Why F1’s points change proposal risks undermining its basic tenet

I’m guessing that Liberty Media must have formed a ‘Formula 1 Book Club’. It makes sense.

With a massive F1 calendar and so many flights between races, the book club has been established to help team principals while away the hours between bouts of business interrupted by sending their cars on track to run in a DRS train for 90 minutes every other Sunday. Alice in Wonderland appears to be required reading, along with Treasure Island and Where’s Wally (a special F1 edition for the US market in which Wally, when found, is obliterated and not allowed to join in).

It seems to me that someone in authority must have been reading Lewis Carroll’s celebrated story of Alice, who falls through a rabbit hole and enters a fantasy world. This F1 influencer has clearly been enthused by the plot, particularly the bit where one of the characters (appropriately named ‘Dodo’) suggested a race.

When the Dodo suddenly declared the race to be over, the participants naturally wished to know who had won. Initially flummoxed by such a reasonable question, the Dodo magnanimously declared: “Everybody has won – and all must have prizes!”

And there you have it. The F1 Sporting Regulations will need to be read in conjunction with Alice in Wonderland now that some F1 Dodo has decided to award points to 12th place – and possibly beyond. Who knows where this might end?

A championship point for simply turning up (with TWO cars, of course)? A bonus point for putting forward the most vacuous ‘Celebrity’ for interview on the grid? How about the mechanic with the best tattoo on their left forearm? Or the driver who says most often: “Dunno. Should be a good race. Let’s see what happens” when questioned while on their way to the grid.

Luca Badoer has the most F1 career starts without points, but would have scored on 11 occasions under current rules - that would increase to 14 under the newly-proposed system

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

Certainly, if the F1 Dodo succeeds, it will no longer be worth a driver or team principal wishfully saying: “We hope to score a point.”
That will become as easy as having your loyalty
card stamped at Costa on a Sunday afternoon.

The distribution of points has had various iterations since the inception of the F1 world championship in 1950. For the first ten years, the top five finishers received points on the sliding scale 8-6-4-3-2. There were many occasions when it seemed they couldn’t give the points away, such was the woeful reliability and the handful of finishers struggling across the line, often miles apart in cars barely hanging together.

Over time, the reward for winning was increased to nine, and then 10 points, with the spread going down to sixth place. In 2003, the first eight finishers received points. Then, in 2010, the value of earning points became diluted – not to mention consigning facts of statistical point-scoring significance to the bin – when a more generous system gave the winner 25 points, diminishing to a single point for 10th.

Championship points should be hard won and savoured; not handed out like consolation chocolate buttons at the end of a kids’ egg-and-spoon race

Granted, finishing 10th is not easy given the exceptional reliability of today’s cars. But it will be difficult to get enthused about seeing team members giving each other high fives after trailing in 12th, a lap down and a minute off the pace. Ron Dennis used to say that finishing second was the first of the losers. In which case, finishing 12th will be the equivalent of being declared runner-up in a miserable contest for runners-up.

Arguing for this expansion of the scoring system, due to be discussed at the next meeting of the World Motor Sport Council, one team principal in charge of a midfield runner complained about the difficulty explaining to their financial partners that the battle for P11 actually gains zero points. Having initially been puzzled by the absurdity of such an argument in a sport that has – or should have – a desire to be the very best as its core value, it’s tempting to think that the avoidance of such a conversation is actually a good thing and prevents the team principal from looking even more silly than he really is.

The recommendation to dish out championship points willy-nilly would surely have any CEO of a successful sponsor remind the F1 boss that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer prints 10 times as much cash, the nation does not thereby become richer. On the contrary,
the currency is devalued by inflation.

And that’s another thing. It’s not as if this suggestion by the F1 Dodo is going to add to the wealth fund of whoever finishes 12th. The existing financial divi-up is already established by your finishing position, be that ninth or 19th.

Awarding more points for finishing in minor placings would surely devalue their significance

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

In fact, an existing commercial agreement says the FIA receives a fee from the teams and drivers based on the points they score. Thus, in return for doing very little, the governing body will be in line for a bigger financial slice to help the cost of producing finishers’ medals which nobody really wants (except for the profiling president handing
them out on the podium).

We’re talking about a significant world championship in the spectrum of global sport. Championship points should be hard won and savoured; not handed out like consolation chocolate buttons at the end of a kids’ egg-and-spoon race.

If this continues then, given the current climate of being offended over the merest slight, the team coming home 18th or 19th will be taking legal action thanks to feeling morally entitled to championship points simply because they’ve finished the race.

Meritocracy isn’t an add-on extra that can demanded as if by right. It should remain the principal reason for getting up in the morning on race day and going to the grid in the knowledge there can only be one winner.

Take the F1 Dodo’s latest proposal to its illogical conclusion and the sport is on its way down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world that bears no relation to why most of us are there in the first place. 

A final decision is expected later this year and could have enormous ramifications for F1

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images