An Alternate F1 Reality
How does 2021 play out if set in a different points system?
It’s all come down to this. Pre-season testing seems so long ago, yet it was only nine months before now that our naivety led us to believe that this would just be another season of Mercedes domination.
Obviously, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Red Bull showed up to race one in Bahrain with a much quicker package than anyone expected. Lewis Hamilton still took the opening salvo, but Max Verstappen has led the championship for the majority of this season.
But, now the Dutchman finds himself back where he started. Level on points with the defending seven time champion, it is only one victory that separates them through countback.
Everything has been written about this season, the sport will break through into the mainstream this weekend and it will be one of the biggest sporting occasions of the year — impressive given it was an Olympic year.
Whoever wins is almost irrelevant at this point because the season that we’ve witnessed has been historic and exciting enough that the winner will be seen as almost a footnote.
However, one winner in all of this has been the points system that Formula One uses.
This will be the longest F1 season of all time, at 22 races. That also makes this the longest championship fight in the sport’s history. The vast discrepancy in the points awarded means that it should make it harder for a championship to last this long.
In previous points systems a potential DNF could only cost between eight and 10 points. Those points could be clawed back with a couple of wins, whereas now that gap needs three to four wins in a row to be offset against one bad weekend.
This is compounded by car reliability also being far greater than at any other point in the sport’s history too.
Previously, a DNF wasn’t a disaster because it was always likely that your championship rival would also fail to finish at a later point.
However, that isn’t necessarily true of championship contenders anymore. This is highlighted by the fact that Hamilton and Verstappen have DNF’d a total four times this season — three for Verstappen, once for Hamilton. But of those four non-finishes, none have been because of a reliability issue.
Verstappen’s tyre blew unexpectedly in Baku, he crashed during an incident with Hamilton in Silverstone and both crashed out together in Monza.
And yet, despite Verstappen’s extra DNFs, the two title rivals find themselves level on points going into Abu Dhabi. That hasn’t happened since 1974. There hasn’t even been a last race showdown since 2016.
Despite close title challenges in 2017 and 2018, the damage was done when Sebastian Vettel DNF’d one too many times and Hamilton cruised to victory with multiple races spare.
Since the 25-points for a win system was introduced in 2010, there have been four other final race deciders: 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. It was only in 2010 that the championship leader didn’t go on to win the title.
Since 2016, that points system has seen two further tweaks. In 2019 it was introduced that the fastest lap also earned a driver an extra point, provided they were in the top 10. And this year, the additional three Sprint Races meant that an extra nine points were on offer.
That means there have now been seven different points systems in F1.
They are as follows:
- Pre-1961: 8–6–4–3–2-Fastest Lap (any position)
- 1961–1990: 9–6–4–2–3–1
- 1991–2002: 10–6–4–3–2–1
- 2003–2009: 10–8–6–5–4–3–2–1
- 2010–2018: 25–18–15–12–10–8–6–4–2–1
- 2019–2020: + Fastest Lap (inside the top 10)
- 2021: + Sprint Race points. 3–2–1.
This season also poses the question of what if? What if we never changed points systems at all? How would the title have differed? Would it have made a difference, or would it already be decided?
The good news is that no matter what points system would be used, there is still a championship battle at Abu Dhabi.
Interestingly, of the seven points system, this is the only one in which both drivers are level after 21 races. In the other six, they share three leads each.
At any time from before 2003, Verstappen leads this championship. From 2003–2020, it’s Hamilton’s to lose.
That goes to show the importance the Sprint Races have had on this title. If Verstappen does win it by five points or fewer then his performance during this new weekend format will have made a decisive difference.
Verstappen also has the extra fastest lap point, which is currently making a whole world of difference. Without that extra point, Verstappen would be losing.
There is also the matter of the days when F1 didn’t count every point earned for a championship standing.
However, if we were to ignore both drivers’ worst three or four, or even six, results then those extra DNFs would actually come back in Verstappen’s favour. The championship would already be decided. So, let’s just stick with including every result from now on.
Sunday will be a historic occasion, a great spectacle and a much needed one for the sport. Going five years without a final showdown has been incredibly disappointing.
It is great news that the points system has held up over such a long season, as the sport inches closer to 25-races per year, meaning the potential is there for more tense and tight battles into the future.
Here’s hoping that this weekend is just the beginning of a new dawn in F1.
