Radical rule change to save F1
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I really want to share this idea I’ve been having in my mind for many months. We’ve seen Lewis Hamilton lose the Monaco Grand Prix on strategy, and now the Strategy Group plans to walk backwards by introducing refuelling again. It all sounds like nonsense to me
Pitstops were born out of necessity, but if we’ve outgrown that necessity why should we hang on to it. It’s simply not right that pitstop strategies – planned by white collar individuals before their laptops and not drivers sweating it out in the cockpit – decide race results.
My plan is radical, and you may want to laugh out loud when you listen to it at first, but I hope you’ll understand the reasoning behind it because I genuinely care for the sport like all of you do. It’s just that the current way people think in the sport is seriously hampering my capability to enjoy and appreciate Formula 1.
Why not do away with pitstops totally? We don’t need them. Let’s have tyres lasting a whole race (and more, in case of safety car) and let drivers be able to race flat out. Now you’ll be asking me, if pitstops aren’t there, where would the excitement come from? The answer is overtaking – awarding points for overtaking and defense. We need to overhaul the points system whereby every successful overtaking move would entitle one point and every successful defense half point. This would apply right from the first place till the last equally.
It must work like this:
Overtaking
A successful overtaking move must be termed as one in which the overtaker manages to place his whole car (from the front wing to the diffuser) ahead of the defender – this awards 1 point for the overtaker.Defense
A successful defense must be termed as one in which the defender manages to keep the overtaker behind him after he has made at least three advances within a lap. This awards ½ point for the defender.Overtaker
An overtaker must be termed as someone who makes at least three advances on the defender (the car ahead) within a lap. An advance must be termed as a move in which the overtaker manages to bring 3/4th of his car side-by-side of the defender.If this points system is implemented, we will see overtaking, and lots of it – whether there is DRS or not, dirty air or not. The rear-end teams have something to fight for. Even if damage is incurred for a driver while making an overtaking move, and that damage causes him to retire from the race later, he still leaves the race with a point. It gives additional motivation to overtake – the more the overtaking for one driver, the greater the points he accumulates. Drivers would also want others to attempt overtaking moves on them, so they can defend and gain points.
Don’t you think this is a winning formula?
If these are implemented I would also recommend the race duration to be reduced. This would keep away the tedium.
If these moves are implemented, I am pretty sure an F1 race would be more thrilling than a football match, there would be more and more people wanting to catch the action, it would increase television viewership thanks to more action on the track, and drivers would be able to race flat out without the silly and enforced need to preserve tyres.Above all, it would ensure that there wouldn’t be races where the chess board decides the result instead of the driver in the cockpit.
I admire your lateral thinking, but wouldn’t two drivers just get together and keep overtaking each other to rack up points?
Good outside the box thinking, but for my mind, I like that fact that 3second pitstops exist, and the strategy behind the pitstops. It is interesting to figure out when to use them, when not to. It makes it smarter than the hick racing series we see in other countries. Furthermore, I love the fact that the team are then involved in the racing.
I know I’m in the minority, as most people follow a single driver, but I think motor racing is about finding the best team, this includes, car, driver, pit crew, and staff. I know we get boring seasons from time to time, but I for one wasn’t calling RBR’s win streak a domination, because what we are whitnessing from Mercedes is pure domination. But good on them, for having the best team…
Can’t help but feel it’d be biased hugely against the leaders. If you’re in first, how are you supposed to overtake? We will end up with the leader getting the fewest points at most races.
I appreciate all your responses – of course there are things to fine tune in this.
Good point you made, but overtaking would not be happening every now and then. And it’s only one point for an overtake. The points for a win must be raised so that the possibility for the winner grabbing lesser points than some of those behind him is reduced. Besides, the leader can still accumulate points by defending.
@John HThat’s really a possibility – there probably would need to be some rule enforced which says that once a successful overtaking has been made by driver B on driver A and then driver A on driver B or vice versa, the same two cannot be eligible for points for subsequent successful overtakings on each other except at a later stage in the race, at least 10 laps later.
Isn’t it sort of what we already have? The more cars you overtake, the higher the position you finish in, the more points you get… Therefore the incentive to overtake is already there.
I would tweak it so that getting any part of the car alongside is an advance, while you might like to have it as front wheels alongside rear wheels of the car in front etc. which would encourage late braking and moves down the inside, and for any advance not 3 a lap (impossible on some circuits). Do you think this would award too many points?
Also, I take it the points would change to something like 50, 43, 37, 32, 28, 25, 23, 22, 21, 20… Would there also be points for pole and fast lap then? 4 and 2?
