Virgin’s missed opportunity in Canada leaves them last again

2011 F1 season review

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Virgin were last again in 2011

Poor reliability was the chief reason why Virgin finished last in the championship in their first season.

They finished in the same place this year, but it’s fair to say that misfortune played a greater role in them failing to beat HRT this time.

More often than not, Virgin out-qualified and out-raced their back-of-the-grid rivals in 2011. What ultimately made the difference was a single race: the Canadian Grand Prix.

With six laps to go Timo Glock was running 14th in front of his team mate, the HRTs and Jarno Trulli. But he locked up his tyres, damaged them badly, and fell back.

That allowed Vitantonio Liuzzi to claim the 13th place which made the difference between the two teams at the end of the year. This was despite Virgin having two 14th places and three 15ths. HRT’s next best finish was a single 16th place, which Virgin had three of. It’s a tough world outside the points places in F1.

Virgin team stats 2011

Best race result (number)14th (2)
Best grid position (number) 19th (3)
Non-finishes (mechanical/other) 8 (5/3)
Laps completed (% of total) 1,820 (80.32%)
Laps led (% of total) 0 (0%)
Championship position (2010) 12th (12th)
Championship points (2010) 0 (0)
Pit stop performance ranking11th

Virgin’s reliability was measurably better this year: retirements due to technical failures fell from 14 to five (plus one failure to start, also due to a car problem), which was better than Williams, Lotus or HRT managed. Their percentage of laps completed increased from 72.5% last year to over 80%.

However this remained a glitch-prone team which suffered problems in some unusual areas. Such as the pit wall failure in Suzuka which left them without timing information to make their strategy calls.

More alarming was Timo Glock’s rear wing failure in qualifying at Monza, when the Drag Reductions System jammed open. Jerome D’Ambrosio had a suspension failure in practice at Sepang and his front wing failed in China.

A lock-up for Glock in Montreal cost Virgin 11th place

In pure performance terms Virgin fared even worse than last year. By the end of the season it was hard to imagine this was the team that had vied with Lotus on pace for much of last year.

That much was clear in Monza, where retirements offered Virgin their best chance of getting back in front of HRT. Glock finished 15th behind the two Lotuses, 50 seconds adrift of Kovalainen.

Alarm bells were ringing at the first race weekend when the team were more than 7% slower than the fastest time in the first two practice sessions, raising fears they might fail to qualify under the 107% rule. This did not happen, and although the team later fell foul of the rule on more than one occasion, it was usually related to some technical problem, and they always received permission to race.

However they came under increasing pressure from HRT and were out-qualified by their rivals in the final race of the year.

Long before then, technical director Nick Wirth had been shown the door. With him went his radical policy of eschewing wind tunnels and instead modelling the car entirely using computer simulation. One month later, the team concluded a deal with McLaren to use their car development tools including a wind tunnel.

Virgin will become Marussia in 2012

This, and plans to consolidate the team’s disparate bases of operation, should help make the MVR-03 a more competitive proposition. But the impending collapse of the Resource Restriction Agreement is the worse possible news for this tiny team.

Their entry into F1 was originally conceived under Max Mosley’s budget cap. The team then found itself operating under the less restrictive RRA, and even those restrictions now look set to disappear.

Among the other changes coming for next year will be a new name: Marussia. The Russian sports car brand has taken over the team’s entry from Richard Branson’s company.

D’Ambrosio will also not remain with the team – like Lucas di Grassi before him, he loses his seat after his first year in F1.

He compared reasonably well against Glock and although there were crashes in practice in India and Canada it seems harsh to hold those against him when the world champion did much the same. His spin in the pits in Hungary was embarrassing, though.

Jerome d'Ambrosio has lost his seat to Charles Pic

He occasionally gave his team mate cause for concern, particularly at Suzuka, where he edged Glock in qualifying on the renowned ‘driver’s track’. He put up a good fight in the last race at Interlagos as well, but the deal to replace him with Charles Pic had already been done and was announced within hours of the chequered flag falling.

