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F1 announces new Overtake Award for driver who makes most passes

2021 F1 season

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Formula 1 has created a new award for the driver who makes the most overtaking moves during a season, which will be branded by its cryptocurrency sponsor Crypto.com.

The Crypto.com Overtake Award will be presented for the first time at the end of the 2021 F1 season.

Sebastian Vettel is leading F1’s standings of drivers who have completed the most “on track” passes so far this season. The Aston Martin driver has finished higher than he started in five races so far this season, including Baku City Circuit, where he rose from 11th on the grid to take second place.

Formula 1 will use new television graphics during race broadcasts to highlight potential passes and show which drivers have made the most overtaking moves so far.

Cryptocurrency platform Crypto.com joined Formula 1 as a global and title partner earlier this year. It also sponsors its new sprint qualifying events, the second of which will be held at Monza next month.

“The Crypto.com Overtake Award gives us the chance to celebrate drivers’ instincts to make bold and strategic moves which reflects the qualities needed when dealing in cryptocurrency,” said F1’s director of commercial partnerships Ben Pincus.

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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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78 comments on “F1 announces new Overtake Award for driver who makes most passes”

  1. Yea, not really interested in this.

    1. Fair. Just ignore it and move on.

    2. You’ll be even less interested with it when it relates to tracks like Monaco. It wont exactly highlight those kind of tracks in a good light.

    3. AWS is going to take the prize.

  2. Kind of a cool idea, if a little meaningless? Like the fastest pit stop awards – interesting, but don’t actually mean anything. I’d be interested to know how they judge an ‘overtake’, whether it’s purely whether car A successfully passes car B on track, or whether passing in the pits or due to accidents ahead is valid. Or whether car performance disparity is counted – like a Mercedes on a Williams surprises nobody but an AlphaTauri on a Red Bull would be impressive.

    Either way, surprised Sebastian Vettel is leading the standings. I didn’t think he’d overtaken that many people!

    1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      24th August 2021, 14:43

      @rocketpanda yeah, I know! I was surprised to see Vettel’s name there!

      Good question about the pit stops and accidents!

    2. Like flap chasing at the end of a race we might see meaningless repetitive overtaking of a Haas at the end of a season.

      1. I don’t think so. The Fastest Lap chasing is because it gets a point towards the real championship, whereas this overtaking award is indeed meaningless and is probably just for a bit of fun. No driver or team will be thinking about this award when racing, and Formula 1 knows that otherwise they wouldn’t have announced that it was happening halfway through a season.

    3. Meaningle$$$$

    4. On the Marbles
      25th August 2021, 14:11

      Fastest pit stop award probably means a lot to some of the Pit crews; those guys can make or break a close race, if it is meaningless it is no more meaningless than any other award in the grand scheme of things.

  3. Rewarding the driver with the worst qualifying record for the quality of their respective car. Brilliant.

    Let’s also have participation trophies for drivers not winning a single qualy duel and not winning a single point in a season.

    1. Yeah, if Bottas gets stuck with more grid penalties he is going to win the overtaking award of the year.

      1. Bottas winning the overtaking award? One who gets stuck behind any backmarker car?

    2. I was thinking exactly the same thing, @proesterchen.

    3. @proesterchen

      It seems to be just another advertising income opportunity for Liberty F1. Highlight a new feature and then charge an advertiser to sponsor it = $$$

  4. When I saw the headline I thought this was something to do with the game. I’m not so keen about this one but it doesn’t take anything else away so.
    I was thinking if someone spins and drops to last place does that count as an overtake for every other driver?

    1. I guess it has to. And then when that driver overtakes a whole lot of cars to get back to where they were at the start of the race, e.g. overtakes 15 cars, well, they’ve just bumped up their score by 15. Oh, and don’t forget the team orders and Blue Flags.

