Formula 1 is unlikely to go ahead with a proposal to extend points beyond 10th place from next year.
FIA race director Charlie Whiting said teams had not agreed on how a revised system would work. Unanimous agreement between the teams is needed to approve a change for next season.
“It’s been discussed,” said Whiting. “It’s not like a 2021 rule it’s something that if everyone had agreed to we would look at introducing it for 2019 but there wasn’t agreement on that.”A sticking point in the discussions has been how large the gaps between points for each position should be, particularly between the lower places.
Currently 10th place is worth one point. If a point was given for 15th then 10th would have to be worth at least six. However some team bosses argued the existing one-point gaps would also need to be increased.
“I think a one-point gap is not enough in my opinion,” said Haas team principal Guenther Steiner. “Because between seventh and eighth, it’s a one point gap, between being 15th and 14th is a one-point gap, I think that’s not the right proportion. I think there needs to be a little more investigation.”
Extending points beyond 10th place and increasing the existing points gaps would mean the value of a win, which was increased from 10 points to 25 eight years ago, would have to rise significantly again.
F1 motorsport director Ross Brawn said in August that any change to the points system would need to be one which would stay in place for the long-term.
“It’s a big decision to change it,” he said. “If we change it, it needs to be left alone for 10 years, we don’t want to keep messing with it.”
F1 last changed its points system 2015 when the double-points final round, which had been introduced the previous year, was dropped.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2019 F1 season
- Crying in the Melbourne car park at 2019 grand prix was my career low – Ocon
- McLaren Racing reports reduced £71 million loss in 2019
- Kvyat: Hockenheim podium last year was “my biggest achievement” so far
- How the FIA’s new encrypted fuel flow meter targets Ferrari’s suspected ‘aliasing’ trick
- “He smashed my office door”: 23 must-see moments from ‘Drive to Survive’ season two
Phylyp (@phylyp)
10th October 2018, 7:32
Thank goodness. Rewarding the top 10 is good enough, particularly now when they comprise half the field.
Jimmi Cynic (@jimmi-cynic)
10th October 2018, 7:58
@phylyp: Just half? Why not the whole field?
10th: 1 point
11th: 0.85 point
12th: 0.75 point
13th: 0.65 point
14th: 0.55 point
15th: 0.45 point
16th: 0.35 point
17th: 0.25 point
18th: 0.15 point
19th: 0.05 point
20th: 0.01 point
F1 is built on tenths and hundredths of a second. It’s time the points system is too.
Everyone can be in the (decimal) points!
Phylyp (@phylyp)
10th October 2018, 8:05
LOL :-) @jimmi-cynic
And to favour the math-challenged, let’s multiply everything by a 100. So a win is worth 2500 points. Watch those “most number of points” records tumble and fall, Jerej would have a great time with that.
Although we’d still have #20 mumbling – #19 finished a car’s length ahead of me and gets 5 times as many points.
Jimmi Cynic (@jimmi-cynic)
10th October 2018, 8:33
@phylyp:
Car length ahead – a few hundredths of second and a few hundredths of a point lead in the standings. Seems fair. ;-)
Joao (@johnmilk)
10th October 2018, 9:15
Make this happen and see the Sky panel losing it trying to count
Brian (@bealzbob)
10th October 2018, 10:55
@jimmi-cynic
2018 season adjusted :)
1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 331.35
2 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 264.15
3 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 207.56
4 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 196.65
5 Max Verstappen Red Bull 173.82
6 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 147.00
7 Sergio Pérez Force India 57.30
8 Kevin Magnussen Haas 56.55
9 Nico Hülkenberg Renault 55.31
10 Fernando Alonso McLaren 52.11
11 Esteban Ocon Force India 51.62
12 Carlos Sainz Jr. Renault 42.70
13 Romain Grosjean Haas 36.55
14 Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso 34.02
15 Charles Leclerc Sauber 24.17
16 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren 15.60
17 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 13.11
18 Lance Stroll Williams 12.70
19 Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso 6.58
20 Sergey Sirotkin Williams 6.32
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
10th October 2018, 16:25
There: Problem solved! Now let’s deal with something that’s broken.
Brian (@bealzbob)
10th October 2018, 17:25
@drycrust Oh no that’s much too difficult :)
Jimmi Cynic (@jimmi-cynic)
10th October 2018, 19:26
@bealzbob: Excellent!
Although…what if… All the points were converted to a fractional system. That way we could use dried up baseball analogies. He’s batting…er.. driving .505 this season!
Apexor
10th October 2018, 20:53
jimmi-cynic does dnf or dq includes points too?
Jimmi Cynic (@jimmi-cynic)
10th October 2018, 21:13
Apexor…that’s a vexing question, I’m glad you didn’t ask. Oh..you did.