Opportunities for Glock to shine were even rarer than they had been last year, though he was thrilled with his qualifying lap in Monaco where he trimmed the deficit to Lotus to half a second, and made an excellent start in Valencia.

Nonetheless Glock has pledged his long-term future to this team which is a bold move for the former GP2 champion given their lack of success so far.

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Images © Virgin Racing

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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66 comments on “Virgin’s missed opportunity in Canada leaves them last again”

  1. they went backwards this year. Compared to Lotus AND HRT.

    Sad, I like this team…

  2. I’d say the last sentence of this article is open to subject to personal opinion. Imagine if Glock got the team’s first couple of points in years to come, would that not be a great news story for the team and F1? Glock, a driver with tallent and strong finishes, shoved out on to his backside by Toyota and their pathetic F1 project, who then went to a team which had been built from scratch.

    I’d find that an excellent story. It’s pretty much a certainty that Caterham (Team Lotus) will be the first of the new teams to get points, but I still like the idea that Glock will get a reward for all his hard work, dedication and determination.

  3. A sad state of affairs when this can be said for Glock

    he was thrilled with his qualifying lap in Monaco where he trimmed the deficit to Lotus to half a second

    Lets hope they get into it next year under a half new flag and impress and get back some fan support. They started out great amongst the new team with nice outfits, information and everything. But Wirths ideas failed to deliver, possibly because of the budget suddenly being more or less open topped and the team lost a lot of support as they seemed to be lost this year as well.

  4. The fact they seemed to do better than HRT most of the time is an arguement for having points for every place, it means one freak result would mean less over the course of a season.

    1. Well, Virgin already has some reputation regarding peaking at the wrong moments. Last year they managed to finish behind hrt and this year exactly the same happened. I’d love to see them in front of hrt in the final standings, but for some reason they failed miserably.

    2. @Calum Agreed, it’s as if Renault got 4th in the standings because they made it onto the podium and Mercedes didn’t. Many people criticise how so many drivers get points, I think it wouldn’t be too bad if more got them. Virgin were better than HRT this year and arguably a fair points system would give them 11th place in the standings.

      1. Renault most deffinitely finished 5th behind mercedes in 2011 and 2010 m8 Despite their better podium rate.

        1. I know that, I said that Virgin being behind HRT is as if Renault were in front of Mercedes, unfair. I know Mercedes was 4th and Renault 5th, I was just using it as a comparison for the Virgin/HRT thing.

          1. MSC finnished 4th in Canada compared to Rosberg and Massa’s 5th only. If based on no points system he is ahead of them.

    3. It’s a fantastic argument for having something like negative points or points represented as characters (or otherwise non-championship points) to those classified who do not finish in the points. It would have no effect on the Championship in name, and to go even further, still use the countback rule for anyone technically “classified” in the table, i.e., scoring real points.

      Countback is probably a little unfair to the non-points scoring teams and drivers, but I don’t mind the official Championship deciding NC terms that way, either.

    4. It is also an argument for going back to the scenario where no extra monies are awarded unless a team actually scores a point. Then it wouldn’t really matter if you came 11th or 12th in the season.

    5. I like that points have a high value. If attaining them is (relatively) difficult it makes them more special. Yes it annoying for teams that don’t score at all, but perhaps that should be motivation for them to finish in the top 10 more often :p

      1. Also, I think it is right that points should increase exponentially, so the difference between 1st and 2nd is a lot more than 9th and 10th. If points went down to 24th and then increased exponentially then wins would be worth 100+ possibly. Values that high just become frustrating to look at. I don’t know why, but the all-round ridiculousy huge numbers on points tables for NASCAR put me off- the numbers are all so big that I lose scope of the relative difference between drivers/teams.

  5. Nonetheless Glock has pledged his long-term future to this team which is a bold move for the former GP2 champion given their lack of success so far.

