Formula 1 has finally given a reason why it will no longer award a bonus point to the driver who sets the fastest lap during a grand prix.
The FIA, which sets F1’s regulations, and Formula One Management announced the decision to drop the rule in October last year. However neither offered an explanation for the change.FOM reintroduced the bonus point for fastest lap, decades after it was originally removed from the rule book, in 2019. It predicted the change would “improve the show” and “make the final part of the race even more interesting.”
Its sudden and unexplained decision to drop the bonus point came less than a month after last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, where it became a bone of contention between championship contenders Max Verstappen and Lando Norris. The latter lost the bonus to Daniel Ricciardo after the RB driver made a late pit stop to take fresh tyres, despite being ineligible to score the point himself as he ran outside the top 10.
Ricciardo, a former Red Bull driver who returned to their second team in 2023, admitted he took the bonus point away from Norris “with a little bit of Red Bull in mind.” McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, who has repeatedly urged F1 bosses to prevent competitors gaining an advantage by owning multiple teams, called it “a nice A/B-team sporting thing that I didn’t think was allowed.”
F1 has now indicated the Singapore Grand Prix controversy did serve as the prompt to drop the rule, stating on its official website: “With the bonus sometimes proving a controversial topic, the decision was taken to remove it from the scoring system this year.”
The bonus point is unlikely to be missed by F1 drivers, most of whom said it was an unnecessary addition to the rules. The decision to drop the rule has not been reflected in Formula 2 or Formula 3, which will continue to award one point to whichever driver sets the fastest lap in each of their race formats, providing they finish in the top 10.
A poll of RaceFans readers last year found a majority favoured dropping the rule from F1.
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Ekynox
13th February 2025, 9:29
We should have bonus point(s) for Pole Position
albo94
13th February 2025, 10:30
Not necessary. Starting on pole is already an incentive to go as fast as possible in qualifying. Adding an extra incentive would have no effect.
Regardless, I think the pole position is the best reward for the fastest driver. No need for points.
Iain Slater
14th February 2025, 13:29
Two different things.
Qualifying and during the race.
Bonus points during the race is as you say unnecessary and now we know can lead to controversy.
Janith
13th February 2025, 10:47
Pole Position bonus point makes more sense than the fastest race lap bonus point.
Iain Slater
14th February 2025, 13:38
Interesting.
I suppose there could be more points awarded for qualifying well.
Seems a bit harsh to qualify well but go on to crash in the race and get absolutely zilch.
Would be some consolation if Max rams him up the jaccsie at the first corner.
Wer
13th February 2025, 11:07
You already get a bonus best starting position for winning the qualifying. How many more awards do you want to hand out for it?
ozzmosis
13th February 2025, 11:49
The obvious with this problem is the possibility of a head-to-head championship being decided on a Saturday, which isn’t good for The Show.
Nikos (@exeviolthor)
13th February 2025, 12:08
True.
Actually, this is one of the main arguments against sprints races.
S Arkazam
13th February 2025, 15:01
You might not like this, but even under the current rules a Championship can still be decided on a Saturday.
e.g. if a challenger misses practice and quali, then he cannot race on Sunday.
Thus towards the end of the season this could result in a dead rubber race on Sunday.
Even double (or more) points won’t solve that conundrum ;)
Dex
13th February 2025, 12:44
We should play with the rules just for the sake of it. There are other things to do to combat boredom.
S Arkazam
13th February 2025, 13:50
Why not reward pole position by giving the driver a couple of metres head start?
Kris
13th February 2025, 9:33
The RB vs RB issue was key, but the rest of it was also frustrating.
The gaps between teams mean a driver in 3rd or 4th having a big gap behind pitting to get the bonus point was a bigger issue for me.
Jere (@jerejj)
13th February 2025, 10:32
‘Sometimes’ is the key word as the explanation doesn’t even indirectly refer to what happened in Singapore.
However, I’m still surprised the bonus point rule didn’t get dropped after the 2021 season already, if they ever were going to do so, following the Red Bull & Mercedes tactics in Silverstone & Mexico City, respectively, using their second drivers to take away the FLAP point from a winning championship contender.
David (@nvherman)
13th February 2025, 11:37
@jerejj
I suspect that that comes under the heading of acceptable intra-team tactics.
Where the situation in Singapore 2024 differed is that Ricciardo took his action thinking about how it would affect RBs sister team, and their championship contender. As B-teams are not supposed to affect the outcome of A-teams, due to the other 8 constructors not having a B team option
Señor Sjon
13th February 2025, 13:32
Verstappen did mess up most of Bottas attempts and Mercedes had to pit him again to try over and he only got it on the final lap.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
13th February 2025, 11:22
A simple point inevitably complicated by alogrithims and 50 people back at base running various outcomes. You can imagine in pre, that world, some calamitous decisions would’ve left some teams looking red faced. Didnt work and Danny Rics lap finally killed it
S
13th February 2025, 12:30
Indeed. Another variable in F1 completely ruined by the teams’ ability to datamine, plan, orchestrate and manipulate it.