Changing the points will never make the sport greatly better. All drivers would overtake if they had the chance, the problem is that they have difficulty doing so, meaning the issue is in the design of the cars/tires/track etc and not because of a mindset.
@Iestyn Davies
Yes, points system would have to transform to the kind you’ve suggested so that ultimately the top three do come out of the race with the greatest points haul. And since the objective of this points-for-overtaking-and-defence system is to make racing more exciting and driving more flat out, I think fastest lap should also be awarded with points but not pole position.
The definition for an “advance” would have to be fine tuned. I just suggested the basic principle which I think is more or less ok because it wouldn’t result in too many points being awarded.
The incentive to overtake may be there but it isn’t strong enough. In spite of the DRS we still have processions rather than races. Something needs to break the tedium.
The introduction of the higher rear wing and DRS was to make the design of the cars more conducive for overtaking. But it simply hasn’t happened. If an 18th place driver overtakes the 17th place guy, it makes no difference to the overall points tally for him or the team. But if he overtakes in this system he gets a point, and if the 17th place guy defends he gets half a point too. So it can’t be ignored that the motivation and incentive is greater with this points-for-overtaking-and-defence system.
@pt DRS has noticeably increased overtaking, there’s no denying that. The only problem obviously is that it’s too artificial, leaving the driver in front almost completely defenceless in a DRS zone. Also, it was very much a knee-jerk reaction, as 2010 saw much more overtaking than was seen for much of the refuelling era.
F1 shouldn’t place too much of an emphasis on overtaking, although I do concede that it should not be totally impossible for cars to pass each other on track, and as someone mentioned before the solution to that perhaps lies in a revision of the aerodynamic rules. I cannot agree that drivers need more of an incentive to overtake one another. If they did they would not be racing drivers. Your point on a battle for 17th and 18th does not hold true – at least not in the past few years when Caterham and Marussia (and HRT) were battling for positions that were worth the same in terms of points, but not under countback – see for example Kobayashi vs. Bianchi at last year’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Overtaking (or a lack of it) is not a central problem within the sport, and introducing a points system for it would do nothing to save it, as the thread title implies. In fact, I think it would only complicate it further. However, that said, I do somewhat agree with the point regarding pitstops, though I do not think that pitstops should be done away with altogether, rather that the tyres could be more conservative, at least to a point where there isn’t too much tyre saving in races. and the “both compounds” rule is totally unnecessary.
To improve the sport, some simple approach must be mantained. I think having the points restored to 2013 standards is good enough.
If we have these points for overtaking, it would need a points reorganization as IRL or Indy, but that is so hard to follow.
I would agree with you if there would be JUST ONE POINT for the driver who improved his position the most places during a race. It would not diminish the effort done by top drivers (as, let’s say, Hamilton, wouldn’t choose to start last and try to win the race to get 26 points, when you know it’s too risky and he may end up with nothing) but for a Manor, it could be a good chance for them to try a risky strategy to finish, let’s say, 15th, but having recovered 5 or 6 places, it would recognize their effort.@Simtek
Really appreciate your response.
I think F1 can never place too much emphasis on overtaking. Overtaking IS racing. It goes back to the basic principle of what “racing” means – lining up to complete the course ahead of the others. In other words when we go to a race we want to see how the grid shakes up after the race is over – how can the grid shake up unless there is no overtaking?
Shaking up the grid through pit-stops is, in my opinion, not pure racing. Pit-stops were introduced at a time when cars did not carry enough fuel to complete a race, and tyres could not be made to last for long. But now we have fuel to complete a race, and tyres can also be made to last a whole race – so why have an external element like a pitstop determine the outcome of a race when the action should happen out on the course? If pit-stop strategies determine who wins or loses the race, the whole Mercedes-Benz AMG team should have stood with Nico Rosberg on the top step at Monaco.
If team staff members with laptops decide who comes to the pits and when, and this in turn decides the race result, where is true racing? And what are the drivers racing for? That’s why I felt pitstops should be eliminated – it isn’t true racing. So if pitstops are eliminated, where does the action take place – on the track? How? Through overtaking.
Overtaking is the soul of racing and it never can be overemphasized. And, as you said, it isn’t the kind of overtaking the DRS offers. That’s why my points idea would reward both overtaking and defending. That said, I don’t think my points idea is not gonna make overtaking so common that people get bored of it. It would only make overtaking more frequent than it is now. This combined with a lack of need for tyre preservation would give thrilling, flat out, unadulterated racing sans the tedium, particularly when the race duration is also shortened…
@OmarR-Pepper – Vettel 40 victories!!!
Appreciate your suggestion – seems a lot less radical. However I don’t think one point for the most position-improving driver would make much of a difference.
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