    I think Glock simply has a realistic view on the situation. He knows that many talented and / or very experienced drivers like Trulli, Sutil, Barrichello, Heidfeld and Hulkenberg are struggling to find available F1 race seats these days, while words like “sponsorship package” have lately become even more common than they were before in F1. So Glock can try to arrange a short-term deal with some midfield team without any certainty over the future or he can settle down at Virgin/Marussia, which gives him a crappy car at the moment but some stability and kind of guarantee of an F1 race seat for some years.

    I believe Glock just prefers a stable F1 race seat to a high probability of ending up in DTM in a year or two. Moreover, I guess there are clauses in his contract that allow him to leave Virgin under certain circumstances.

    1. the season before he went to virgin he finished 2nd in singapore for toyota……what a fall

  6. Both HRT & Virgin racing should be banned.In the past teams like Minardi & Jordan at least used to proudce some great F1 drivers (Alonso,Webber,Fishichello) but these two teams are just hopeless.

    1. @wasif1 Well HRT has Ricciardo who might become a future champion. Talking about the large gap to the leaders, they aren’t much different from Minardi. Of course, I hope that both HRT & Virgin will make a step forward and won’t be lagging so far behind next year but I also strongly believe that F1 needs backmarkers as much as it needs Red Bulls and Ferraris.

      1. @Girts I agree with you about Riccardo but I don’t think it was HRT’s plan to have them,Red Bull knew that they need money & Red Bull have a driver to feed somewhere so they just put Ric there.I agree that F1 needs backmarkers but not people who sometimes struggle to even qualify within the rules.

        1. A rule that is ignored 99% of the time for the sake of common sense. Not to mention there has long been much larger gaps in performance from the leaders to the backmarkers over much more dangerous eras without everyone raising a ruckus over it.

          I’d rather there be more teams racing even if some of them are slower than have a sparse field. We don’t need 50 cars, but a 20 car field would be pretty lame.

          1. @Joey-Poey

            A rule that is ignored 99% of the time for the sake of common sense. Not to mention there has long been much larger gaps in performance from the leaders to the backmarkers over much more dangerous eras without everyone raising a ruckus over it.

            Hear, hear!

          2. Bring back pre-qualifying, and give anyone who wants a go a go?

        2. @wasiF1 The rule states ‘at the stewards discretion’. If the steward allows them to race, they are within the rules. Their is really no way they can break the rule, unless they started without actually being allowed to do so.

    2. So they should be banned because A) They are not fast enough, and B) Because they don’t have enough future champions in the teams? (Excluding Ricciardo as they are being payed to race him so he doesn’t count.)

      O.o
      Crazy man.

      By that logic, We’d have got rid of Force India years ago.

      1. Thank you!

    3. @wasiF1 Gonna have to disagree with you on this one! They should not be banned, they should be encouraged to climb the F1 ladder. We all know that F1 is a pain-staking process and success does not come over night. It’s very much a 1 step back, 2 steps forward game. From a technical point of view, this sport is always developing and so should the methods of getting into F1. Money or rather the issue of money doesn’t help an awful lot. But don’t scrutinise those brave enough to tough it out, scrutinise the system for making it that way.

      1. @AndrewTanner Well I have posted my opinion but have to respect yours.

  7. I really hope that for 2012 there isn’t this clear bottom 3 teams anymore, this gap to the midfield needs to close, the “New Team” tag and excuse is now gone.

    I’ll be disappointed if we arrive in Melbourne in March and it’s the same old Q1 story of Lotus(soon to be Caterham) Virgin(Marussia) and HRT way off the pace and nearly no hope of getting into Q2 and then the whole session becoming about who the other driver to be knocked out will be, i want a competitive Q1 in 2012! Please close the gap!

    1. I totally agree with you. The fact is that there will always be three bottom teams. In the ideal scenario we would have all the teams on more or less the same level where the places are determined by pure racing alone. Would make F1 a lot more interesting and competitive.

