Bernie's Radical Medal System: Could It Actually Work?

There continues to be discussion about the current F1 points system. At the moment it is:

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This system was introduced after the 2002 season which Michael Schumacher wrapped up in record time. He won it at the French GP in July!

The season wasn’t due to finish until October. The championship had been won, and yet there were still three months of the season left. For F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, this was an absolute disaster.

This points system was introduced to make championships closer, and to avoid championships being won so early.

However in 2004 Schumacher won the title early again despite this change. Fans also started moaning that there was not much motivation to win races, as drivers only gained two extra points.

This has become more of an issue over the past two or three seasons, when we have had close championships and not enough battles at the front.

Therefore, Bernie Ecclestone wants to abolish the points altogether and replace them with medals.

Is this a step too far? Or could it really improve the show? Would it be fair?

Let’s look at the concept of Bernie’s idea and assess all the pros and cons.

The Concept

Instead of the championship being decided by the driver with most points, the driver who wins the most gold medals would win the driver’s championship.

A gold medal would be given for a race win, a silver medal for second and bronze for third.

So in other words it’s the drivers with the most wins who is WDC. In the event of drivers winning the same number of gold medals, it would then be decided by who got the most silver medals. If drivers win the same amount of gold and silver medals, it would go down to bronze medals and so on.

On the other hand, the Constructors Championship would continue to be decided by the points system as it is currently.

If we used the 2008 championship as an example, Lewis Hamilton wouldn’t have been champion. Felipe Massa would have been declared champion due to the fact that he won 6 races over Hamilton’s 5.

Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa would have gone into the Brazilian GP with 5 wins each. So whoever won the race would have won the championship, as opposed to Lewis Hamilton having to finish in 5^thplace to be WDC.

The 2008 championship with Bernie’s system would have looked like this:

Felipe Massa              6 Gold Medals

Lewis Hamilton         5 Gold Medals

Kimi Raikkonen          2 Gold Medals

Fernando Alonso       2 Gold Medals

Robert Kubica             1 Gold Medal

Kimi Raikkonen finishes above Fernando Alonso due to having one more silver medal.

The Pros of the Medal system

It sounds a crazy and radical idea, but there are some real positives to this system. At the moment fans moan that there aren’t enough battles for the win in modern F1.

There are many championship contending drivers happy to finish 2^nd and take the points. With drivers having to conserve long life engines, and gearboxes the motivation to battle for the victory is removed even more.

If a driver is 5-10 seconds behind the leader is there any point taking risks and risking unreliability in the next race just for two measly points? Many drivers feel it, isn’t so stick to getting the eight points.

In Valencia this season for example, Lewis Hamilton decided very early on just to accept second place. There isn’t enough reward to take big risks. Due to this, the last part of a F1 race can be extremely tedious. The race may as well be over after the final pit stops.

With the medal system all the leading contenders would want to leave the race with a gold medal. They simply have to get gold medals as they won’t win the championship without them.

This completely changes the philosophy of how the drivers approach the race weekend. Drivers will giving everything to win the race because they know they have to.

Even if they are over 10 seconds behind they will have to keep on pushing and pushing. Drivers may risk a big lunge on another driver to take the lead of the race. Teams will be adopting tactics to win the race rather than just to get a good number of points for the championship.

Drivers are more likely to throw caution to the wind on a consistent basis. We rarely see that these days. We want to see the best drivers in the world being on the limit for the whole race, and being on the absolute ragged edge. We want them to forget about conserving the car as that won’t win them championships under this system.

Races certainly have the potential to be far more entertaining, and feature more edge of the seat action.

Title deciding races also have the possibility to become more exciting. 2007 is a great example of this. With two races remaining, four drivers were on four wins each. This system would really have opened that season’s title battle even more. It would have gone to the last race and all four drivers would have entered the championship finale with a chance to win the title.

That would have been worth watching, and we would have ended up with an even more thrilling conclusion than we actually got. All 4 of them would have been trying to win the race in order to win the championship.

In 2006 Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso would have both gone to Brazil with 7 wins (gold medals) each. They would have both been battling to win the race in order to win the championship, as opposed to Schumacher hoping Alonso would finish out of the points.

That would have made a thrilling finale, as the 2007 scenario would. And as mentioned earlier, this season Hamilton and Massa would have gone to Brazil on five wins each. Again we would have seen championship contenders having to go and battle each other for the win to be champion.

Another pro is that for the general public the system is very easy to understand. Practically all sports fans have watched the Olympic Games at some point, and will comprehend the concept of gold, silver and bronze medals.

The Cons of the Medal system

So there is no doubt that this system would improve the show and make F1 more dramatic, particularly at the front of the field. However as good as this sounds there are an awful lot of drawbacks which need to be considered.

Winning a championship isn’t just about wins. It’s about being consistent, not making too many errors, along with the ability to fight back from a misfortune earlier on in the race.

A driver should be rewarded for being consistent throughout the season. One driver may have won the most races but they may have made mistakes and crashed in all the other races.

Another driver on the other hand may have won one or two races less, but still finished high up in the races they didn’t win and only made 1 or 2 mistakes overall. So in this type of scenario it may be a bit unfair that they don’t get the championship.

