F1 Championship by Wins: Why Bernie Is Right

Now that the teams have objected to the introduction of Bernie Ecclestone's championship by wins scheme, the F1 season will be on the same basis as previous years; he who scores the most points is declared champion.

It is worth looking again at exactly what has happened in the past couple of weeks.

Any F1 rule changes introduced after each season's entries have been received have to be approved by all the teams, or they are invalid. Did Bernie not know that? Of course he knew, not for nothing has he been running rings around team managers for the last 30 years.

Bernie achieved a massive blitz of mainstream media publicity for F1 in the run-up to the first race of 2009. He has caught the attention of people who may not have thought about the sport during the long winter break, and he will have his rule change in place for 2010.

What has been the objection of teams and fans to the fairly simple proposition that he who wins the most races becomes the champion?

There may be many reasons, no doubt including automatic opposition to anything put forward by Bernie. But the main reason people have been able to articulate is that "it doesn't reward consistency".

That view does not stand examination, especially if you happen to believe that competitive sport is about striving to win.

Under Bernie's proposal the points system would remain unchanged, so a driver who scored well throughout the season would still find himself ranked very high at the end of it, even if he had achieved no wins. The constructors championship would be totally unaffected.

There is a rare circumstance whereby a driver scores the most wins, but does not win the most races. It is rare precisely because a win pays more points than other positions, but as it happened last year, it is at the front of many people's minds.

The new system would have seen Felipe Massa become 2008 champion, because he won the most races. As it was, we saw Lewis Hamilton start the race in Brazil with a target of fifth place to bag the championship.

A race where fifth place is good enough to become champion? Give me a break.

There is a clear choice between F1 as a string of points-scoring exercises, and F1 as a series of races. Over the years we have seen very many events that became processions, as a dull as dull could be, with all the action of a paint-drying contest.

There has been no incentive for a driver to risk all to cross the finish line first, for two comfortable second places score more than a win. Of course there is no guarantee that championship by wins would produce more exciting races, but by jiminy, it must be worth a try.

Bernie is right, he really is.