    2. I stopped calling them new teams during this year because they were no longer new also, virgin? have the record for most gp starts with out a point. Granted in different circumstances from the previous record holder but for me at this point you have to classify them all simply as stuggling f1 teams.

      After reading some posts here though i’m starting to wonder if virgin are cursed. Glock is a better driver than most people would say liuzzi klien senna karun sakon or pedro are. Most of the year they have been slower than the virgins yet one lucky result just like last year gets hrt ahead. Virgins 2nd seat is seemingly cursed since the last 2 guys in it got one season and don’t look to be coming back ever *DESPITE* matching timo on multiple occasions both of them, d’ambrosio even finished 23rd in the drivers champ ahead of glock 24th. Ontop of that they have the record as already stated for most starts with out a point a record they would share with hrt had hrt managed to qualify for all the races lol! It just seems no matter what they do it backfires and thats with out mentioning their cfd design approach.

  8. Of the Lotus, Virgin and HRT trio, Lotus seems to be the only ones who is taking F1 seriously. I dont know what will Lotus do but HRT and Virgin will be filling the last 2 rows next year again. You cant expect different results if you keep doing the same things. Do we even know what their plans are for next year?

  9. Does anybody know how marussia is fairing these days?
    Maybe they can poor more money in, which should help a bit.

    And as we’ve probably seen nothing of the McLaren cooperation yet, I wonder what next year’ll bring.

    My ten cents: the ‘new’ teams will close the gap a bit more, but in the end, they will continue to be in the last three palces of the championship.

  10. which is a bold move for the former GP2 champion given their lack of success so far.

    To be honest, I think it’s Glock’s only move if he wants to stay in F1. I don’t think any other team would have him.

    1. they would of for 2010

  11. I always wondered what results would be like if F1 was scored more like golf. ie. Lowest score wins.

    You get your end of year score by adding up all your results, and whoever has the lowest number wins. Failing to start (DNS/DNQ) or failing to finish (DNF) gets you 25 points.

    This year, Vettel would have 28 points, plus 25 from his DNF in Abu Dhabi, making 53. Webber would be second with 85, including 25 for his one DNF.

    Anyway, thats besides the point, if this system were used for teams who didn’t score any points, adding up all results from this year, Lotus would have 703, Virgin 737, and HRT 797.

    HRT are a long way behind, often finishing further back than Virgin, and gaining a higher (therefore worse) score because of it. Yet because of one single 13th place in one race that was never again replicated, Virgin end up plumb last.

    1. Very interesting, thanks for posting. Though it has few flaws I reckon. For example, if driver A finished 5th in 6 races and driver B won 5 of them and retired in the other one, they’d both have 30 points. That seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?

      1. Yeah, that’s the only thing. It really penalises retirements. I’m sure there’s probably a better way to go about it.

        1. @ajokay Maybe if a driver would keep their best 15 results or something like that? Though that wouldn’t award reliability and consistency at all :)

  12. Next year will be the 1st and best chance we have of seeing ‘where’ Marussia actually are. They will have designed a car under ‘normal’ procedures, of Windtunnels and CFD and no Nick Wirth in sight of it all. If they can find some pace, and theres plenty to be found, you would fancy them to actually be finishing in front of HRT next season. No disrespect to HRT, but they have somehow found themselves infront of Virgin for the last 2 seasons in the WCC, and yet havent had the better car.
    Next year will be the make/break of both Marussia & HRT, with Lotus (Caterham) seemingly progressing forward, and the possibility of the RRA on the brink of collapse.

  13. sid_prasher (@)
    5th December 2011, 17:47

    HRT hasn’t really gone anywhere – they haven’t been able to update the car in 2 years…if they can’t find funding they should just sell the team and let some one else try.

    1. They have already been bought out by a rich spaniard, I believe the plan is that they will have substantialy more money to spend next year but i could be completely wrong.