My feeling is that to fractionally win you first have to fractionally finish. So in my dewy decimal system, because getting 0 points isn’t fair, micro-points would be subtracted. Say… -0.001 for a DNF and -0.008 for a DQ.
So instead of getting nothing from an unlucky race, the driver would get worse than nothing. And that’s something to build character. And reliability. ;-)
BlackJackFan
11th October 2018, 18:02
‘JC’ – I’ve almost reached the stage where I check your comments before reading the article… ;)
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
10th October 2018, 7:50
I’d say I was happy that this won’t change for next season, but I can’t trust F1 not to still go ahead and suddenly change until the first points are handed out in Melbourne.
GongTong (@gongtong)
10th October 2018, 7:59
I agree with Ross Brawn, do it once and then leave it alone. My gripe with going to 25 for the win was that it completely demolished the statistical history of the sport with an enormous increase in points. We’ve done that now so going up to 50 won’t make much difference.
Whilst I do kinda see people’s objections against ‘points just for participation’, I feel the championship calculations would be more pure if consistently finishing eleventh is worth more than a single tenth.
I don’t really like the argument that we heard from some drivers that scoring a point used to be an achievement. This wouldn’t be so important if more teams and drivers were able to fight for the PODIUM; an achievement that really means something, rather than the B series prize of scraps from the big six.
Tomcat173 (@tomcat173)
10th October 2018, 10:19
@gongtong Absolutely agree with this. Like Alonso’s career points tally is now totally meaningless, given half his career was under 10 points for a win system, and the other half was under the 25 points for win system.
BlackJackFan
11th October 2018, 18:04
Why only Alonso’s…? ;)
frood19 (@frood19)
10th October 2018, 10:25
it’s been meaningless for many years. career points is a stupid measure anyway, unless you adjust it to a common system. over the years, a win has been worth 8, 9, 10 and 25 points at different times. second has been worth 6, 8 and 18.
BasCB (@bascb)
10th October 2018, 8:01
Good. This is not something to do on the fly. I really am not sure it is even a good idea to reward more finishing places, but if you go from the first 10 to more, why stop at 15? Why not give points to all who finish?
I do agree with Steiner that if it is done, there should be bigger steps between the finishing positions the higer we get. I’ll go and look up Keith’s article about points systems from a few years back!
Todfod (@todfod)
10th October 2018, 8:24
@bascb
Agree.
I don’t understand why they’re interested in changing this point system anyways. With a grid of only 20 cars, it seems fair that only 10 cars are entitled to points.
If this new proposed points system is to reward the back marking teams and to thicken the fight at the bottom of the grid, then maybe they should award all the way to the bottom. I’m not sure that will help the sport though. I think the intense battles to finish P10 and score the last point is a good element of racing today. We might just be left with a situation where teams aren’t willing to take risks to score those extra points. There is a certain degree of accomplishment for midfield teams when they finish in the points.. that will be lost with the new points system.
vjanik (@vjanik)
10th October 2018, 8:14
Once again, F1 messing with things that dont need changing.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
10th October 2018, 8:32
The reason why they changed the old 10-8-6 system to this one was because 3 new teams joined the grid expanding it to 26 cars (before US F1 folded). Now we only have 20 cars and they are still giving points to half the grid. So why expanding it further now? makes no sense.
I’m glad they didn’t agree on a system, but I’m worried that they’ll continue to discuss this… I don’t want points to be something you just get no matter where you finish, it should be something you earn. I already feel that 10 places is too much, but given the gap to the top three teams, the midfield at least gets something. But going beyond doesn’t seem clever in my view.
Christopher Rehn (@chrischrill)
10th October 2018, 8:55
Giving to more drivers would make it worth fighting for P14 when you are in 15th place. As it stands, only the top 11 really fight. Perhaps the one in P12 too, hoping for a retirement in the dying stages of the race.
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
10th October 2018, 14:31
@chrischrill The belief that those further down the field don’t fight as hard as those at the front because there not fighting for points is nothing but a myth.
Even with no points on the line the cars fighting for 14th/15th back are pushing & fighting just as hard as those going for points…. Just look at Sirotkin in Singapore for example, He was arguably pushing/fighting far harder to keep his position with no hope of points than those who were actually fighting over points were.
Giving everyone points will make zero difference to what those at the back do in terms of racing each other just like extending points to 10th made no difference to what those from 8th-12th were doing.
Christopher Rehn (@chrischrill)
10th October 2018, 8:47
1st: 50
2nd: 35
3rd: 25
4th: 20
5th: 16
6th: 14
7th: 12
8th: 10
9th: 8
10th: 6
11th: 5
12th: 4
13th: 3
14th: 2
15th: 1
A big gap from 1st to 2nd would encourage going for the win. Two point difference from P5 to P10, then one point difference down to 15th.
15p between 1st and 2nd is the same gap as between 6th and 15th. That sounds fair to me.
