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OK Video time.
Hello - yes this is my face again! Let’s have a quick chat about something that may
not *actually* be a problem at all but the discussion comes up every so often, so let’s
talk about it: How do we separate the consequences for drivers
and their teams in cases where only one of those two parties has actually done something
wrong? This most commonly comes up after an unsafe
release - when a pit crew releases a driver back into the pitlane into the path of another
car, usually. In this case, the driver has done nothing
wrong - they are literally ‘just following orders’
And I don’t mean that in the Nazi sense, I mean the drivers literally can’t see out
of their tiny, enclosed 300 kph bathtubs so need to be told exactly when they’re free
to go. Nonetheless, an unsafe release often means
some kind of penalty - a drive through or time penalty of some descriptions - and what
may have been a very successful race. And when we see this play out we often feel
aggrieved for the driver. It’s not their fault but as the driver and team are inextricably
interlinked, both must suffer the penalty, including the innocent party - the driver.
And while most come to the conclusion that ‘it’s a team sport and they win and lose
together’ let’s just play pretend for imagination’s sake and ask ‘how *do* we
even start to try and reward and penalise the team and its drivers separately.
First let’s look at the type of mistakes that can cause a loss of points.
The car could break down The driver could crash
The driver could be taken out by someone else There’s that unsafe pitstop
There’s a team misbehaving (like illegal spying or standing in the pitlane with the
wrong equipment or something} There’s having a *properly* illegal car
- like it’s got four engines or adjustable wings or something
There’s having a mildly illegal car - like the floor slightly crosses the allowed geometry
or the car has a miniscule power spike or something
There’s also dodgy driving, like cutting a chicane or weaving or not following safety
car procedure. That kind of thing. And let’s say ‘driver behaving badly’
like ignoring procedure, swearing at the FIA on the radio or holding up a political message
on the podium. I’m sure there’s loads more, but let’s
not be here all day listing infractions. So we can loosely split these things into
“Driver’s Fault”, “Team’s Fault” and “Bad Luck”, really.
With the bad luck pile I guess it doesn’t matter about separating consequences. You
just have to accept these things and move on
Let’s start with Team Infractions first as these are potentially much simpler to deal
with. Option 1 - You deduct points from the team
and the team only. This has actually happened before. In fact:
it happened twice to McLaren in 2007. Firstly in Hungary where the team got stripped of
all it’s points - bizarrely - for Alonso playing silly buggers during Q3. Then it got
all its points removed for having stolen Ferrari technical data.
Both drivers got to keep their own points though.
But completely wiping out team points isn’t always the appropriate move - should a team
really lose 25 whole points if their driver wins but they nearly took out Romain Grosjean
in the pitlane? Seems pretty hefty. There could potentially be a viable system
in which team points penalties are treated in the same way as driver time penalties.
Two points for a little thing, Five points for a bigger thing, etc.
The downside here, apart from making us spreadsheet nerds frustrated by the extra complications
- and fastest points already did *enough* thank you -
The downside is that points are worth different amounts to different teams. A 5 point penalty
to Mercedes is almost nothing, but to Williams it’s an absolute disaster. They could have
spent all season gathering those 5 points. Or a midfield team, 5 points is nothing to
be sniffed at either. The battle is much closer there than at the top, currently so 5 points
could be three championship positions by the end of the season.
Now in some cases the FIA just hand out a fine to the team. A loose fitted wheel is
an instant fine, for example. So perhaps a dangerous pitstop or fitting a wheel from
the wrong tyre set could have fixed price penalties.
But again we run into problems. Not only do monetary amounts have different values to
different teams - with the massive rich teams able to shrug off $10 grand more easily than,
say, Haas - but then you’ve put a price on cheating, effectively.
If big teams can invest hundreds of thousands into shaving off a tenth of a second by reshaping
an endplate or something, why *wouldn’t* they be more blazé in the pitlane if it could
gain them perhaps even a whole second over the competition for a few grand in the swear
jar? I’m sure many team principals would take
so many slaps on the wrist it would hurt to wear a watch if they got to move up a place
in the standings. So here’s a wackier idea. Why not separate
the driver and team points completely? So, in this scenario, the top ten drivers
on track all score points for where they finished as usual, but for the teams, only the highest
placed of their cars scores them points and the other car is ignored.
