Mandatory pit stop plan scrapped

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Plans to force drivers to pit twice per race during 2014 have been dropped.

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Formula 1 teams reject proposal to enforce two pit stops (BBC)

“The proposal received no support from the teams at Monday’s meeting of F1’s rules strategy group.”

Vettel against double points rule change (Reuters)

“‘F1 demeans itself with double points gimmick,’ declared a headline on the F1 Fanatic website, whose poll of more than 700 members showed 90 per cent opposed to the idea.”

Formula 1 to award double points for final race from 2014 (The Times, subscription required)

“Fans immediately took to Twitter and website forums to criticise the idea. One site, F1 Fanatic, carried out a poll that found 91 per cent of respondents were against the idea.”

(NB. Both figures for the percentage of voters were correct when the respective articles were published)

F1 champion Vettel slams rule changes (The New Zealand Herald)

“I respect old traditions in the Formula One and I don’t understand the new rule.”

Teams consider postponing Jerez test (Adam Cooper’s F1 Blog)

“It seems that some teams won’t be as ready as they thought they would be, with Lotus apparently pushing the idea of a delay.”

McLaren, Force India won’t run (Sky)

“It now remains to be seen how many of the remaining four teams named on the FIA announcement – Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and Toro Rosso – will be in action at Sakhir.”

Budget cap no easy fix – Whitmarsh (Autosport)

“If we want to do it [introduce a budget cap] we have got a way of doing it, but a minority will always be opportunistic or try to frustrate it.”

Di Resta accused of entrapment as he admits recording Hamilton’s call (Daily Mail)

“‘I didn’t know it was illegal at the time,’ responded Di Resta, 27.”

Paul Di Resta’s Force India days look numbered as he eyes potential Sauber move (The Mirror)

“The only team that really has any possibility is Sauber. There has been nothing other than a chat with my manager.”

Merc ready to beat Red Bull – Rosberg (ESPN)

“We’ve made massive progress and really everybody believes that this team can do it and beat Red Bull.”

Martin Brundle on Formula 1 in 2014 (MotorSport)

“From what I’m hearing, I think it could be complete chaos in the early part of the season.”

World Formula One champion Vettel to become a father (AFP via Google News)

“German magazine Bunte revealed the Formula One star and his long-time girlfriend Hanna are expecting their first child in 2014.”

Tweets

Comment of the day

@Melkurion worked out how the ‘double points’ rule would have changed past championships:

Fangio would lose the 1956 title, but gain the 1953 tile, leaving him with five
Ascari would only be a single instead of a double champion
Hawthorn would lose is one title
Moss would be a (deserved) double champion
Ickx would be champion over Rindt, though I doubt he’d be very happy with it
Gilles Villeneuve would be champion
Scheckter would not
Jones would be a double champion
Piquet would be a double champion instead of a triple
Lauda would be a double champion instead of a triple
Prost would have five titles instead of four
Schumacher would lose one giving him six
Raikkonen would be a double champion
Alonso would be a triple champion
Hamilton would not be a champion
Massa would be
@Melkurion

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Author information

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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103 comments on “Mandatory pit stop plan scrapped”

  1. Chris (@tophercheese21)
    11th December 2013, 0:05

    Well at least that’s some good news about the pit stops.

    Hopefully this double points rule gets ditched as well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single proposal cause this much negative reaction from fans, driver, and media pundits alike. And deservedly so, it’s a ridiculous rule.

    1. I guess they needed something to get racing fans to watch FormulaE. I am surprised the new rules do not include, drivers change their own tires, chugging a beer every 10 laps and drawing a number out of a hat for qualifying.

      1. @yappy mandatory chugging beer pitstop every 10 laps? Now that’s something I’d like to see.

        They could even use the local beverage for each race. Beer for England, Belgium and Germany, wine for Italy and France, sake for Japan…

        Sochi would be fun to watch and we’d definitely need a race in Scotland.

        1. XD wow, brilliant!

    2. If they really want to get action on the track a simple way of doing it would be to award points for an overtake.

    3. Bernie’s medal idea caused an uproar too, not sure how everybody took it though.

    4. petebaldwin (@)
      11th December 2013, 11:38

      The double points rule will go – no doubt. They won’t keep a rule that has attracted such a negative response from fans and highly respected members of the F1 community (including Brundle and Vettel).

