Bernie has come up with a medal system , gold,silver,bronze. No points.If you don't medal, your finish position over the season determine your championship place. The constructors remains the same. You can check it out at www.f1live.com I think it's good to encourage winning instead of building up points.
And they'll scrap that after three races ... With slicks, what about the option tire "stripes"? And isn't it time to revamp qualifying again? Formula Micro-Management.
Bernie's an idiot. What he's basically endorsing is a format that punishes consistency over wins. It looks brilliant in the wake of a season where there were several victors and the duel came down to the final race. But there's more to a season than just winning races. And how do Silver & Bronze stack up against Gold? If they just restructured the points system they'd accomplish the same thing. Otherwise, I hope next season comes down to this: 3 drivers each have 5 wins (I mean Golds--sorry!), but no other podiums. Driver 4 has 2 Golds but several podiums. Darn, if only there were some sort of way to sort out who should be in first place...hmmm...like a system of points...
Bernie was talking about something similar at the start of the year. No points system and the WDC is determined by the number of races you win, with a countback for ties. Basically, its a half baked idea and I hate it.
What next coming from the narcotic clouded mind of Bernie and Max?? Make the cars run down the track with 6 reverse speeds while the drivers cannot use rear view mirrors? The past 2 seasons have had quite tight points races why screw with it.. Just take a look at what NECKCAR did with there revamp of the points.. Hey Max and Bernie it is not broke so dont F@%& with it..
Wow, didn't think that they'd swing the balance so far back to wins over consistency. Bernie better hope that someone doesn't get a bunch of wins early so the last 3~4 races become meaningless. Just going back to the 10-6-4-3-2-1 would've been much better.
Can't get any worse I guess, from the Ugly F1 COT to the stupid points system. They want to save money, yet come up with KERS which costs an additional $50 Million to develop. I think Bernie has gone senile, and Max is just a big ******.
Not to mention that next season can potentially create more disparity between teams. This is the usual cycle when technical rules are changed--the second-tier teams have closed the gap and begin to appear more competitive and then new regs reset the table. So it will be Ferrari and McLaren fightin' for the gold all season.
Nice to see that there is some general agreement on this. This is knee jerk decision making at its best. It appears (and I emphasize appears) to be a problem, so a hasty decision is made to 'fix' it. The supposed problem is that McLaren played for fifth to win the championship and that took the excitement away. The fact is that it created a situation that was one of the most exciting race and championship finishes ever. McLaren really played it stupid (I saw this coming before the race) by playing for 4th or 5th and leaving themselves with no margin for error. When Vettel passed Hamilton the error happened. Unfortunately they didn't reap the rewards of their error because Toyota messed up when they didn't bring their drivers in for wet tires, and handed the championship to Hamilton. The other really funny thing about this is that the Olympics uses the medals system to recognize single event winners and then carry it into national rankings, whereas Bernie wants to use the system to crown the drivers champion, which has no parallel in the Olympics, and then keep the points sytem for the WMC, which is equivalent to the national standings in the Olympics. It is entirely possible that as many as seven drivers will be competitive for the WDC next year and this new system could make a farce of the whole thing. The way to make a change like this is to run it as an unofficial parallel system for two seasons to see how it works, and then make a change if it looks to have significant advantages. Bernie and Max both seem to think they aren't doing their jobs if they aren't constantly changing something, whereas it would work better if we rarely saw their faces or heard from them.
Jerry, You brought up a good point about running parallel. I'd be interested to know if they re-ran this season and others under the proposed change to see how they would have actually turned out, or if BernieCo is just assuming he has a brilliant idea.
Excellent Post Jerry. In addition, all the statistics from prior years with points will now be null. F1 sometimes doesn't look at its own heritage. What is wrong with the following: Finishing Results: 1) 12 Points 2) 8 Points 3) 6 Points 4) 4 Points 5) 3 Points 6) 2 Points 7) 1 Point Fastest Lap: 1 Point Pole Position: 2 Points
Bernie along with the FIA are famous for "fixing" things that aren't broke. 2009 is going to be Epic....an epic turd The only real change that needs to be made is Permanent Stewards
I completely agree with awarding points for pole position and fastest race lap. I think it keeps drivers and teams pushing all the time and somewhat honest, and its an opportunity to recuperate precious points lost due to team/driver errors during the course of the season.
Yes, as well as races!! Correction, The only real change is to rid the sport of vermin like Max, and Bernies greed, here's hoping Bernies missus empty's his elephant's rectum sized wallet, and Max's missus follow's suit.