      1. I’m feeling that this is going to be interesting to count all those overtakes.

  5. Yes, another award. I thought F1 already had more than enough awards, so is this really necessary?
    The headline immediately reminded me of a funny question in 2017 Abu Dhabi GP Thursday press conference:
    ”Lewis, in a few weeks you will receive your champion award, but there are still other awards like for the rookie of the year, personality of the jear, and a action of the year, and now the Mercedes tyre crew had won for first time, the first fastest pitz stop award. Do you think, now my question, that there are enough, enough awards, or can you imagine, several other awards, for example, like an award for fair play, for a special friendly action, or there are no friendly action in formula 1, what your opinion, and the opinion of Sebastian and Ricciardo for this subject?”

    1. Can you repeat the question?

    2. @jerejj

      How about rewards for the cleanest racer of the season and have a Maldonado award? Liberty can charge sponsors more this one for the driver with the most contact?
      The Maldonado award would perhaps not be appropriate? Although he did crash 40 times in five years which I think is the F1 record? The award mentioned in article does sound a bit silly and more on the merit of a gain in sponsorship revenue for liberty.

      I do think F1 drivers who are the cleanest should be commended while still going fast.

      1. @redpill Good idea. Here are some I mentioned on another site:
        Most last-place finishes, most Q3 appearances, most crashes, most lap time invalidations,
        most tyre sets used, the list goes on.

  6. This was bound to happen – American owners, sponsorship for absolutely everything, pointless accolades. Not cool but not a dealbreaker, just a pesky fly-like distraction.

    1. Coventry Climax
      24th August 2021, 18:20

      Only partly true, as part of my TV screen gets used for yet another pointless graphic, and coverage is being turned more and more into looking like a moro— computer game. Oh sorry, not allowed to use that word anymore, although completely appropriate here.

  7. A nice award, to boost some drivers’ confidence. I actually thought Hamilton is the leader due to the amount of come back drives he’s had. Surprisingly, it’s Vettel to be fair.

    1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      24th August 2021, 14:46

      @krichelle Likewise, I was thinking of Lewis because the comebacks and Alonso because of his brilliant starts. He sometimes gains 5 spots or something crazy like that on the starts.

      1. Is this award based on where they finish compared to where they start, rather than actual overtakes?

        As Kimi has overtaken 30 cars on the opening lap this year, but then dropped back down during the race. So is this really a ‘places gained’ award?

  8. Remember pole trophy? I thought it was still going but someone on twitter, while discussing this meaningless awards, pointed out it wasn’t a thing anymore.

    Says a lot about the relevance of this stuff. Very NASCAR ish, meaningless awards that have nothing to do with anything other than more room for sponsors. It won’t be long until someone pays a lot of money to sponsor the final 5 laps of each race. I can hear Crofty already shouting “this battle for the race is brought to you by DHL!”

    1. Coventry Climax
      24th August 2021, 18:24

      Those of us living in Portugal know that the DHL slogan is a downright lie.

  9. So is this for actual overtakes or is it for the net difference between starting position and finishing position – just curious.

    1. someone or something
      24th August 2021, 14:24

      If it’s the latter, it’s an award for being rubbish in qualifying.
      If it’s the former, it opens a can of worms. What is an actual overtake, besides textbook examples?
      In a way, this reminds me of IndyCar a couple of years ago, boasting a race with over 300 overtakes … about a tenth of which would’ve been counted as such in F1, because they counted every single position change, including pit stops and cars stopping on the track …

      1. What is an actual overtake

        I agree, how do you exactly define what is and isn’t an overtake? And more important, which overtakes should the judges ignore? Presumable there will be overtakes the judges won’t want to count, for example, would Sebastian’s overtake of Lewis a few years back by using a short cut across the grass count? Since he wasn’t classified as being First when he passed the Chequered Flag first then presumably Sebastian’s overtake shouldn’t be counted as legitimate, but on the other hand it was a successful, but dangerous, pass. Without a precise definition of which overtakes will be counted and which ones won’t be counted then decisions will become subjective, which isn’t good for the award.

        1. Are you referring to Canada 2019? If so, Seb didn’t overtake off track but rather maintained position by going off and rejoining unsafely.