      The idea is based around extra money being paid by Abu Dhabi and the idea that fans would prefer this to Vettel winning the WDC with races spare.

      What they have misunderstood is that whilst we want a close Championship, we only want that to occur naturally. I’d rather Vettel win the championship with half the season to go than an artificial one that goes to the final race.

      Hopefully, they’ll understand this and then realise that the same goes for DRS and the tyres!

  2. Good boy FIA, good! Now do the same with the double points.

  3. Kudos to Vettel for being the only one so far to speak about the double points. Meanwhile, Romain was thinking about which number to pick, and Hamilton was posting pictures of both his dogs flying in first class…

    Not blaming them, they will eventually talk about it and they probably have other stuff to do right now, but when such a blatantly stupid move by the rule makeres comes out, one would expect the stars to speak out inmediately… so far, none of htem has said a thing, nor the team I follow on twitter/facebook…

    Considering the response from journalists and other fans, even a joke by Lotus F1 would’ve mean something…

    1. Vet doesn’t need to think about his number #Number1

    2. Vettel is not the only one, nor the first driver, to do that @fer-no65. His new RB teammate Ricciardo was. And given that we have already had Dr. Marko express his disagreement, stating Horner got overruled, I think its clear why the RBR drivers are being vocal but others not, its based on whether their team wants / allows them to say so, so I wouldn’t overvalue the fact its only them saying it.

      1. Horner was overruled? I thought these changes were supposed to have been accepted unanimously!?

      1. @floring
        Delivered big time :D
        That was the best tweet of this season.

      2. Damn, Keith not allowed!

      3. A big improvement on Lotus’s usual annoying crap.

      4. maarten.f1 (@)
        11th December 2013, 14:56

        @floring that is hilarious! hahaha

        I gotta say, I don’t have a Twitter account, but these kind of tweets make it very tempting to get one.

        I actually do want to see point 3 implemented, poor Massa though…

        1. poor Massa though…

          For sure.

  4. Looks like someone’s borrowed the official FIA brain cell from the WEC chaps :-)

  5. Happy to hear Seb has a boy/girl on the way with his long time girlfriend, congrats !

    1. Happy to hear this as well, hopefully he will lose half second from his speed !!!! No seriously if i’m not wrong he will be the 3rd man on the grid to be a father after Felipe and Grosjean or is there any other driver who has already a child ?

      1. I think Maldonado has a baby girl, Kimi probably has a few running around no one knows about :)

        1. This made me laugh far more than it should have :P

        2. +1 hahaha. good one.

      2. @tifoso1989 Maldonado too (earlier this year), appropriately named Victoria.

      3. David not Coulthard (@)
        11th December 2013, 4:05

        Webber? He’s still an F1 driver until January 1st, I think?

        1. @davidnotcoulthard Pretty sure that Webber is not a father.

        2. Not everyone who is “old” has kids, you know. ;-)

    2. Looks like his practice paid off ;)

  6. As much as I dislike Di Resta’s character, as a driver I feel that he is worthy enough to stay in Formula 1, even though he’s obviously not lived up to anywhere near the potential the BBC were hyping him up to back in 2011.

    1. Michael Brown (@)
      11th December 2013, 2:13

      I see him as a solid midfield driver, but better than Sutil.

      1. If Sauber didn’t want/couldn’t pay Hulkenberg, I can’t see why they’d go for Di Resta. Especially not when there are several paydrivers of similar calibre looking for a drive.

  7. y not instead of doubling the last race points … y not each team has like a joker that can double their race points in that exact weekend … and each team should decide before the start of the weekend thats much better that the last race double.

    1. That just increases the amount of random chance being introduced into the sport to affect the outcome of the championship. Winning the WDC would become even more of a lottery if championship contenders luck out and win when they nominate a double points weekend, or their rivals do the same and DNF. A terrible idea.

    2. y not

      Conversely, why?

      1. @matt90 It looks like Nascar might be more your thing if you thing that’s a good idea.