Tomcat173 (@tomcat173)
10th October 2018, 10:23
@chrischrill Why start at 50? They could adopt the V8 Supercar points scoring system, where a win is worth 150 points?!
Dont start me on “marquee” races like Bathurst being worth more than “regular” races.
Christopher Rehn (@chrischrill)
10th October 2018, 10:41
@tomcat173 I understand that you’re being sarcastic, but I don’t see the massive danger in having a high points sum. I mean, we already can’t translate Schumacher’s 9 and 10-point victories to Hamilton’s 25 pointers, let alone to back when they excluded XX races per year before reaching a points total.
50 points a race win is reasonable if F1 wants to make it down to the top 15 without losing the “value” of winning a race. If 25 goes for the winner and 1 goes for P15, the P2 would have to score something like 22 points and then we’d see much less value in winning a race.
Tommy Scragend
11th October 2018, 16:28
On a point of pedantry, Schumacher never had a 9-point victory. Ten points for a win started in 1991, the year before Schumacher won his first Grand Prix.
VMaxMuffin (@vmaxmuffin)
10th October 2018, 15:18
For what it’s worth, that’s not actually how points work in V8 Supercars.
Every weekend is worth 300 points. So, a weekend with 1 race (Bathurst, Sandown) will be worth 300 points for the race. If the weekend has 2 races, they will (probably) both be worth 150 point, though in theory it could also be split into 100 and 200 (which I think they should do for “standard weekends” where the Saturday race is only a bit more than half the length of a Sunday race). If a race weekend has 3 races it could be split into 3×100 or 2×75 and 1×150, and a 4 race weekend will be 4×75.
ColdFly (@)
10th October 2018, 9:55
No need to change!
All drivers scored points this year, and it doesn’t feel that any of them is hard done by until now.
ColdFly (@)
10th October 2018, 9:58
But if they want to do something to celebrate Formula 1B, why not have a separate F1B table as suggested yesterday?
Jere (@jerejj)
10th October 2018, 10:30
”F1 last changed its points system 2015 when the double-points final round, which had been introduced the previous year, was dropped.”
– To be precise, technically, it never got changed then. The current points-system itself has stayed the same in principle ever since its introduction back in 2010 with the one-off exception of the top-10 drivers getting double the amount they’d typically get for each of the points-worthy positions in one race.
Now on the real point, though: Just leave it as it is. There’s nothing wrong with the current system so, therefore, stop even pondering about altering it entirely. Focus only on things that actually need fixing/altering, not on those that already work adequately well.
”If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
José Lopes da Silva
10th October 2018, 11:03
Current system is fine. Don’t change it.
6 point finishes had to change and we’re just nostalgics if we’re asking for it’s return. Giancarlo Minardi had already asked for a change. Personally, I use to think that too. Besided, in the old days there was plenty of mechanical failures allowing Onyx to get podiums, and that doesn’t happen today. 6 point finish today would be ridiculous.
Hamilton 121
Vettel 86
Bottas 59
Raikkonen 53
Verstappen48
Ricciardo 41
Perez 6
Magnussen6
Grosjean 5
Hulkenberg5
Gasly 4
Ocon 3
Sainz 2
Alonso 2
Leclerc 1
All time points is not that important, anyway. Fangio never appears in the statistics. People should look more at the % stats, rather than the absolute.
Anyway, for all time points comparisons, you should check https://formula1.markwessel.com
TribalTalker (@tribaltalker)
10th October 2018, 14:47
Thanks José Lopes da Silva!#
The markwessel simulator is great fun.
I made a top-16 scoring system which is based on 4*current scoring:
1st = 100
2nd = 72
3rd = 60
4th = 48
5th = 40
6th = 32
7th = 24
8th = 18
9th = 14
10th = 10
then 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 for 11th through 16th.
The changes are from 8th position down, other than the simple multiplier.
Why bother? It makes the performance differences of the bottom seven teams much easier to see. And it’s fun, for a certain type of person…
MustardTiger
10th October 2018, 12:23
Can someone please explain what the “problem” is that they are trying to fix? I do not understand why this is a discussion?
TribalTalker (@tribaltalker)
10th October 2018, 13:58
The way things are at the moment, the top three teams stand a good chance of taking all the points for 1st through 6th. That leaves just four points-paying positions for the other seven (currently, could go up to nine) teams.
A team that consistently gets 11th and 12th place finishes will end the season on the same points as a team that consistently places last or fails to finish.
In the real world there is some random fluctuation in the availability of points (like Austria this year where neither of the Mercs scored) and some of the lower teams can perform well at particular tracks. But this just masks the problem of having seven teams competing for four point-scoring positions.
Sven (@crammond)
10th October 2018, 15:31
To me, that seems to be a problem of too high reliability rather than not enough points-paying positions, though. And besides all those awful components-for-several-races rules, another driving factor for the high reliability is a points-system that rewards regular finishes too much and too often in comparison to how it rewards wins. I’d rather have void-results back than expand the points even further.
