Why 'tiebreak' desire is driving F1's new format plans

This year's British Grand Prix was a fabulous race that had the capacity crowd on its feet. Battles occurred throughout the field, but the winner wasn't in doubt after lap 20 of 52 when Lewis Hamilton pitted under the safety car. This ensured that the early stop made by Valtteri Bottas did not produce the undercut that may have extended his lead.

Unfortunately, great though the race was, as a sporting spectacle it was overshadowed by two other memorable events that day that frayed the nerves of every sports lover.

At Wimbledon Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer in a fifth-set tiebreak even though, perhaps just 10 minutes from the end, the smart money would have gone on Federer for the win.

A few miles away at Lord's the cricket world cup final was building to an even greater crescendo as the teams, tied after the conclusion of the normal match, engaged in a 'super over' to decide the result. Again, just a short time from the climax New Zealand seemed to hold the upper hand but England fought back to tie again and win by a bizarre countback system that relied on the number of boundaries achieved.

What made those games so exciting was that the result came down to a tie-breaker - something we don't have in motorsport.

Occasionally we get races where the result is in doubt until close to the end. People still talk of the epic battle in the 1979 French GP at Dijon, when Gilles Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux slugged it out over the last two laps, albeit for second rather than the lead (pictured above). F1's handful of photo finishes - including the 1982 Austrian GP pictured below - are also fondly remembered.

Even this season, in Austria and Hungary the eventual winner did not take the lead until just a few laps from the end. Not surprisingly these two races received almost the highest fan ratings of the first half of the year, beaten only by the chaos that characterised the wet, dry, wet German GP. The recent tense finishes in Belgium and Italy also proved popular.

Tiebreaks generally take different forms to the format of the main event and are used when a draw is an unacceptable result, meaning they are normally employed in knockout rather than league competitions.

Motorsport is effectively a league championship and yet tied results are extremely rare. They have occurred in qualifying but never in a race itself. In spite of this we could perhaps learn something from the excitement that a tiebreak can generate.

The FIA, F1 and the teams are in discussions at the moment about the possibility of introducing a small number of 'super weekends' where the event format may be different from that to which we are accustomed. This may include sprint races and mixed-up grids.

The purists may find this hard to swallow but I feel that while F1 cannot produce the occasional tie-breaker, we should learn from the psychology that such measures bring to the fans and exploit the well-known peak-end effect.

To do this we need to bring the peak of excitement near the end of the race. Psychologists tell us this gives a positive cognitive bias, and hence fond memories, to the fans. This is why I fully support changes to formats that may make this possible.

Another feature of 2019 that has left an indelible stamp is the subject of stewarding, judgements and penalties. This has always been a difficult subject and early this year the FIA determined a policy of 'let them race' was preferable to draconian penalties for minor infringements.

Not only did the earlier philosophy have the potential to adversely alter a race's outcome, worse still it encouraged risk-averse attitudes from drivers. No one is suggesting we should allow dangerous driving or intimidation, but close racing is just that - close.

Unfortunately it's one thing to expound a policy but more difficult to ensure that under many different circumstances it is deployed in a fair and equitable manner. The stewards have a very difficult job and, just like the employment of VAR in soccer or Hawkeye in tennis, technology isn't always their friend.

There was a time when the word of a referee was law and the only opposition to it was purely partisan. Pundits now have at their disposal data and multiple videos that can be assessed with the comfort of time. Worse still, social media and speciality internet forums allow those with little knowledge and extreme bias to voice opinions which, hidden in the anonymity of the internet, allow them to make vile comments.

The role of the steward is a difficult one, made harder by the desire to allow a measured amount of rough and tumble. Without their version of the Sibylline books of prophecies, or even a permanent steward to offer guidance, they need to make logical decisions. Take the vexed subject of track limits. In spite of all the technology in F1 there is no system similar to Hawkeye to automatically detect if a car exceeds the circuit limits.

The on-board GPS is nowhere near accurate enough but, even if it was, would it be right to penalise every transgression? The guidelines are that a driver must not gain a lasting advantage through improper use of track limits.

This means a timing system would have to be linked to an image processing system to ensure that a driver who made a genuine mistake, and suffered a consequential increase of their lap time, wasn't slapped with a further penalty. It could be done but at the moment it is in the judgement of the stewards.

Perhaps their biggest challenge is the need to operate in real time. In football the use of VAR signals a stoppage to play. This cannot happen in F1, which compounds the problem. It is vital that, barring a technical infringement found in scrutineering, the drivers on the podium are those that finally finish in the top three. This forces the stewards to assess significant amounts of data in a short period of time while not actually hearing any witness statements from those involved.

In my opinion the stewards are extremely competent and operate in difficult circumstances. We should appreciate this and respect their decisions even if, like any referee, they can occasionally be wrong.