[Theo Parkinson]

Recently I looked back at some old f1 fanatic articles and I stumbled upon an article about the 2009 medal system/winner takes all system and I noticed it provoked a similar reaction to double points. My question is what is worse to you, Double points or medals?

[matt90]

The problem with medals was the inconsistency. Only first place was decided by race wins, all other were still by points. Take this scenario come the ends of the season.

Hamilton – 90 points, 5 wins
Alonso – 95 points, 4 wins
Vettel – 100 points, 3 wins

With the points system, you have
1st – Vettel -100
2nd – Alonso -95
3rd – Hamilton -90

With medals
1st – Hamilton -5 wins
2nd – Vettel -3 wins
3rd – Alonso -4 wins

How does that make any sense? Either you order it by best results or you order by points, but not both.

Both ideas suffer from a completely unsporting scoring premise, so are actually pretty similar to me, although medals had the added complication of completely altering what is an established method for ordering the competitors in just about any motorsport championship. Tradition for the sake of tradition can sometimes be stifling, but unnecessary changes can also be damaging- and in this case rewarding the highest finishing positions only seems counter-productive. It fails to reward consistency or making the most of a bad situation (why care about a great recovery drive by a top driver if it doesn’t even net them 18 potentially useful points, but only a totally inconsequential 3rd place?). If a driver found themselves in a truly hopeless position you would be far more likely to see intentional retirements to save the car.

So for me, medals was worse as it was an unfair scoring system with an additional dodgy premise.

[Kingshark]

Medals wouldn’t even have been such a bad idea if there was some consistency.

[Jimbo]

Medals but not the way as envisioned by Bernie/FIA. All they had to do was give 0 points for everything and then this part of the sporting regs would kick in:

“In the case of a dead heat for a championship place then the driver or constructor with the higher number of superior race results will be awarded the place.”

They could still give gold, silver and bronze medals to make them feel better.

[Author]

Posts