He has completely lost it.

I don’t think I could come up with a worse way to figure out the championship if I stuck my hand up a horses backside.

The points system will remain.

At most they will alter the amount of points awarded.

Now, back to the post subject, I think the better pointing system would be 10 7 5 4 3 2 1, the Top 7 being awarded with points, plus 1 point to the Pole and 1 to the Fastest Lap, with a perfect weekend resulting in 12 points for the driver, and pushing the drivers to the maximum both in qualify and race, not making him stay comfortably sat in second place knowing that he’s earning only 2 points less than the winner

And I think the medal system is lame, totally screwed, a championship is a championship, if Bernie wants medals, then create a Formula for the Olympics,

You act like drivers could in general simply grab a win at will and are not doing so because of lack of motivation. That’s simply not the case.

In football motivation might play a bigger role, but in Formula 1 the drivers depend on their car (and setup and tires and such).

Indeed there are rare instances were drivers settle for a lower position, but that’s not the norm.

Besides, you have 2 drivers per team and often a driver will be forced to settle for a position. Teams will be forced to determine their no 1 driver virtually from the start of the season.

So the overall result of a season will not change by using medals and the drivers’ motivation has virtually nothing to do with it for the majority of this result.

Then yes I think it is unfair to count only the wins instead of calculating a weighed ranking based on all results.

Again, if you want to increase the points for a win then give 12 points for a win. It’s really not that difficult.

The case being made against medals is a case against points, too.

Sure with points there will be skewed results, but not to the same extent as with medals.

If someone scores a lucky win and doesn’t perform the rest of the year, the result in the standings will marginally different. With medals the driver can easily win 4 or 5 places.

There will be times when a driver has had indeed one win more but otherwise severely worse results than the next contender (ie the second place guys has been on the podium all year).

Maybe, but if that is the way the title is decided, then the drivers will abide by and race with this potential in mind. One example is football. The Premier League Championship is decided by a system that rewards consistency by a most-points-by-end-of-season-wins method, thanks to scoring 1 point for a draw. Is this fair?

Australian Rules Football is decided in a different way. There are finals between the top 8 teams at the end, until two teams fight off in a Grand Final. Last year one team won 21 out of 22 games in the season, won every final and then “choked” in the Grand Final. They’re not the Premiers, and they accept this. Is this fair?

My point is that it should be up to the competitors to judge, not the fans or the FIA/FOM bosses. So let’s see what the teams and drivers think before judging whether something is an “inherently unfair ranking system” or not.

Why would Massa or Alonso bother to fight for the third place in a season’s 14th race knowing that only a win can eventually give them the championship?

Because someone else with as many wins as them might sneak a 3rd at the next race, dropping them down the final standings if they don’t get that extra win. And because the team would be within their rights to sack them.

One point I haven’t read here yet is that the main argument against medals is the potential skewing of Championship position due to a “lucky” result. Rosberg and Piquet’s podiums, for example. But with any points system, this is already the case. If a driver consistently finishes 9th, but never gets a point for the season, he could be pipped in the Championship standings by a Force India (eg.) driver who scores 1 point due to a safety car or weather, but finishes every other race in 20th. The case being made against medals is a case against points, too.

Not sure why the constructors need to get points though. They could be ranked according to medals (and after that lower places) too. If it’s about the transport costs being paid, then they woild need at least an 8th place finish instead of a point.