FIA president Jean Todt says Formula 1 double points not big issue

The decision to award double points for the season finale in Abu Dhabi has led to widespread criticism of F1's rulemakers from the media, fans and senior team figures.

And although Todt is not totally in favour of the idea, he thinks it is wrong for the issue to have been made so big when the sport is facing much larger problems - especially on the costs front.

"The double points? It's a little fog in a big picture," said Todt in an exclusive interview with AUTOSPORT.

"If you ask me 'what do you feel?' Honestly, I'm not very excited about it, I'm not really excited. But it's such a little parameter, compared to so many other things."

AUTOSPORT exclusive: Todt's vision for world motorsport

Todt feels that F1 should be putting in much more effort to sort out its cost crisis in particular - with teams continuing to face major financial difficulties.

"My number one item: cost reduction," he said. "And I feel it's kind of insane - we don't need, for 46,000km a year for two cars in F1, to have 800 people.

"I think you can do a proper job with half or one third of this amount of people.

"So on that front we have a responsibility, together with the commercial rights holder. We will be stronger if we work hand in hand."

On the double points matter, Todt thinks it right that the sport experiments with ways to keep up interest throughout the campaign - but says F1 must be open to dropping the rule if it proves to have been an error.

"On one side I must sympathise, to say, 'how can we create more interest to the end of the championship?'" he explained.

"It is true, if the championship is settled, your editors will say: 'there's no point you going, because the championship is over'. So you have less interest, which is natural, it will happen in any kind of sport.

"If it was a bad move, after one year we can say, 'OK, we step back, the idea was not good.' But anyway we are not changing the world of Formula 1 by making double points at the last race."