  14. I hope HRT will battle with them evenly next year. Lotus will be even further ahead.

  15. I’ve thought for ages that points should go right the way down to last place, because I’ve never heard a good explanation for why they don’t. I don’t get why the slower teams whose staff work just as hard as the staff in the fast teams shouldn’t have something to show from each race weekend that proves how well they did compared to the other cars around them, as what happened to Virgin this year can hardly be called a fair sporting competition. I don’t think anyone would disagree that Virgin were a better team than HRT this year, but they have nothing to show for it.

    What if there was a season where one driver finished 11th every single race, but there was another driver that crashed in every race except one, where he finished 10th? The driver that is clearly worse would be classified higher. It is of course an extreme example but proves the flaws of the system.

    I remember Anthony Davidson saying once that the current points system used to work because so many cars retired, meaning the ones that managed to finish got a reward. It simply doesn’t work anymore and it horrendously unfair as this simply isn’t true anymore.

    1. I’ve never heard a good explanation for why they don’t.

      Because the system is corrupt and is designed to keep the top team on top?

    2. I can only agree.
      Of it makes points rare, and a team has to be reasonably good to even get one in a season, but the battle below the points are screwed, as consistency is irrelevant, you just need that single good result, which will usually come from being lucky anyway.
      I think points down to last place, would have its negatives, but it would make the battle for the last places fair.
      Virgin was clearly the 11th best team, and had there been points down to last place they would surely have been 11th in the standings, but because of the countback, a single mistake lost them everything.
      Which of cause can happen, but I want consistency to matter at the back of the grid, as well as the front, rather then the last 3 places being decided mostly by luck.
      I think it is sad that the battle for 10th place is decided by the teams respective performance and positions at a SINGLE race of the season where a lot of the cars in front fall off the road, instead of their respective performance over the whole season.

  16. At the end of the day Glock as good as he may be made a mistake and when you make a mistake you have to expect that it will cost you and in this case it ultimately cost Virgin (Marussia)12th place in the Constructors Championship.

    Liuzzi for all his critics did a better job that day in very difficult conditions and ultimately won HRT 12th place in the Championship and the extra prize money that comes with that.

    1. themagicofspeed (@)
      5th December 2011, 22:41

      Prize money is not applicable to teams scoring no points, nor are the sports profits distributed to teams finishing lower than 10th place in the WCC. Thats why Lotus were so happy to finish 10th for the 2nd year running, as it means they get a share of the profits from FOM, while HRT and Virgin get little or nothing.

      1. From what i read about the subject, it seems there is a bit of money to divide between the teams that are not in the top ten but its about 10 Million/team, a far cry from the 35-40 that 10th placed Lotus gets now that its finished in the top 10 for 2 years on the run (the other top 10 finishers get more)

  17. themagicofspeed (@)
    5th December 2011, 22:37

    Virgin have been such a flop, an embarrased Richard Branson denied them the investment they desperately needed, and distanced himself from the team to save himself the reputation rididule. In fact, it appears he has sold it completely to russian car manufacturer Marussia, who previously were a sponsor, then a major shareholder. You never, ever see him or any senior Virgin people at the races. Frankly i dont blame them, because its an embarrasment. Virgin could have easily provided the investment needed to push the team up the grid (look at the Red Bull case study; Masechitz bought a mid-field team and, over a few years, made the right choices, recruited the best technical staff in the business, and invested massively in the technical facilities, and created the well-oiled championship winning machine that is modern day RBR. He was not afraid to invest what ive no doubt will be a surprisingly small amount of his Red Bull fortune, employing the right people to create a winning team.

  18. Inevitably three teams will be the bottom. If its not Lotus, Virgin and HRT it would probably be Williams, Sauber and Toro Rosso. Reliability is just so good these days that its almost impossible for a backmarker to get a fluke result.