        1. I’m not sure if you’re agreeing with me or misunderstood me (and think I meant that the actual double points thing is okay without tinkering), but, just be be clear, all I’m wondering is how on Earth this proposal is any less awful than the actual one (which is indeed terrible).

  8. Well, good for Vettel that is against the double points….. and has a good reason.
    “You can hardly imagine that on the last match of the Bundesliga season, (soccer) matches are suddenly worth twice as many points,”
    Also congrats to him for his child!I hope this kid becomes someone important in the future…..
    Glad the mandatory pit stops are scrapped, the strategies would be nonsense and the teams would struggle to make them effective.

    And also good for Webber. I’ll just watch WEC next year to see Mark’s races and if the things go well…. victories.

    1. 9*WDC Vettel Jr, one more to beat dad. Is it the car or natural ability? The dilemma of the next generation.

  9. I’m not Webber’s biggest fan, but I imagine that if he was sticking around for 2014 he’d be giving out about the FIA right now, and probably (quite rightly) very publicly. Funny then that it’s his team-mate that’s speaking sense, they’d both agree on something!

    Great news that the mandatory pitstops have been scrapped as an idea. Now we just need enough fan and media backlash against the absurdity of double points to put as much pressure on the FIA as possible. Unfortunately money speaks louder than any amount of passionate fans railing against seeing their sport debased into mere ‘entertainment’ like some tv singing contest, and money is something the Abu Dhabi organisers have plenty of.

  10. Jack (@jackisthestig)
    11th December 2013, 0:42

    Mandatory two stops were proposed, everyone hated the idea and now it’s been scrapped. I cannot envisage anything but the same happening to this double points idea.

    I don’t know what’s going on with the FIA at the moment. They usually seem quite dated, slow and overly cautious when it comes to change yet out of nowhere they suddenly come up with several wild ideas and write them straight into the regulations. The same thing seems to be happening in football with the UEFA President Michele Platini, completely resistant to any form of change or progress for years until recent weeks when he has come out with all sorts of proposal completely out of character.

    I wonder if Greenpeace or some crazed nutter have been spiking the drinks at the meeting rooms of major sports governing bodies.

  11. So Da Costa is planing on using number 13? If so I like him already :)

    1. I don’t think he will be using any number! And someone should tell him not to tweet and drive! ;)

      1. His typing’s not very good, is it?
        I wonder if he lost out to Kvyat because he kept pressing the wrong buttons on the steering wheel.

  12. As people have said, if the FIA could just do away with this double points codswallop then that would be satisfactory. I really just want to forget the whole episode, but I know even if it gets overturned, this one will stick in the memory like the sprinklers and medals ideas.

    1. That’s a response to receiving the pleasing news of the mandatory pit stops plan being scrapped.

    2. Unfortunately, the FIA will lose a lot of money from the teams that the double points was going to earn them if they drop the idea.

  13. Kudos to Vettel for speaking out. I’m relieved that respected people like Brundle are doing the same.

    1. I’m especially pleased at Brundle. It’s important that broadcasters such as Brundle continue to speak out against this. Hopefully popular opinion can shift the FIA away from this madness.

  14. Congratulations to Vettel, given the due date being reported as likely late-July/early-August, his post-Buddh celebration back home seemed to have been productive.

    1. @spdoyle17 Remember how he used to joke about it? The next year is Bianchi hehe
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqvIPTh_FQo

    2. I saw somewhere that she was already 8 months’ pregnant. Who knows though…

  15. Excellent work by @melkurion, well deserved cotd, some FIA apologists were saying that since only 10 Championships were changed it’s ok, but it shouldn’t be ok, and in particular one of them could never be OK, Jochen Rindt could not compete in the last race of the season because he had died in an earlier race crash with a substantial championship lead, double points in the last race would have cheated him of the championship he had earned and died for.

    1. Well said (written) @hohum.

      1. Good point about Rindt; similar thing goes for 2013 Raikkonen.

  16. Noticed all the quotes about F1 Fanatic in the round-up Keith. Looks like someone’s a bit starstruck about how much attention their little website is getting :) Anyway, if the FIA going to award double points, then do it at a race of significance like Monaco or Spa (actually Spa might not be a bad idea). At the very least don’t make Abu Dhabi the last round of 2014 (or even less realistically, move it here).

