The revamp that would transform F1’s history

With so much attention on Fernando Alonso turning his back on Europe's most illustrious grand prix to race in the Indianapolis 500 later this month, it's ironic that his Formula 1 honours list would be more impressive had he never had to race outside his home continent.

Alonso is currently chasing a third world championship, the hopes for which are looking increasingly forlorn. But were you to retrofit F1 history to create a Europe-only championship, he'd already have three crowns.

This is very much an alternative reality in which Rubens Barrichello, Juan Pablo Montoya, David Coulthard, Mark Webber and Jacques Laffite are champions.

The justification for creating this strange hypothetical is Formula 1's return to Europe with this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix. With Europe being something of a curiosity (by some standards, geographically the continent is actually Eurasia), for the purposes of this analysis both the Russian and Turkish GPs are considered to be outside of this.

So this makes the Spanish GP the first round of the fictional European F1 Championship. If it sounds like a new idea, it isn't, for there has actually already been a European Championship for grand prix racing.

First held in 1931, the first two championships comprised the three premier grands prix, the French, Belgian and Italian, and was run to Libre regulations, with Alfa Romeo drivers Ferdinando Minoia and Tazio Nuvolari taking the titles.

Minoia is a driver many will not have heard of, and for good reason as he was one of the lower-profile racers of the period and his grand prix career started and ended that year. He won the title with a best finish of second.

After a couple of years of not being staged, the championship returned to grand prix car regulations in 1935. During the four years it was held, Rudolf Caracciola won three times for Mercedes-Benz, with Bernd Rosemeyer [pictured] taking the title for Auto Union during his remarkable '36 season.

The championship did begin in 1939, but was disrupted by the outbreak of war. Hermann Muller should have won that abortive championship, although in Germany it was another Hermann, Lang, who was 'awarded' the crown using a different points system.

But that's as far as the official European Championship of grand prix racing has ever got.

If you eliminate non-European races from 1980-2016, the destiny of the championship changes a surprising 16 times. This includes last year's title, which would have gone to Lewis Hamilton, not least because it eliminated his engine failure while leading the Malaysian Grand Prix.

It makes for very bad news for Ayrton Senna, who loses two of his world titles and doesn't gain one back. Jacques Villeneuve becomes a double world champion, while Damon Hill gets the '94 crown instead of the '96 one (Michael Schumacher was banned for two European races in '94 and disqualified from two others).

Alain Prost becomes a five-time champion despite losing the 1986 crown to Nigel Mansell, who himself gets three crowns thanks to also gaining '91 from Senna.

Schumacher ends up with just five titles, also losing the 2000 title to Mika Hakkinen and the '03 crown to Juan Pablo Montoya, but gaining the '06 crown from Alonso. David Coulthard gets '99 from Hakkinen and Jacques Laffite takes '81 from Nelson Piquet.

F1's alternative European Championship 1980-2016

Who would be champion if only races held in Europe counted?

For the purposes of this, the Russian and Turkish GPs are not included

Every single one of these seasons kicked off with at least one race outside of Europe, with the pattern settling down to four non-European races at the start of the calendar in recent times. That's exactly what we've had this year.

The fact that in such a large number of these campaigns there was a different 'European champion' compared to the rest of the seasons tells us several things. Obviously, it is far more likely to happen in seasons that are close given small margins make the difference.

But it also supports the idea that it's very difficult to recover from a bad start - as well as the fact that, under the intense pressure in the season-ending races (only two of the above seasons, 1984 and 1997, ended with a race in Europe), the cream rises when it matters.

Looking at the past 16 seasons (when F1 has consistently had either three or four non-European races at the start) it's rare for the championship leader at that point not to go on to take the crown.

Only five times has the leader heading to the start of the European season not gone on to clinch the championship - Kimi Raikkonen (2003 and '08), Fernando Alonso ('07), Jenson Button ('10) and Nico Rosberg ('14).

Curiously, in 2008 and '10, the eventual champion didn't win the 'rest' of the season either, as Massa and Webber respectively scored the most 'European' points in seasons when Hamilton and Vettel won the world championship.

That's very good news indeed for Vettel, who currently leads the championship as, in 69% of cases over the past 16 years, the driver on top heading into the first European race of the season has gone on to prevail.

It's tempting to suggest, in these days of new ideas in F1, to create a self-contained European F1 Championship within the wider world championship to drive some extra interest. But that would likely end up being about as relevant as the oval and street/road championships awarded in IndyCar (for the record, overall champion Simon Pagenaud won the latter last year, Josef Newgarden [pictured] the former).

The importance of the non-European races is also a reminder that, while this part of the world is the heartland of grand prix racing, the races further afield do play a crucial role in F1. It's a far cry from the early days of the world championship, when the utterly irrelevant (to grand prix racing) Indianapolis 500 was a points round from 1950-1960.

But if F1's plan to run a non-championship race comes off in the future, a plan that sounds appealing but that is difficult to fit into the calendar, to give it a boost in status how about considering grouping several races as a regional F1 championship?

That might make it a little easier to sell, while keeping it distinct from the main championship, as well as capturing a little of the spirit of the old Tasman and Springbok series that were once so popular.

It could certainly be an interesting way to create a year-round presence for F1, and an outlet for otherwise obsolete cars - provided, of course, it can be made cost-effective and, ideally, profitable to compete in.

And if F1 really does have, as Chase Carey has claimed, such a long list of potential venues for grand prix racing, perhaps that's a way to accommodate it. And ensure pressure is on the promoters to offer the best show they possibly can to the fans in this brave new world of F1.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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