Medals, or meddling?

The discussion about the medals system potentially coming into F1 has set fans buzzing again, since Bernie Ecclestone stated, “It will happen, ” on Wednesday.

We’ve had lots of intelligent and insightful feedback on this and I have to say that the antis outweigh the pros so far. I also noted Eddie Jordan’s comments, where he laid into the plan and virtually accused Bernie of being out of touch. This is clearly a foretaste of the kind of comment we can expect from dear old Eddie when he is unleashed as a pundit on BBC next year…what would he have said about the ruling on the Bourdais/Massa collision in Fuji, or even the penalising of Hamilton at Spa? He’ll have the stewards reaching for the smelling salts next year.

The teams I have spoken to give this initiative a cautious welcome, but with quite some reservations. They see it as a very big step that needs to be thought through and presented properly. No-one is in the mood to shoot ideas down at the moment, because we are in the 'phoney war' phase of the FOTA/FIA/ Bernie tussle, which will start to heat up more next week, when FOTA meets on Dec 4th and the FIA world council on the 12th.

Let’s examine this medals plan of Bernie’s a little more closely. The first point to make is that although it appears only to be concerned with the top three drivers in any race, the plan also calls for drivers from P4 to P8 to receive points as before. In order for the constructors’ championship to remain unchanged, a win still gives a team ten points and the other points positions remain. The constructors’ championship has to stay in place because that is how the money is awarded at the end of the season; very important.

Although the apparent simplicity of the new system is it’s attraction – the drivers are literally ‘going for gold’ - in practice it will be fiendishly difficult for commentators to explain what is going on in a championship below the title contenders. It’s almost like a two tier system, which treats the contenders differently from the rest of the field, so you’ll get an even greater sense of ‘us and them’.

It will be fantastic for someone like Vettel to get a gold medal, but it’s already pretty fantastic to get a win, if you drive for Toro Rosso, as he did when he won Monza, so it’s important that the prize doesn’t overshadow the achievement in some cases.

And what about the ‘have a go’ incentive, whereby the driver in second is encouraged to have a lunge? How does this sit with the way the stewards were policing things last season? If you misjudge your lunge and ‘cause an avoidable accident’ you could be in for a stiff penalty at the next race, so unless part of this scheme is a more lenient approach from the stewards, in the interests of improving the show, I don’t see the drivers feeling inclined to risk it.

Another potentially unsatisfactory aspect is the potential for the season to end before the last race, if someone gets a lot of early wins. GrandPrix.com has worked out that in the last ten years the outcome of the season would only have been different on one occasion, which is this year where Massa won six and Hamilton five, but it noted that on four occasions the title would have been decided in August and on two occasions in July.

One of my readers, Alex, asks why doesn’t Bernie consult the fans? Well they don’t consult the fans on technical regs, or on where to place the cameras at a race track, so I guess they would ask, why consult them on this? That said there have been fan surveys in recent years, notably by the FIA and ING and it’s good to see that the fans’ point of view is being taken on board.

So why is this debate happening? Well primarily, in my view, because Bernie is very keen to make F1 appeal to a younger audience. It doesn’t do all that well, compared to say Champions League football, in attracting the 18-24 demographic which advertisers and sponsors like Vodafone are desperate to reach. He feels that this will help refresh the sport and simplify it for the ‘yoof’. Also I think there is an element of responding to the criticisms of Luca di Montezemolo, the Ferrari president and head of the teams’ association. If you remember the comments he made in the closing stages of the season and particularly after Singapore, he has been pretty critical of the F1 show.

Bernie’s intervention here reminds everyone that Massa actually would have been champion this year if it was given to the driver with the most wins and that will play very well at Maranello. It takes a little of the sheen off Lewis’ title. So even if the FIA throws it out on December 12th, at least he can say he tried.

There is a bit of that going on with Donington too. If they fail to get a track together in time for 2010, Bernie can say he tried to save the British GP, but that it couldn’t be done and the event will perhaps be lost from these shores. The business model F1 has relied on in recent times is that a new superstar comes along, like Schumacher or Alonso and his countrymen find lots of money to put on not one but two races. It’s derailed here, Hamilton explodes onto the scene, but dear old Blighty turns out its empty pockets with a shrug.