    1. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      11th December 2013, 2:24

      @somethingwittyer hope you are being just sarcastic.
      What it is important about the press mentions is that in some way everyone of us is making his point across. Let’s continue, let’s sign the virtual petition to show to FIA how important the fans are.

    2. I think its great! Us fans are having our say and some people are listening. This site could be the snowball that starts the avalanche! Its nice to think that our voices are heard.

      Also shows that this site is getting respect and credibility, and rightly so. So well done @keithcollantine for your top work and well done F1fanatics for having mostly well informed, and sometimes passionate opinions!

    3. Also hope the comment is an attempt at sarcasm though it is difficult to detect possible nuances and subtle gestures on the internet.

      The mentions were newsworthy in that major news outlets used Keith’s website as a credible information source and as a way to gauge fan reaction to recent F1 proposals. Our voices have been heard beyond this website. That’s good to know.

    4. @somethingwittyer I won’t deny I’m pleased to see the coverage the poll and comment piece got in the mainstream media.

      Of course the reason they’re featured in the round-up is to point out to those who contributed to the poll that their views are being passed on to an audience beyond those who read F1 Fanatic.

      1. You should be pleased @keithcollantine Well done.

    5. I genuinely felt proud of the F1 Fanatic Team when I saw those tweets and references to everyone’s favorite F1 website. I’ve always experienced frustration when reading the plethora of uniformed, ignorant and often plain disrespectful comments on many popular forums, and I feel privileged to be a member of what is in my opinion the most credible, well-informed, intelligent and engaging of online F1 communities. Thanks and keep up the terrific work!

  17. Good to see the knee-jerk double points proposal getting so roundly, and universally ridiculed by many F1 VIP’s and VIW’s (very important websites!). I haven’t seen a sound argument for it yet. If the FIA has any sense of, and sensitivity to, their core audience’s informed feelings on this ridiculousness, the idea must be canned.

    1. The idea should be canned but my guess is Bernie auctioned off the last race of the season with this double points format to sell it as the most important and expensive race of the year and the FIA went along with it because they will get the equivalent of an extra races worth of points payments from the teams without any extra expenses being incurred, Bernie and Todt wont want to give the money back. Bernie isn’t ruining F1 because he is stupid, Bernie is ruining F1 because he is greedy.

      1. @hohum – Think you are correct and that the teams will not vote this down. It would be like turning down a pay raise, not likely to happen. Funny thing is some people are saying this is to punish Vettel and Red Bull. If past form is any indicator, they would be the ones most likely to benefit from the extra points/prize money.

  18. Actually, about the COTD, Alonso would still be a double WDC and Vettel would be a 4-time WDC.

    Because, if the teams already knew that Brazil 2012 was double points, Red Bull would have made Webber drop from 4th to 6th giving Vettel 5th place and hence the championship to Vettel.

    1. Good point. Might be worth checking the other races in a bit more detail as well.

    2. @Sumedh Actually, I don’t think it is true.

      Vettel had 13 points more than Alonso.

      Alonso came second, so would have received 18×2=36 points.

      Therefore, Vettel would have to get at least 23 points to still be champion. This would have meant fourth place.

      Letting Webber drop to 6th would not have been enough – Webber would have had to crash into Hulkenberg in fact and take them both out to ensure Vettel becomes champion. I doubt he would have gone that far.

  19. Can someone explain the Di Resta / Hamilton case? I don’t know anything about it, but it sounds like Hamilton has repeatedly perjured himself and is basically a scumbag.

    1. @chaddy, you should not make those kind of assumptions when you know nothing about it, google it.

    2. @chaddy From what I understand Hamilton is suing di Resta for wrongful dismissal. Di Resta sacked Hamilton as his manager in early 2012 after Hamilton is said to have lied about securing a sponsorship deal. For obscure reasons Hamilton believes that this (which would be considered gross misconduct in most lines of work) does not constitute valid grounds for dismissal.