  19. Points in F1 should be HARD to get, 25 points for a race win is way to much.

    1. @matt2208 It’s all relative. I think it actually makes for greater clarity between the GP2/GP3 series.

  20. I reckon we’d be complaining a lot less if the three ‘bottom’ teams were at least close on performance. They never seem to be having any good scraps like you get in GP2/V8 supers/BTCC etc. It would be good if they could all at least find the same level, even if that’s still behind the midfield.

    1. Personally I think its only reasonable that its hard to even get close to the long established teams. If anything, it shows how the F1 field really is at an enormously high level.

      Just imagine someone coming in, spending about the same level as the midfield teams (Lotus) and immediately beating several experienced and established teams to it. Wouldn’t that mean, that the teams we had before they came in were giving us only lacklustre performance?

      Instead these newer teams show its really the work of several seasons to build up a slick operation and field a car that can even fight the back of the experienced teams on the grid.

  21. Look how long it took Rebull before they started winning races. Look how long it took STR before they won a race.
    And they didn’t even set up these teams from scratch, they bought already existing teams.
    Speaking out of ignorance, is expexting a 2year old to run at the same pace as a teenager.

    Perhaps the situation WilliamsF1 find themselves in will put things in much better perspective. They are not much faster than the new teams, despite having the infrastructure and experience.
    F1 is not like the Internet where you can have successful companies overnight. Selling nothing but time wasting activities.

    What is 2 years, when you have teams that are over 50, 30, 20 years in the sport.

  22. I think it’s unfair that Virgin should be last, as they were clearly better than HRT this year in terms of pace and reliability. Therefore, I’ve come up with a different way to judge the standings based on consistency rather than one singular result, and it would look something like this:

    Each position is added up over a season, for example, coming 19th and then 18th would add up to 37, and a retirement would equal 24. This not only rewards consistency and reliability, but that singular good result as well. It basically forms an average finishing position when dividing the number you’ve added up by the number of races that the driver had competed in.

    I calculated this and the results change from:

    21. Trulli
    22. Kovalainen
    23. Liuzzi
    24. D’Ambrosio
    25. Glock
    26. Karthikeyan
    27. Ricciardo
    28. Chandhok

    10. Lotus
    11. HRT
    12. Virgin

    To…

    21. Kovalainen – AFP (Average finishing position) = 18 (Who was better than Trulli for most of the season I thought, and this reflects that)
    22. Trulli – AFP = 18.4
    23. D’Ambrosio – AFP = 19.05
    24. Glock – AFP = 19.78
    25. Chandhok (The only possibly unfair result) – AFP = 20
    26. Ricciardo – AFP = 20.83
    27. Karthikeyan – AFP = 20.88
    28. Liuzzi – AFP = 21.16

    Crucially, the constructor’s would change to:

    10. Lotus – AFP = 18.2 (18.8 with Chandhok’s result)
    11. Virgin – AFP = 19.415
    12. HRT – AFP = 20.95

    With the exception of Chandhok’s position, I think that this is a much fairer way of deciding the teams and drivers who do not score points, and the standings easily reflect the better drivers and teams over the course of an entire season as opposed to just one result.

    Possibly, for the drivers, they need to enter at least 3 races to gain an average finishing position and enter the driver standings.

    Also, NCs DNS and DNQ I have counted as adding 24 on, although if they’re considered worse than DNFs then it could be easily remedied to reflect that.

    1. What about karthikeyan? He only did half a season and whilst i don’t remember the finishing positions i remember coming away with the distinct impression that liuzzi outdrove him everytime they were both in the car.

      Rather than averages which would probably turn out largely like the bernie patent medal system. I think points down to 1 for 24th place increasing by 1 for each position up to 10th or 6th. Where you could then start putting in the points differentials we have now would give a more accurate representation of the season. If this were the case though you would need to increase the ammount of points for the top places from what they are now to keep the importance of podium finishes wins and top 10 or 6 results.

