How Could the F1 Points System Be Changed?

Currently in Formula 1, there is a lot of talk about the points system and whether it is adequate or if it should be changed.

The points system may not seem that important to some, but it can have a big impact on the tactics drivers and teams use in races, depending on the reward available to them.

So what should an ideal points system be able to provide?

·        Reward for race winners

·        Motivation to overtake in the final third of a race and for front runners to keep pushing for the race win

·        Opportunities for points for midfield and back-of-the-grid teams

·        A system that can keep the championship close

·        A system where the best performing driver can win the title

·        The system has to be easy for fans to understand

It’s never going to be possible for a points system to provide all of those wishes, but I think the current system could be easily improved to incorporate more of what the F1 points system needs to achieve.

The current points system is 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1.

Current standings with this system

Lewis Hamilton - 62 points

Kimi Raikkonen - 57 points

Felipe Massa - 54 points

Robert Kubica - 49 points

Ferrari - 111 points

McLaren - 100 points

BMW Sauber - 90 points

This new system was introduced in the 2003 season, the season after Michael Schumacher won the championship in July. One of its main aims was to make the championship closer, and for it to be harder for one driver to walk away with the title (Schumacher still won the 2004 championship four races early).

Overall, this system doesn’t work very well in my view. The biggest issue is the gap between the race winner and the second^-place driver.

Two points is very little reward for winning a Grand Prix, to finish second is almost as good as a race win. When a driver finishes second, they don’t lose out too much to the driver that has won the race.

If a driver goes into the last stint of a race four or five seconds behind the leader, what’s the point in risking the eight points they already have in the bag to possibly get only two extra points?

By taking this risk, they could end up with no points if they crash by pushing too hard, or risk engine failure in the next race, as engines need to last two race weekends.

The drivers racing at the front all want to win the championship. This is the priority. Winning races is very nice, but if a race win needs to be sacrificed in order to keep the challenge going, then so be it.

Fernando Alonso always made good use of the points for second place when contesting his championships. Consistency has always been one of the strong weapons in his armour.

Under this system, you can score big points without winning races, if you can get big points consistently, then you will be in contention in the business end of the championship.

Let's imagine Fernando Alonso won the first five races of a season and Lewis Hamilton finished second in all of them. Fernando Alonso’s lead to Lewis Hamilton would only be 10 points. For winning the first 5 races, that is an extremely small points gap.

Alonso would deserve to a have a bigger lead. On the plus point for the fans, Alonso wouldn’t be miles ahead already, which keeps the championship exciting.

What would be farcical is if Hamilton were to win the sixth race of the season but Alonso were to have a mechanical failure or crash. This means they would be level on points after just six races, despite Alonso winning five races to Hamilton’s one.

What this little scenario shows is that if you are very consistent, it is possible to be in title contention even if you are not winning races galore (Raikkonen took Schumacher to the last round in 2003, despite only winning one race to Michael’s six). Also from that example, you can see that a DNF is potentially extremely damaging.

If your main rival is very consistent, it is very hard to build a gap in the championship. On the other side of the coin, if the leader is still consistently scoring high points, then it's going to take a lot of time and patience to bridge the gap.

So overall, this points system does make championships closer, allows midfield runners to score more points, but apart from that, it doesn’t work. It has appeared to make the front runners more conservative towards the end of a Grand Prix, plus it is not entirely fair.

The old F1 points system was 10-6-4-3-2-1.

Current standings with this system:

Lewis Hamilton - 54 points

Felipe Massa - 46 points

Kimi Raikkonen - 44 points

Robert Kubica - 34 points

Ferrari - 90 points

McLaren - 79 points

BMW Sauber - 61 points

I think the old points system is an improvement over the current version but again it is far from perfect. The main factor that makes this better over the present system is that winners are rewarded.

I think four points between the winner and runner-up is much more reasonable. If drivers are in range of first place within the final third of a GP, they are more likely to be motivated to attack if there are four extra points at stake.

If a driver is 10 points behind the championship leader, but they overtake them and win the race, then they are then only 6 points behind as opposed to 14 points behind. So it effectively becomes an eight-point swing between winning and finishing second.

Third place is six points less than first position, so the third^-place driver will be very keen to try and get second place if he can. The new points system was brought in to make championships closer, but there have been close championships with this points system too.

If this points system had been used in 2007, Raikkonen would have won the championship by six points. It still would have been very close. Raikkonen would have had more of an advantage because he won two more races than anyone else.