    3. To be honest, I haven’t followed the story; it’s of little interest to me. I did read one report about the case, yesterday, on one of the big sports websites. The website – which I’m not going to name – is one of the big sites that covers all sports.

      Anyway, I read the comments attached to the report, mainly out of curiosity. I could not believe the racist abuse that was being hurled at Hamilton senior. One comment contained a racial epithet that I won’t lower myself to repeat here. I would imagine that comment has been deleted by now. Other comments include some vile, racial slurs and some of those comments were still up, as of a few minutes ago.

      Depressing to find out that sort of abuse is allowed on a sports website.

  20. “From what I’m hearing, I think it could be complete chaos in the early part of the season,” he replied. It appears that teams are less than convinced that their new hybrid systems are going to be reliable, at least at first.”

    Come on Martin, you know that this era of hyper-reliability only came to being relatively recently. Mechanical breakdowns are a part of the sport, always have been, always will be. Now I’m glad that the gearbox in my road car doesn’t decide to seize up every morning on the way to work, but we all expect a highly strung racing car to give up the ghost from time to time. A few more retirements in races will add a nice variable to the sport and will allow Marussia and Caterham to get a more realistic sniff of scoring a few points, which can only be a good thing as it makes results like Webber 5th place in Australia 2002 possible again. The fact that the teams won’t be as ready as they’d like is a result of many things (lack of funds due to tough economic conditions, lack of testing time) but you can’t honestly say it is a bad thing for the sport if we get a few rouge results at the start of next season.

    1. I think that its a really good thing to have too @geemac, its one of the things we missed in recent years, the uncertainty that a fast car would really make it to the flag

    2. Me too @geemac, It won’t matter a damn how far out in front the leader is if there is every chance he will be stopping on the track before the finish, in the days of engines stressed to their absolute limit it was never over until the chequered flag dropped.

    3. What will also be nice will be the last few races of the next season where half the grid will be starting from the pitlane after exhausting their allowable number of engine parts.

  21. If FIA really want to give More points to spice championships then give Points for Qualification of Top 5 or Top 8 and Giving Points for Top 3 Fastest laps.
    I propose this
    Qualification Top 5 Points P1 – 10 , P2 – 8, P3 – 6, P4 – 4, P5 – 2
    Fastest laps Top 3 FL – 3, 2nd FL – 2, 3rd FL – 1

    1. Or, we could go totally bonkers and decide the constructor’s championship with a points system, but decide the driver’s championship with lowest cumulative time for all races combined–the Tour de France model. That would totally change the race tactics.

      Personally, I’d prefer they left the points system alone.

      1. I agree for leaving the Points system along but if they change them then awarding for both Saturday and Sunday is better than Giving for final race alone and also with the Points for Saturday gives more points to Performances like Hulkenberg in Italy and USA or Grosjean in Hungary or USA , Kamui in China or SPA 2012 (These are on top of my mind now) these could prove helpful for teams too.

      2. In the Tour de France model, Chilton would have been WDC 2013 :) @tim-m

        1. You’re right, @mike-dee. Maybe we should go with ‘most race distance covered’, which if I remember correctly, Vettel would still be WDC.

          1. No i think Jenson clinches the 2nd world championship if thats the preferred way

          2. Correct. Button raced 1126 laps in 2013, Vettel only 1120. (Same in kms raced, where Button leads Vettel by 39 km)

            Perez and Chilton would have been 3rd and 4th.

          3. Interesting! Imagine how careful the drivers would be on the first lap with this system.

  22. I saw on another site about the Leo DiCap. thing then I had the greatest laugh at one of the comments:

    I wonder if his team will be like his acting career; very good but never actually win anything.

    1. There were quite a few: look here.. You know that Oscars are not the only movie awards in the world, don’t you?

  23. In defence of double points, what more could the FIA do? Any meaningful changes will be shot down by the teams because it means willingly sacrificing downforce. And when they do agree, they immediately try and get out of it, as they did with the off-throttle blown diffuser ban in 2011. At least the FIA are acknowledging that something needs to be done and are trying to do the best they can with what they have, even if it does not work.