I personally agree with others on this forum that there should be additional pts given to first (Senna1994 beat me to the punch with the 12-8-6-4-3-2-1 format that I personally endorse). Except for the first few seasons of F1 with only 2 pts difference between 1st and 2nd, most of the history of F1 has seen a 3 or 4 pt advantage to 1st over 2nd. I do believe that F1 was correct in extending the pts down to 8th place since with only 6 positions giving pts for most of F1's history if you weren't on one of the top 3 (or maybe 4) teams, then it took freak circumstances such as rain during qualifying or the race for any of the lower positioned teams to have any chance whatsoever to get pts. Of course when Schumi dominated with winning over half of the races for several seasons and clinching the championshiop early, the gap between 1st and 2nd was narrowed to a 2 pt difference to keep the championship open for longer. Unfortunately this had the effect of subconsciously promoting a consolidation policy as opposed to a go-for-broke mentality that the historical system offered. For many years, with a 33% or more difference for first place, drivers gained considerably by being aggressive and going for the win. Under the current system it is viewed as foolish to forego a sure 8pts for a risky 10pts... Frank
I'm old fashion. Give me the 10 - 6 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 point system without any bonus points, it's not an arcade game after all.
I am for a system that much more heavily weights winning. It would lead to a lot more aggressive driving and a lot less hanging back just to finish with some points (e.g. Kimi for most of the last two years). Just like he does for teams in the manufacturers championship, perhaps Bernie should kick in a big independent purse according to driver finishing order in order to further incentivize drivers.
How can you expect anyone but Ferrari, McLaren, and possibly BMW to 'seriously' win ? (Toro Rosso was a fluke, let's be honest about that) How on earth can you 'encourage' a second or third tier team to win ? Do you think they are just cruising around in 20th place, sandbagging for no good reason ? Another stupid idea. I just wish everyone would realize there are OTHER drivers, OTHER cars and OTHER teams outside of the 'Big 3'...
Do we really have to reinvent F1 every year or two?? would it just be too boring if we didn't change the rules one year?
Newest plan: No points. No winners. The winners are announced by Bernie at the end of the year. Look at it this way: In ye olde days, with a 9-6-4-3-2-1 points system, and six races a year, the difference between first and second was about 5.6% of the maximum possible points you could accumulate in a year. With 10 points for a win and 18 races a year, your maximum possible is 180 points. So a 5.6% difference between first and second would compute to ... 10 points. (Winner take all?) If they're going to have that many races per year, the points system is going to have to inflate. Perhaps not quite to the NASCAR level, but well above 10 points for a win. Keeping the traditional separation, the difference between 6 races and 18 would convert a 9-6-4-3-2-1 level to 27-18-12-9-6-3. So there'd be room in there for points down to 8th or even 10th place.
I'm going against the grain here but I actually think this is a great idea. The original points system is still intact for the manufacturers to fight it out even if they are not one of the top teams. But for the drivers, it's now more important to WIN or at least get a podium finish to become champion. In past seasons, at the end of a race, drivers in fourth through sixth would not take any risks just for the chance to gain one single point. They'd save the cars and any risk of an accident. If there are no driver points for anything but third and above, they have to fight for a podium right down to the last corner. It should really make last minute passing happen more often. If Lewis was forced to compete in the last race, it would have been much more exciting than watch him play rope a dope and try to eek out one single point while Massa ran his heart out to win. With each driver with 5 wins going into the race, winning would have been everything. So, I think this is a good idea with the hope that more races have more passing and last minute excitement. The one bad thing... the risk of a tie at the end of a season is greater. If there is a tie, then they have to go back to points or some other tie breaker. It's too bad it's happening at a time when the rule changes that have made the world's ugliest F-1 machines.
What is needed is MORE points. All the way down to the last car crossing the finish line. Everyone that shows up to the circus should at least get a peanut.
But this puts the teams and the drivers on different programs. If you're sitting in fourth, you're getting team points for the WCC, but the driver gets nothing. If the driver goes for third and spins out, the team loses, while the driver has nothing to lose ..... except his ride, if the team gets ticked off. Methinks Bernie is trying to justify his "no team orders" rule. 2008 was remarkable for a reason nobody's mentioned: Every team finished with the same drivers they started with. How long has it been since we've seen that? If the entire grid was just musical chairs with a bunch of hired guns, where would car development come from? The drivers need to be working with the team, not off on their own. Consider: driver 'A' drives for the team, driver 'B' runs for his own points. Suddenly, driver 'B' starts having mechanical issues. Isn't F1 more than political enough already?