Velocityboy (@velocityboy)
10th October 2018, 12:41
And at the end of the race everyone gets an orange slice and a cookie. Bah!!! Oh, and get off my lawn!
Garns (@)
10th October 2018, 14:03
Another issue with F1- discussing ANYTHING with the teams, its an issue.
FIA need to work out what rule they will go racing with, in any given year, invite teams to join under those rules and go from there. No sport does well when the precipitants has a say in the rules as well.
Mark Zastrow (@markzastrow)
10th October 2018, 14:26
Honestly, I’d be fine if the points system were 25 points for a win, 24 points for 2nd, and so on down to 0 points for 26th (in the case of a full grid). Then the champion would be mathematically equivalent to having the best average finishing position. And if you are trying to figure out a points scenario in a middle of a race, it’s nice to know that gaining one position always means one additional point.
(For all the criticism Nascar’s overhauled points system has taken, this is one aspect I quite appreciate.)
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
10th October 2018, 14:46
They should leave points down to 10th because earning points should mean something & extending them back any further will do nothing but make grabbing a point far less an achievement than it should be.
I think extending points to 8th & then 10th already took away a bit of the achievement that earning a point used to be. I mean look at Mark Webber at Melbourne in 2002 & how much that 5th place/2points meant to him & the team & then compare it to Zsolt Baumgartner’s 8th place/1point at the 2004 USGP which didn’t receive the same level of fanfare because it didn’t feel as special.
rob91
10th October 2018, 15:15
That fifth place in 2002 was special because it was the teams best finish for 8 years achieved with a debuting driver competing in not just his home race but the team owners home race too. It was just like something from a movie.
rob91
10th October 2018, 15:08
1st = 30 points
2nd = 20 points
3rd = 15 points
4th = 10 points
5th = 8 points
6th = 6 points
7th = 4 points
8th = 3 points
9th = 2 points
10th = 1 point
Fastest Lap = 1 point
VMaxMuffin (@vmaxmuffin)
10th October 2018, 15:26
I seem to be in the minority here but I think all finishers should be awarded points. This would make the mid-to-tail of the field championship battles much more interesting.
All time points stats never should have mattered, and certainly haven’t since moving to 25 points for a win anyway. Cars are also more reliable these days so there’s less points opportunity for a lower team that “survives” the race. And I don’t really understand the idea that one should have to “earn” a point in F1, because like the all time totals statistic what that means has changed a lot over time. And at the end of the day the difference in effort on the driver’s part between 10th and 11th is pretty small I’d say, and more down to chance.
Coanda (@ming-mong)
10th October 2018, 18:10
The history books are already screwed and to be honest championships are all that really matter. Why not extend it for the whole field and then have a points penalty system for for hardware changes above the allocation.. ie ICE=-15, GB=-10, Turbo=7.5 or whatever.. etc.. simple and fair and it would be exciting for the midfield battles plus spectators forking out loads of money to go to these events can see their heroes qualify and race where they should be instead of all this ither nonsense.. an ICE could even include additional weighted penalties the more you take on..
Neil (@neilosjames)
10th October 2018, 20:18
So last week they were talking about changing a qualifying system which is absolutely fine, and now it’s reported they’ve been busy working on a new points system to replace the entirely adequate one the sport already has.
F1 likes to think of itself as cutting edge so… teams, why not try something crazy and ‘out there’ and focus your energy on fixing things that actually need to be fixed?
Apexor
10th October 2018, 20:59
Here where the new point system should be at. If there are know solution please F1 keep the current point system. It works just fine.
So here is where the points should be at:
1st 100
2nd 50
3rd 25
4th 15
5th 12
6th 10
7th 8
8th 6
9th 4
10th 2
BadgerBoy
10th October 2018, 23:55
It should definitely be 100 points for a win. How about this:
1st 100
2nd 60
3rd 40
4th 30
5th 20
6th 10
7th 8
8th 6
9th 4
10th 3
11th 2
12th 1
?
MaliceCooper
11th October 2018, 14:00
How about if they narrowed the gaps a bit to keep the championship spicy? 20 – 16 – 14 – 12 – 10 – 8 – 6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1. They could perhaps also add a bonus point for fastest lap to bring out some nutty last-minute charges?
BlackJackFan
11th October 2018, 18:15
How about we just have a different points system every year, each time being decided by the Miss Grid-Girl winner of the previous year… Or just sort out the racing, and leave EVERYTHING else alone…! Fer gawds sake.
Michael Counsell
12th October 2018, 21:28
Scoring in Moto GP & Superbikes has been down to 15th for ages with very little complaints. Non finishes are more often self inflicted so consistency is is a very highly rated skill.