Fans support new points system

Formula 1 fans have given the sport's new points system introduced for 2010 a big thumbs up, voted Ferrari the most popular team and say Michael Schumacher is the most supported driver, as the first results from grand prix racing's biggest ever survey are revealed

The 2010 LG Global Fan Survey, conducted by F1 Racing and the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) in conjunction with LG Electronics, compiled the views of more than 90,000 fans from 180 different countries when it was conducted in February.

A selection of the results are published for the first time in this month's edition of F1 Racing, with a more detailed review coming on AUTOSPORT.com next week.

One of the most popular outcomes was the new points system introduced this year - with 44.9 per cent saying they think the 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1 system is good. This is slightly less than the 61.9 per cent who believe there should be a bigger points gap between first and second place.

F1 fans have also put a move to high definition (HD) coverage of the sport at the top of their wish list (65.7 per cent want it), followed by interactivity to follow a specific car (53.7 per cent) and watching F1 on the internet (52.4 per cent).

In terms of favourite venues for F1 races, Monaco (52.0 per cent) topped the list ahead of Italy (50.6 per cent), Britain (42.9 per cent) and Germany (28.8 per cent).

Ferrari returned to the top of the polls in terms of most popular team, with 30.1 per cent of the votes, ahead of McLaren (19.1 per cent) and Brawn/Mercedes (10.01 per cent).

In the drivers' stakes, Schumacher came out on top (19.5 per cent), ahead of Fernando Alonso (9.7 per cent), Kimi Raikkonen (7.2 per cent), Felipe Massa (6.1 per cent), Lewis Hamilton (6.0 per cent) and Robert Kubica (4.3 per cent).