rewarded? What happend before points? WINS! As far as someone running away with the season ala MS, the FIA took care of that with the tire rule. Too bad as Mark Webber said it best - "dont like MS winning? Drive faster" Its not anyones fault if a team gets it right and continues to do so. So we should penalize until parity I guess. Wins matter and points dont. This makes sense.
It might make sense to you but it's clearly not an opinion that's shared by everyone here. Perhaps we should have a poll.
A poll? For wins or points more important? See my response above to Remy Zero and the point of racing. Its been about winning for a long time. Its just sport and victory is usually the goal. Consistently winning should be rewarded with a title. No system is perfect and Im sure this one wont be, but for me its just not hard to understand. Im glad they recognize winning again. Refreshing and overdue.
+1 +1 I think they went from one extreme to the other. The previous system encouraged overly conservative driving. The new system makes the 2nd place almost useless if you're going for the title. IMHO a 10-6-4-3-2-1 point system would have been a much more balance approach. I wonder if the engines will last 3 races with this new system... We'll see.
Formula 1's world champion in 2009 will be the driver with the most wins during the season, the FIA said on Tuesday. The governing body also announced that it had rejected a proposal by the Formula One Teams' Association to change the current system. The proposal had been sent by FOTA to the FIA earlier this year. The FIA announced the current 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 system will stay in place, but confirmed the world champion will be the driver who wins the most races in a season. The points system will be used for the remaining championship positions and in case two or more drivers win the same amount of races during a year. The Constructors' Championship remains unaffected by the changes. "The WMSC accepted the proposal from Formula One Management to award the drivers' championship to the driver who has won the most races during the season," said the FIA in a statement. "If two or more drivers finish the season with the same number of wins, the title will be awarded to the driver with the most points, the allocation of points being based on the current 10, 8, 6 etc. system. "The rest of the standings, from second to last place, will be decided by the current points system. There is no provision to award medals for first, second or third place. The Constructors' Championship is unaffected. "The WMSC rejected the alternative proposal from the Formula One Teams' Association to change the points awarded to drivers finishing in first, second and third place to 12, 9 and 7 points respectively. " FOTA had called for a points system overhaul after it conducted a survey in which fans asked for a greater gap between the points for first and second places to encourage drivers to go for victory. "FOTA set out and conducted what has been a unique survey," said McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh earlier this month. "That audience survey told us that they wanted greater differentiation for winning and FOTA then considered a broad range of alternatives. "Inevitably there is a balance to be struck on everything that you do. If you have a very large differentiation between first, second and third it is easy to envisage and to model that seasons may end sooner because championships will be determined sooner. "And if we reflect on the last two championships they have been quite exciting climaxes and one would say on the face of it why would we want to change? What we felt within FOTA was having conducted a very thorough survey of audience views and advice we shouldn't ignore it. "There were people who felt status quo was the best thing but I think what swung it was the opinion of the audience. We, as FOTA, have unanimously agreed that is what we want to see introduced this year. We now have to work with the commercial rights holder and with the FIA and seek their endorsement of that proposal." When the idea for Ecclestone's medals system was aired earlier this year, the FIA produced a document detailing research it had conducted about the impact the concept would have on F1. It suggested that there would have been 13 occasions when the world title would have been won by a different driver - although the most recent two occasions would have been last year, when Felipe Massa would have won, and in 1989 when Ayrton Senna, not Alain Prost would have been champion.
+1 correct, Mosley and Bernie are absolute utter cretin's. Last year dispite the absurd penalties, it was a brillant season decided on the last race last corner, If it ain't broke why fix it!! Muppets
That basically tells me that Hambone should not have won the championship and the FIA now admits their system was incorrect.