    Ideally, we would have a championship free of (or with severely limited) aerodynamics, a much smaller difference in performance between cars, and a range of strategic racing options to offset whatever performance gap there is – a world where the deciding influence is driver skill, not invisible engineering wizardry. But the teams would hate this, because it would be harder to get and hold onto World Championship positions. They claim to be acting in the best interests of the sport, but isn’t it marvellous how whatever is “best for the sport” always seems to coincide with what is best for that team? And somehow, they have managed to convince the fans that they are the plucky underdogs in all of this, surviving on a combination of wit and guIle. But they’re not. They only look out for their interests, happily manipulate everyone to suit themselves, force the FIA into a position where they can only make arbitrary rule changes, and then cry foul over it.

    The teams aren’t the solution in Formula 1. They’re the problem.

    1. @prisoner-monkeys the only point in your comment which I would disagree with is that “the FIA are acknowledging that something needs to be done”. In this particular case I think Brundle’s point is correct in this case in that they are trying to solve a problem which isn’t there. They may well have difficulty getting the changes which need to be put through but the answer isn’t to just tinker with something unconnected.

    2. @prisoner-monkeys I think it should be pointed out that the decision was taken by the F1 Strategy Group, which consists of 6 teams (6 votes), FOM (6 votes) and FIA (6 votes). According to FIA’s press release, the new rules were approved “unanimously”, which indicates that everyone supported them. So the teams are only part of the problem even if they were the ones, who came up with the weird idea.

      I believe that James Allen is right by saying that the new Strategy Group members “want to demonstrate that they can get things done”, namely, they want to show that they’re able to agree on something even if it’s something absurd. However, RBR already openly criticise the double points rule so I doubt if they have really achieved that aim.

      1. So as much as I am all for democracy, perhaps the teams have too much say, especially if it is as P-M suggests that they are the problem and not the solution. And I do believe what he is saying regarding teams claiming what is best for F1 is that which would selfishly favour them. And then of course there is the reality of Ferrari’s weight in F1 too.

        Perhaps the REAL voters, namely the viewers, will have to revolt by turning their backs to F1, in order for F1 to take notice of what the actual people who are the reason F1 exists, want.

  24. Regarding COTD (which is a great one by the way), I don’t know why, but Prost always seems to do well in different points systems. I believe he would have been a quintuple world champion in the medal system too, while in the post-2010 points system he would have won six.

    1. @andae23 Yep Prost was the points accumulator eh …. On another note . Why root ( 23 ) for your profile pic ? Can drivers pick square root of numbers ;-)

      1. @hamilfan Well, I claimed the number 23 on Twitter, but someone claimed he had already claimed it before me. But as the FIA doesn’t specify the numbers as integers, I reckoned sqrt(23) would do fine as well :)

  25. @keithcollantine Congratulations on the well deserved recognition your work is receiving. The FIA may not listen but you’ve given this community a broader voice and gotten the attention of others in the F1 press in the process. Well done.

    1. Yeah well done

  26. Business manager in telling lies shocker. And I thought the paddock was full of straight dealing, honest people who are full of concern and empathy for others.

    Apparently DiResta didn’t get the memo that what happens in the paddock stays there.

  27. “‘F1 demeans itself with double points gimmick,’ declared a headline on the F1 Fanatic website, whose poll of more than 700 members showed 90 per cent opposed to the idea.”

    Is this the first time F1 Fanatic has been quoted in a news article that has been quoted on F1 Fanatic (my head hurts)!?

  28. Well congratz to seb. Kravitz tweeted sbs.com.au reproting that but said it was unconfirmed.
    I sometimes wonder why so many F1 drivers stay childless. I know that the long travelling calendar takes its toll but there’s kids everywhere in naxcar and australian v8 supercars, and they travel.

    I wonder if he’ll end up braking that millisecond earlier because he doesn’t want junior to be fatherless?

  29. Congrats Keith for championing this crusade against double points idea.

    If the double points gets revoked, I will feel great as I will have contributed with that one “NO” vote on your site which then eventually got quoted at so many places that FIA revoked it. THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME THAT POWER and ability to make my favorite sport better (or at least stop it from getting worse).

  30. Now just the double points to be scrapped and I’ll be moderately happy

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