The new US owners of F1 are at it again, not content with creating new races in Miami and Vietnam, removing grid girls and replacing them with kids, looking to expand the calendar to at least 25 races, and hiring Ross Brawn for a sort of sporting directors role, they now want to have a new F1 Points System.
Most of the ideas coming from the new US F1 owners are good, but having a new F1 points system which effectively gives everyone who finishes a point is purely rewarding mediocrity.
There is way too much of everyone gets a ribbon in life, it has created a trend among people who don’t how to lose.
Fine for little children in their first adventures into sport and life, but as people get older that transfers into adult sized tantrums and / or the inability to accept loss or any negative feedback.
But general observations about life aside, there is no way that any car that finishes should get a point under a New F1 Points System.
A car that is several seconds off the pace, and a lap or so down in 16th and last of the cars tooling around doesn’t deserve an award.
Yes if the same car at the same speed is 8th of eight runners they would get points in today’s version, but having only eight runners is a very rare occurrence in modern F1 and it means there has been conditions or accidents in which the slow but steady driver should be rewarded for good race management.
A prime example is Marcus Ericsson, the Luke Burt of Formula 1, solid F1 pilot but not too many of his drives should be rewarded with points. Solid, reliable driver, but has never delivered anything spectacular. Nor has he really deserved any more points than he currently does.
Should this year’s awful Williams score points for being awful and last? No.
How is awarding points down to 20th going to improve the racing. Racing drivers are pretty compeditive as it is, and if a car is a few seconds down the road they will try and overtake it regardless of points on offer, usually.
If anything it could lead to less overtaking as a driver might be happy in the knowledge that 12th place scores X amount of points, rather than pushing for 10th place and 1 point under the current system.
Despite being against the idea, there are two reasons a new F1 points system could work.
One – if the teams prize money was handed out based purely on points then you could make the argument that the new F1 points system could make that side fairer, but with certain teams getting extra payments thanks to various historical reasons. And make sure it is handed out on a sliding scale of points scored.
Secondly, it would make it interesting if the new F1 points system did hand out points down to 20th, but that offer stops as soon as you go two laps down. Imagine the late race chaos as backmarkers try desperately to stay just the one lap down. They could get in the way of leaders and create havoc at the front, which would make for interesting racing t the end.
So a new F1 Points system shouldn’t be a high priority, perhaps fix the cars aerodynamics, and lop sided-Mercedes and Ferrari favoured engine regulations first if you want to improve the racing and the show.
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