  23. I’m really torn over this team.

    On the one hand, they ditched Wirth as they knew he wasn’t going to take them anywhere. A bold move, particularly mid-season. They effectively admitted they were writing off this season but with a view to kick-starting 2012 with a bang.

    However, ditching D’Ambrosio hasn’t impressed me. I’m not naive enough to believe that talent comes before money in the lower realms of the grid but perhaps I could forgive them if Marussia hadn’t just taken control of the team. I could sympathise a little more but I don’t think Pic is ready for F1 yet and I certainly don’t think D’Ambrosio has had a fair shot. It’s difficult to see how he could have actually done any better, but then again, I guess that doesn’t matter.

    So in conclusion, not a great season but given that they pretty much admitted that as soon as they did makes me optimistic.

  24. People are coming up with some crazy points systems that unfortunately don’t make any mathematical sense! A system where the driver gets low points for a good result and high points for a bad result is obviously just the reverse of extending the points down to last place! So whats the point? It’s much more natural to have (and much easier to follow) a system where more = better.

    Plus, there would only be one point between first and second place, just as there would only be one point between 23rd and 24th place. Remember when the points system was overhauled a few years ago and everyone was saying that there should be a greater reward for a win? There’s no scope for that in a reverse system.

    And averaging out the points the drivers have with the number of races they’ve completed? Whats the point?!? There are no positives to this (as points down to last place would accurately represent the performance of each and every driver over a whole season) and a load of negatives! So Alonso wins the first race of the season, and then doesn’t race again… he ends up with an average score of 1 and wins the championship! It would be impossible for another driver to beat his average unless they only competed in one race themselves and won. And what about drivers that only do a few races? Chandhok could do one race and finish 20th so have 20 points, whereas Liuzzi could race all year and also have an average points score of 20, so according to the points he is no better than chandhok. It simply doesn’t work! You’d have to start adding rules about number of races competed in, which would be useless as why not just count the points normally. If every driver competes in 20 races, whats the point of dividing every drivers score by 20? It wouldn’t change any results, they’d just have smaller numbers.

    And 25 being too much for a race win? Err what? That can only be judged relative to what you get for the other positions, and the percentage difference between 1st and 2nd is the same as it was when the points went to 8th. The number itself couldn’t be more irrelevant if you wanted it to be. And besides, I bet you preferred the points to 6th place, right? Well the percentage difference was even bigger then, so how can 25 be too much as it is smaller?

    It’s like when the points were extended to 10th place, everyone was saying they were pleased that a win was being awarded more. There was no difference, its exactly the same gain over second as it was before!

    Maths lesson over.

    1. If you’re referring to my post at all in that speech, then you’re wrong, as my suggestion was only for teams and drivers who do not score points, and therefore the results are justified.

      I didn’t say anywhere that the points system should be over-hauled or changed in anyway, as I believe the points are fine as they are. But there needs to be a better system in place for the teams in the situation that we’ve had in the last two years to quantify who deserves each place.

      1. You mentioned yourself that the chandhok result would be unfair, I was just trying to explain this and the other flaws and inadequacies of the various alternative points systems people like to come up with every now and again from a mathematical point of view. I was basically trying to explain how and why a normal points system extended down to last place is the only viable option if people want to fairly represent the performance of all drivers over a season.

        My examples may not have been about the exact situation you were talking about but the same ideas hold true. Say glock managed to nab an 11th place at the first grand prix, he could then not race again for the rest of the season and would most likely beat all the other “new team” drivers and Virgin would most probably finish 10th in the constructors. Doesn’t matter if HRT finished 12th in every race, Virgin would still beat them.

        Hence there are inherent flaws no matter how you look at it.

        1. Well, not really, because I said that there should be exceptions made in the case of drivers who only participate in one race, and therefore aren’t part of the standings.

          And in the circumstance you mentioned, Virgin wouldn’t finish 10th as the other drivers for Virgin would also be put into the frey, meaning that if Glock did have one race, where he finished 11th, and HRT finished 12th in every race, with the second driver 13th in every race and the other Virgin driver not being able to equal that over a season, then HRT WOULD finish in front of them.