If something goes wrong early on in the race (like a lost front wing) then the chances of winning the race are minimal. This means that a driver’s motivation to carry on may not be very high. The ability to rescue points from these situations has always been part of being a good champion.

The handful of points taken away after setbacks can often decide a championship. Under this system, a great recovery driver from 20th to third or fourth position would be practically meaningless as it would be unlikely to help as driver’s championship campaign.

A great drive like this may be even better than the drive by the winner but there would be no reward at all.

In the last few seasons, only two teams have come into the season with a car that can consistently win races and finish on the podium. This means that out of a grid of 20 to 24 drivers only a handful will win medals.

What have the rest of the grid got left to play for? Finishing fourth or fifth on a regular basis will no longer win you four or five points. They won’t get anything for their efforts. This might make competing for these drivers seem a bit pointless and dull at times.

Even worse a driver that gets a lucky win at some point in the season, but no other results in the season, would finish in the championship above drivers who regular in finish in what are currently points paying positions.

Giancarlo Fisichella in 2003 is a very good example. He was in a slow Jordan all year long but won the crazy wet Brazilian GP. He finished the season in 12th but would have moved to eighth in the championship above more consistent drivers under the medals system.

In the pros section, we saw how there is the potential for dramatic championship deciders, but on the other hand the season could be finished very early on in the season.

Let's say it’s a 16-race season. If a driver wins the first 9 races then there is no chance for that driver to be caught up. The championship would be won there and then.

The rest of the season would become very tedious as the championship would no longer be up for grabs, and drivers who don’t have top three worthy cars don’t have anything to compete for either.

A driver winning nine races in a row is a bit unrealistic though (it has never been done before in fact in F1) but it’s not impossible. But by race 10, it could be possible to have a four- or five-win lead, which in the remaining six races would be very hard to overhaul. It would be as good as over.

Another issue could be team orders coming a bigger issue again. It’s possible that a team may decide to back only one driver. It’s possible that two drivers in one team could be so close that they could take race wins off each other.

This would be a major disadvantage if they are up against a team where there is a clear number one driver. It means a team boss may need to make, what would be a very unfair sacrifice, on one of his drivers to help win the drivers’ championship.

There is no doubt that a team that has a clear No. 1 has a big advantage in this system. And as a driver, establishing yourself as a clear No. 1 within your team, would be one of the keys to being champion.

Fans would rather see both team mates battling each other rather than one being forced to hold back, and maybe even being made to stop the number 1 driver in the main rival team.

Retiring from a race could be a very big punishment under the medals system. If you retire from the lead, and give a victory to your main rival it could have a large impact on if you win the title or not.

If the retirement is due to a mistake, then fair enough, but if it’s due to reliability, then it’s very harsh. The swing in race victories it would give to the rival driver would be very significant, possible unfair.

Lastly, the record books would be affected. Drivers wouldn’t be scoring points anymore, so it would be harder to compare current drivers to drivers of the past in terms of point scoring totals. Drivers who had a consistent career of scoring fourth-eighth in races wouldn’t have much to show for their career in terms of statistics.

Conclusion

With this proposal I think most fans can see where Bernie is coming from. Putting the emphasis on winning races will certainly create a far better spectacle than we have currently.

However the main problem is that however entertaining the medals system would make F1 it just isn’t fair. Drivers who finish consistently on the podium will not be rewarded, and great recovery drives from lower positions will be practically meaningless. These should be important aspects of winning the championship as well as winning races.

In 1982, Keke Rosberg only won one race but he was still a very deserving champion nonetheless. In the future drivers, could win the championship under the medal system, but not have won it had the points system still been in place.

This applies to Ayrton Senna in 1988, when only the best 11 results counted. If there had been a points system in place, Alain Prost would have been champion.

It’s worth noting that there is a sense this idea has only been put onto the table, as a knee jerk reaction to the fact the 2008 runner-up won more races than the champion.

The points system got changed after the terrible 2002 system. Now the majority of F1 fans moan about that system so the medals proposal could very well end up suffering that same fate.

Making F1 entertaining isn’t just down to the scoring system. If F1 cars could follow each other more easily then drivers would try and overtake more. What’s the point of fighting hard to catch the leader up if you then have next to no chance of getting past?

Hopefully next year’s new aero regs can go some way to solving that problem. Having to conserve engines and gearboxes also doesn’t help the spectacle as this takes away from the drivers being able to push.

This at times turns F1 into an endurance series, despite the fact that races are only around 90 minutes.

So maybe continuing to work on more overtaking-friendly cars, and stop all these silly rules where key parts of the car have to be conserved would be better than changing to a very radical scoring system.

Having said that, the scoring system certainly could do with a change. Arguably it shouldn’t have been changed in 2003 in the first place.

The system should be 12-8-6-5-4-3-2-1. There is more incentive to win the race and consistency is still rewarded. I think this is the small change required in the points system rather than the radical medals system.

However as most people who watch F1 are casual fans entertainment is what’s required for them. This is why Bernie may decide to revert to the medals system, which will be good for attracting more casual fans to watch F1 but will seriously divide the hardcore and experienced F1 fans.

There needs to be considered thought before making a rash decision, which could completely change the face of F1 racing as this system no-doubtedly would.