If only drivers could truly drive alone and unaided at all times – then it would at least resemble something like a sporting contest.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
14th February 2025, 9:11
Even coaching is back in when i thought they’d banned it. For me, old school, radio should be for pit board messages and if there is an imminent fail. Cars should be in parc ferme on track meaning no steering wheel changes once the set up has been decided upon. There is no road relevance to any of this. Not a drum i am interested in playing but they keep banging it so right back at them with all this tuning a car for each corner and radio coaching. They attempt to remove every bit of jeopardy and largely, bar a black/grey swan event, they succeed.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
13th February 2025, 11:35
Any chance of other topics that prove controversial being removed, such as Lance Stroll or Christian Horner?
Ideals (@ideals)
13th February 2025, 13:03
Neither of these people is employed by the FIA.
mrfill (@mrfill)
13th February 2025, 19:14
Mohammed Ben Suleyman is, and he is proving very controversial and divisive. Presumably he’ll be removed very soon.
S Arkazam
13th February 2025, 13:56
I take offence at the word ‘controversial’; it should be banned.
Coventry Climax
13th February 2025, 17:27
Well, the FiA give no definitions of what exactly they mean by ‘proving’, ‘controversial’ or even what they feel the frequency of ‘sometimes’ should be, so we’ll have to wait for the Technical Directive on that.
spoutnik (@spoutnik)
13th February 2025, 11:52
Thank you Danny Ric !
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
13th February 2025, 12:04
The 1984 F1 World Championship was decided by half a point. Just saying…
Different times/rules of course.
An Sionnach
13th February 2025, 13:12
It’s the final challenge for any F1 driver. Can they overcome the younger upstart in the same car later in their careers? Lauda and Prost both did it.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th February 2025, 6:25
Half a point back then could be considered something like 1,25 points now, which would still be a very tiny margin: the 2016 and 2021 championship fights are considered very close and they were won by 5 and 7,5 points.
slowmo (@slowmo)
13th February 2025, 14:29
Seemed like they chose the lesser of two evils rather than trying to tackle the dodgy stuff of the unfair advantage of “B” teams manipulating races which is still potentially an issue.
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
13th February 2025, 14:49
Ricciardo getting fastest lap in Singapore may have been the thing that helped them make the decision but I was told when they announced it that they were already thinking about dropping the fastest lap point before then as there was a general feeling in the paddock that it wasn’t worth keeping.
When they brought it back it was hoped that it would be an incentive to keep drivers pushing on until the end rather than easing off and managing their pace. However most of the time it never really ended up working like that & it often became about who had the gap behind to allow them to pit for fresh tires with a handful of laps left which it was felt made the fastest lap less of an achievement & less worthy of awarding a point.
They did look at moving the bonus point to pole position but they opted against this as should the championship go down to the final weekend they don’t want it to be ended on the Saturday. This is the same reason they don’t plan to ever have the final race weekend be a sprint weekend. In the event of a final race showdown they want to build up excitement for the GP on Sunday & have the championship decided on the final day of the season & a bonus point for pole is something that could risk that.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
13th February 2025, 16:01
I wouldn’t have minded it so much if it had been available to everyone.
It would have offered the teams/drivers at the back of the field something to try for.
As it was, it was just for the guys at the front who didn’t really care about one point and so it was theirs to abuse.
PeteB (@peteb)
13th February 2025, 16:53
Ok… now we just need Toro Rosso to slow down and make sure to give Max a DRS boost every lap so that becomes controversial and we might finally start getting F1 back!
Coventry Climax
13th February 2025, 17:16
So, distilling the actual reason from the bla boils down to that it was “sometimes proving a controversial topic”.
Wow. Such insight. The FiA never fail to impress.
Edvaldo
13th February 2025, 22:50
Did it even need an explanation? It was lame and Red Bull abused it. Everybody agreed on that before that race was even over.
Jon
14th February 2025, 5:57
Maybe they should just give fastest bonus point to out of the top 10. 11th to last
Jojo
14th February 2025, 9:48
There would be less incentive for drivers further back to fight hard for tenth place. They could all just pit for softs at the end of the race and it would be like a mini qualifying. I think it’s the reason the point was never available outside of the top 10.
Fastest lap was meant to be about the fastest in race lap, but was already quite artificial as it was normally achieved by whoever happened to have a free pitstop to get fresh tyres. I personally wasn’t really a fan of it.
Sergey Martyn
14th February 2025, 13:31
One point from Ben Sulayem for not swearing!
High Chaparral
14th February 2025, 23:43
Maybe they should just ban Red Bull (or anyone else) from having 4 cars.
Ronald
17th February 2025, 17:24
F1 can’t outright force Red Bull to sell Minardi as they asked them to buy it themselves a few years ago. They would risk being sued for damages from a forced sale.
If Liberty has a brain they politely told Red Bull to sell the team in a few years time, so they can get maximum value out of it.
Maybe that already happened, McLaren was relatively silent when the Ricciardo issue was going on.