The main issue with this system is that most of the time it was only front runners that got rewarded. Often midfield teams were only competing for fifth or sixth place at best, meaning only one or two points unless one of the star names struck reliability issues.

The new points system makes the midfield battle in the championship a lot more interesting than this system did. The championship always looked a little bit bare and uncompetitive after your eyes glance below the two or three teams at the top of the tree with this old system.

Let's go back to the fictional example mentioned in the last section involving Alonso and Hamilton. With the pair coming 1-2 respectively in each of the first five races Alonso’s lead would be 20 world championship points, which is a much better reflection of his dominance.

In the next part of the scenario, if Alonso crashed in Race 6 and Hamilton won, not all of Alonso’s lead would be eroded. The lead would go down to 10 points.

Alonso would be punished for the crash but not too harshly, whereas Hamilton is rightly awarded for his consistency up to this point in the championship. In this scenario, the old points system was a lot fairer.

Alternative suggestions

12-8-6-5-4-3-2-1

Current standings with this system

Lewis Hamilton - 70 points

Kimi Raikkonen - 60 points

Felipe Massa - 60 points

Robert Kubica - 51 points

Ferrari - 130 points

McLaren - 110 points

BMW Sauber - 92 points

This is ultimately the same as the current points system but with two extra points for the winner. This would definitely be the improvement that is needed, whilst still keeping the positive aspects of the system in that midfield runners can still score good points. Drivers would be more likely to go for wins under this system with more reward.

With talk of a new points system being introduced, I think this is the most likely alternative that would be chosen, as the FIA will try to refrain from wholesale changes.

Something which may bother older fans and keen stat boffins about this possible system is that never has more than 10 points been offered for a win. In the future, this would destroy the validity of the “most points scored” list.

With bigger points available for each position, a driver can score a lot more points in one season than under previous systems; you can see how. However, it has been like this since 2003 for positions second downwards.

Point totals aren’t the most important of stats in comparison to number of wins, poles, podiums, championships, win percentage amongst others. We shouldn’t avoid reverting to an improved points system for this small issue alone.

Championship decided by most wins

Current standings with this system

Lewis Hamilton - 4 wins

Felipe Massa - 3 wins

Kimi Raikkonen - 2 wins

Robert Kubica - 1 win

Heikki Kovalainen - 1 win

(Points would still remain for constructors championship)

Ferrari - 111 points

McLaren - 100 points

BMW Sauber - 90 points

Bernie Ecclestone is apparently trying to get this system in motion for the near future, as this is his idea to spice up the racing, particularly at the front. It’s very simple. The driver with the most wins would become the winner of the championship. Easy for everyone involved to understand.

The front-runners would definitely have to push to the maximum to win. They would all need to plan aggressive tactics in order to allow them to compete for the victory, rather than at times simply getting a result to contribute to their championships.

We would see the drivers taking more risks than normal, which would be great to watch. They couldn’t just turn the revs down near the end of races if they were losing. They would need to absolutely keep the throttle planted to the floor and keep chances of victory alive. Nothing else could win a driver the championship under these rules.

Possibly team rivalries would be even bigger and more tense, too. A driver won’t want to settle for second to their teammate at the end of a race because they won’t be getting a consolation prize of good points for their second place.

They HAVE to win races to compete in the championship, so it could be potentially fascinating to see this system in action and the big stars having to go gung-ho for victory.

Some say that without points, the championship race would be boring; but if you put this system in place in 2007, then that would be far from the truth.

Before the last two rounds last season, Raikkonen, Hamilton, and Alonso were all on four wins each, with Massa just behind on three. That would have made a very thrilling climax to the season, potentially even more thrilling than the one we had in the end.

Of course there are a few big disadvantages to this season. You could get a situation like 2004, where Schumacher won the first five races of the season. Many would argue that the championship would effectively be over, as it would be very hard to overhaul a gap of five wins to someone with Schumacher’s talent.

Under the system, the driver’s championship would have been won by Round 10 of 18 that season. This is even earlier than it was decided with the current points system.

One of the other big issues is if a driver doesn’t have a car to compete for wins with, then what can they do with their season? They can’t win races, so there is no chance of competing in the championship and nothing to earn.

They would just be competing for their team (points would remain for the constructors championship) and then hoping a winning team takes notice of them and they can take a more active role in the driver’s championship in the following season.

There is another question that begs answering as well. Would the driver with the most wins always deserve to win the championship? Let's picture another fictional example, sticking with the same two drivers used earlier.