          1. Oh yes, my apologies. Thank you for correcting me.

        2. Indeed, canada 2019 was infamous enough, surprised people don’t remember it clearly.

  10. The Nicolas Latifi award for worst qualifier

    1. The Mazespin reward for most successful spins during a season.

      1. A spin is considered successful when the car isn’t damaged!

  11. Just another meaningless gimmick. Did Ocon overtake everyone at the first corner in Hungary?

  12. In a world of boringly easy, skill-less push of a button DRS highway passes it’s even less relevant or meaningful an award than it would have been anyway.

    Just another case of Liberty Americanising F1 as this sort of handing out meaningless sponsored awards for virtually everything is something that you see a lot in American sports.

    #LibertyOut #DontAmericaniseF1 #NoToGimmicks #F1AintNASCARorIndycar

    1. #IGetIt #CalmDownWithTheHashtags

      1. someone or something
        24th August 2021, 23:59

        I’m impressed, that’s the closest you’ve come to making sense in a good while.

        1. You’ve never seen my take on Ferrari’s 2020 season.

  13. Lewisham Milton
    24th August 2021, 15:43

    I guess this counts all “overtakes”? Including moves outside track limits, or ones explained away by a driver having tyres one lap newer than the car in front, and… I suggest another award: the Armitage Shanks DRS Trophy.

  14. I don’t see the point. I’m sure some people are loving the opportunity but to me it seems a waste of energy.
    But the award is cool.

  15. I wonder how closely this corresponds with the ‘most underperforming qualifier’ or ‘most grid penalties’ awards.

  16. Ridiculous that F1 is trying to convey a sense of environmental awareness while promoting a currency that has the carbon footprint of a medium sized country. I’ve seen crypto enthusiasts counter this with “it’s not any worse than the existing banking system”, but this is like saying “I don’t know why you’re making a fuss about this wildfire, there’s one just as big over there.”

    1. Coventry Climax
      24th August 2021, 18:28

      10+

    2. I agree this is not responsible.

    3. Bitcoin is a scandalous waste of energy, and makes a joke of F1s sustainable “successes” – https://corp.formula1.com/sustainability/ – and I suspect a crash is around the corner for most crypto currencies.

  17. And it will be just as meaningless, irrelevant & as quickly forgotten as the other sponsored awards & things which have been introduced over the past few years.

  18. Fanboost next

  19. The winner gets 10.. 1.. 1000.. 10 BTC. Wait now it’s 1 again.

  20. I really don’t understand all the anger about this award. It is totally irrelevant to the championship, and will not affect it in any way. If you don’t care who has made the most overtakes, ignore it. It has about as much relevance as the different championships I come up with like if points were awarded for qualifying or after every lap of the race, or the unofficial Class B championship that was in place from 2017-19. The fact that it has been announced halfway through the championship is evidence as to how little it matters, so there is no need to get worked up over it.

    1. Indeed @f1frog. I guess we can be glad it is through this kind of stuff that Liberty boosts the sports income, since I am far more happy to give a sponsor name to something few will actually care about than giving them to anything meaningful or even changing the events / races etc for sponsorships.

    2. @f1frog @bascb It’s the trend that it points to which is worrisome. As anybody with a minimum of understanding will easily get, this overtake award has nothing to with who is the best overtaker, which means it’s made for the absolute baseline of viewers as a marketing gimmick. And having F1 put emphasis there will undoubtedly mean dumbing down in other areas too. Maybe all in the end. Remember reverse grids? It was touch and go, but only because it was too much, too soon. Now they’ll work they way up to it and this is the first sign the same mentality is still in charge.

      1. As I wrote, I disagree there @balue. This is pretty much the same kind of BS that those “AWS stats” mostly are.

        A way to get someone to pay for something. But they are clearly aware that they cannot just go around doing much that actually changes real things (for now) otherwise they would do so already.

        As fans we have to be aware and speak up when they try to change things for gimmicks. This is just a nonsense award probably handed out for mostly DRS passes to get money from a sponsor that will not mean much, a bit like the most poles award.