          If you assess the calculations properly then you will see that there are very few flaws, and the ones you have pointed out are easily remedied, as I have said.

          1. From the drivers point of view:

            I understand you are thinking about the teams rather than the drivers, but do you really want to separate scoring system into one for the constructors and one for the drivers? (not to mention that this is only for the teams that don’t score points) That would be extremely odd to say the very least (just imagine the fuss if Bernie suggested separating them), so you have to have them the same.

            So what about the drivers that don’t compete in 2 races? Or 3? Or 4? Or 10? Where do you draw the line?

            Should only drivers that have completed a whole season be eligible? Bit harsh on Liuzzi who missed a race so that Nahrain could race, so we’ll let him enter. But then there’s another driver who only missed two races so we’ll let him in as well. But then there’s a driver that only missed four races, and he’s not very happy about the exceptions…

            So shall we let drivers that have completed half a season be eligible? Well there’s a driver that had a terrible second half of the season because his team decided to stop development to work on next years car, so all of the good results he had in the first half of the near are negated. However, his team mate left the team half way through the year, so now he’s at a disadvantage because his team mate has only got his good results so he is classified higher. He’d have been better of not racing for the second half of the season as there was no way he could have beaten him.

            Hmm, hardly a fair sporting competition is it.

            There shouldn’t have to be any “exceptions” or “remedies” because that means the system is flawed! Ever wondered why sometimes the “new” version of Windows requires more computing power but offers little benefit over the last one? Because rather than being built from the ground up it has been patched and altered outside of its original design specifications. Just an example of why any system should be created to specifically solve the problem, not be bodged and altered until it does.

            From the teams point of view:

            Averaging out their finishing positions is the same as giving them more points for the higher they finish, so whats the point? All you’re doing is dividing the reverse points for each team (which of course has the same classification order as a normal points system) by the same number, so nothing changes except the numbers get smaller and you have to have awkward “remedies” for unusual situations, i.e. there are no benefits.

            There aren’t any calculations to assess, just thinking logically about the alternative solution compared to the problem and existing solution shows up the flaws.

      2. Erm you can’t have averages and points because for instance torro rosso have had top 10 finishes and well below top 10 finishes how do you work out an average on less than 10th place finish + x points? you need one system.

        1. Why would you need an average finishing position for a team that scored points? They’d already have a set position based on those.

          It’s only a way of determining the Constructor positions of the teams who don’t score points more fairly than it currently is.

          1. You were talking about the drivers championship as well. Which is in just as much need of “fixing” if indeed the constructors is. Having two different systems for teams and drivers is also extremely silly because it’s overcomplicating it.

            So let’s examin what would happen in the drivers championship in your system. if rubens got 11th place at every grandprix he would be 11th in the drivers standings, ahead of heidfeld kamui di resta and alguersuari this season who all got more than 20 points. Even if you say a driver or team can’t be above anyone who has scored points again you are over complicating it. Most arm chair viewers the larger portion of the several million people watching grandprix racing don’t know or care as much as people on f1 fanatic. There’s people out there who still don’t understand when they are allowed to use drs and you’re talking about making a scoring system on averages specificly if a team or driver doesn’t score points during a whole season. So they can then be ordered amongst other teams whose results are done on the averages system effectivly making a points championship and an averages championship one on the other. To much.

            Considering you’re changing the goal posts with each post i think i’ll just say you havn’t thought this through enough.

  25. themagicofspeed (@)
    6th December 2011, 21:55

    I agree that, if the bottom three were a tad more competitive, say 1-2s rather than 2.5-4s off the pace, it would not be so annoying. Drivers like Vettel, Alonso, et al, must get so annoyed having to lap them every 15-20 laps or so. Few of the back marker drivers have much respect for blue flags.

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