Say Lewis Hamilton won seven races to Alonso’s six. Lets also imagine that Hamilton’s placings in the other races were worse than the placings Alonso got in the races that he didn’t win.

Hamilton may have pushed too hard at times and crashed out more chasing wins. In the races Alonso didn’t win, he got a good second or third place more often. Therefore if we calculated how many points each driver got Alonso, would likely come out with more.

So in this scenario Hamilton has won one more race, but Alonso has been more consistent. So who deserves the championship then? Many pundits say the most consistent driver over a course of a season is the most deserving of the championship so, therefore it should be Alonso. But many others want drivers fighting tooth and nail for victories, so therefore Hamilton deserves to win.

There’s a very fine line in this debate. So this new system would provide competitive racing at the front. That is lacking at times in modern Formula 1, but maybe it is too radical a way of achieving this and brings too many negative points with it as mentioned above.

My own proposed points system

If I were asked to propose a new points system for F1, it would be extremely different to anyone else’s idea. So here goes:

1. 25 points
2. 17 points
3. 13 points
4. 11 points
5. 10 points
6. 9 points
7. 8 points
8. 7 points
9. 6 points
10. 5 points
11. 4 points
12. 3 points
13. 2 points
14. 1 points
15. 0.5 points

**No points given if a driver retires from the race, so a driver can’t just turn up and score an easy point or two**

Current standings with this system

Lewis Hamilton - 157 points

Kimi Raikkonen - 136 points

Felipe Massa - 130 points

Robert Kubica - 119 points

Ferrari - 266 points

Mclaren - 262 points

BMW Sauber - 225 points

This system I feel would incorporate most of the needs that fans look for in the F1 points system.

Firstly, there is suitable reward for the winner. If you win the race, you get eight more points than the second-place finisher and 12 more then the driver in third place, so it is a big deal to get a win championship wise.

However, a driver consistently needs to get big points when they are not winning to mount their championship charge. With big points awarded to second and third ,consistency it is still very important despite the extra reward with going for a win.

The other strength I feel this system would have is that everyone on the grid has something to compete for as the points go all the way down to 15^th place. As a driver going round in 12th or 13^th place, a long way from the points isn’t a very enjoyable experience.

Therefore, they aren’t often motivated to try a move for position, as it won’t give them any extra reward. With this system with more points at stake for lower positions the midfield battle on the track and in the championship will become a lot more competitive.

The 2^nd and 3^rd divisions in football are always very exciting to watch, sometimes more so than the main league. A similar thing could happen here as the midfield teams tussle for these points to get ahead of each other in the championship table.

You might say a driver in the midfield fight won’t want to overtake for just an extra point, but I think they will. As I say the midfield section of the championship is tight with often small points deciding the positions and of course the drivers in these teams are hoping to impress the team bosses of the big teams.

If a driver at the front makes an error or loses a front wing, then there is more motivation to fight back and get as many points as possible. Sometimes fighting back to good points in the current system is very difficult.

All the front drivers at some points have to fight their way through the field for some reason or another. The driver who can fight back better to get more points available from this system would have an advantage.

Overall, I think this system would provide good racing throughout the field and increase the level of competition. There is motivation to go on to win races due to the points gap, and for drivers and teams in the bottom half of the field to keep pushing rather than giving up halfway to two-thirds or the way through the race.

The main thing is everyone has reason to compete and fight hard. Everyone has their own championship to win.

Of course, no points system is perfect and people will find huge gripes with this system. Some people might not like big number of points being awarded for the higher positions. Some may say that this system punishes a DNF too heavily perhaps, 25 potential points would be lost. There are a lot of potential arguments.

However, I think the majority of F1 fans and pundits are united in the fact that they want to see great racing and competition and that the current points system doesn’t quite do its job.

With my proposed system there is a lot of potential. A similar system works very well for the likes Moto GP and IRL (Indy Racing League).

People say radical changes are needed to improve the racing in Formula 1, so why not start that with the easiest thing to change, the points system?

Final Verdict

The current points system definitely isn’t good enough and is another of the regulations in Formula 1 that needs to be looked. It’s one of the easiest things to change, as it doesn’t require the teams having to spend more millions in order to adapt to the rules.

We want all the drivers to be pushing throughout the races and certainly some of the alternatives that I have suggested, and I guess many other pundits have come up in the past can go some way towards achieving that goal.

The 12-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 is probably the most likely change the FIA would make, but it would be really nice to see a more radical approach like my own suggestion put into place.