        1. @bascb spot on.

          I’m going to ignore it anyway, so no problem at all. But if it brings in more cash to keep the sport healthy—go for it I say!

  21. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
    24th August 2021, 19:07

    The silly think about this is that it is meaningless. Or shows you are a bad qualifier, or have a bad car in qualifying but better on race day.

    The fact that a driver gets an award for something like this does indeed seem stupid, simply because it would be possible for the driver in the fastest car to fall to the back, then make an easy recovery every race – and get an award for such a silly thing. Not that they would do that, but it just shows to me that the stats are meaningless. These awards will normally be archived by poor qualifiers which vettel has been this year, as stroll (who certainly is not a great qualifier) is often beating him. To be more realistic, Vettel should have started further up and had less overtakes.

    it is meaningless, and pointless and doesn’t represent who is good at overtaking, as if you start well below your usual position (or fall back), the difference between the cars performance is so great that they are easy overtakes.

    I know this isn’t related to the points, but penalty points are points. Maybe drivers that recieve none over a season should get a special award! Seems about as much sense in getting a point for being a safe driver and following the rules as getting points for what could be really simple overtakes.

    Along with the silly new graphics of a drivers name following the car around the track, but in reality, F1 seems to be getting more and more game like. Silly awards and over the top graphics…

  22. As few others have mentioned, interesting to find out what constitutes as an overtake. Some classic statistic usually have ignored the first lap moves, does this? What about a back-and-forth (say, Hungaroring T1-2-3), does it count as multiple overtakes or just one (with AWS and GPS and whatelse you could easily calculate which car was ahead at what point)? And if someone has to yield positions like Russell at Hungary, are those gained places counted for the passing drivers?

  23. petebaldwin (@)
    24th August 2021, 20:45

    The award for the driver who routinely screws up qualifying. Sounds like a great idea. If you spin off on lap 1 and then recover, does that count as an overtake or is it only for positions above your qualifying position?

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      24th August 2021, 20:46

      Actually scrap that – I don’t care.

  24. What if these means FOM/Liberty has decided to scrap the Crypto.com Qualifying Races?

  25. “The Crypto.com Overtake Award gives us the chance to celebrate drivers’ instincts to make bold and strategic moves which reflects the qualities needed when dealing in cryptocurrency,”

    Did anyone else cringe reading this…?

    1. Even myself who likes to learn about crypto and IT have found that kind of cringeworthy.

    2. Did anyone actually read it and NOT cringe @tommy-c

  26. Here are a few more for Liberty to commercialise.
    Best dressed driver.
    Cleanest/tidiest garage.
    Funniest post race interview (one for Danny Ric)
    Driver who swears the least during a race over the team radio.
    There are countless commercial opportunities to be exploited and used to further cheapen and degrade F1, now that Onlyfans has banned porn…

  27. The best starter prize will be the last thing under Kimi’s belts for his Formula 1 career.

  28. Those crypto hedge fund tech bros can just sit on it.

  29. More like Crypto.com Not Good at Qualifying Award

  30. I really look forward to this. If it’s half as good as the tire degradation graphics, then watching F1 will be like entering heaven during the golden hour and Maxwell Parish painting your portrait for you as you rise.

  31. Is cryptocurrency sponsorship too dirty for the greener image F1 wants to cultivate?
    crypto.com: “Here’s a Most overtakes award. Now shut up!”

  32. If Keith and the longtime readers of Racefans.net would remember, I had suggested points for overtaking around 5 or more years back in this site, back when it was called F1Fanatic.co.uk.

    1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
      25th August 2021, 9:30

      If this happened, you would get the lower midfield that can rarely score points deliberately trying to qualifying last, or trying to have a bad start so they can get some points. At the lower end of the field, it will be a fight for who can be the slowest so they can constantly drop back behind each other and get a point.

      Imagine if every driver got a point for each overtake? You could get drivers allowing their team mates to pass, then reverse the situation hundreds of times during the race. Wow, think how many points could be scored here!!

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