So, let’s take the Australian GP this year. These are the full results, but if we just
focus on the constructors and erase the second placed driver from each team, shuffle them
back up again and award them the full top ten points.
And it’s still kind of fair cause that’s the best result each team managed that race.
It might lead them to effectively abandoning their second driver during the race but you
never know if the lead driver will retire so you’ve got to balance both cars to play
it safe. If we let this system play out up until the
Russian Grand Prix (the last race when this was recorded) we see the constructor standings
is still in the same order, albeit a little less spread out, which is good if anything.
Leaves plenty on the table to play for. [double retirements = 0 constructors pts]
And if we separate out both championships like this we can start to play more with things
like “points penalties for rules infringements” because there are more points on the line
for each team. You could even revise how many points a team
get for each infringement, with different penalties applied depending on where they
finish. So a small infringement could be 5 points
for a win but only 1 point for 5th place. And two small infringements or one medium
infringement could be 10 from a win and 2 for 5th, and so on.
This could get complicated but when has F1 ever done things simply? Never, that’s when.
Driving cars around a circle 60 times is not a simple business and it never will be!
Ok so that’s one wild idea on the table that… maybe could work. If F1 gets their
TV graphics working well it might not even be that hard to follow. Maybe.
OK let’s go back to our list of infringements. I think these ones highlighted here have definite
potential to be brought into the ‘team only’ punishment pool.
These ones here I think still have to be both team and driver taking the hit. If a car breaks
down there’s nothing you car do. If the car is properly illegal and gaining
an unfair advantage then both team and driver are benefitting so both need to be brought
down with penalties. A slight technical infringement though? One
that *technically* breaks the rules but doesn’t actually bring much benefit to the driver?
A bit of bodywork slightly out of place? A tiny bit of fuel flow over pump? Then, really
the driver hasn’t done anything wrong and probably didn’t get an advantage. Punish
the team for stepping over the line so they don’t take the *piscine* but give the driver
the benefit of the doubt. Maybe? So what about if the driver alone does something
wrong? How on earth do we save the team from punishment in this case?
Let’s say your driver crashes out of the race. You can’t magically bring the car
back to life just for the team’s benefit, right? No - *but* in a system where drivers
and teams’ points are separate, one car hitting the wall just means the other car
is now in command of all the points. It may be slightly fewer points, but it’s not as
big a loss for the team as it might have been. If the trailing car crashes, then it’s no
loss at all. But what if a driver does something pretty
dodgy on track? Moving in the braking zone, cutting a corner, squeezing someone wide - that
kind of thing. Normally they’d be given a 5 second penalty
or something which would punish the team as well as the team only get the points the driver
can get. But what if - and this is a terrible idea
that I don’t think I can sell to you - what if you gave the driver a time penalty over
their heads that they don’t have to physically take? You know, like if they get a five second
penalty after their last pit stop so it just gets added to their finishing time.
But what if this time *only* applies to the driver and not the car? That way the team
potentially gets to keep the position but the driver doesn’t. Problem solved.
Except we’ve definitely strayed into way-too-complicated territory here. Can you imagine a car having
two different finishing times? Can you imagine trying to keep up with that through the race
if multiple penalties get given out? Can you imagine trying to work out the finishing order
when sometimes the stewards can’t even work out the grid until a few hours before the
race? And this is prone to exploitation if, late
in the season, a driver is out of contention for decent championship positions but the
team is still fighting in the constructors. The team could ask the driver to go cutting
corners knowing their constructor points won’t be sacrificed. No, this will get messy.
They say there are no bad ideas, but they are wrong.
OK final crazy idea and I’m not the first to suggest this by a long shot and it will
never happen, despite being amazing. Don’t contract drivers to teams. Have them
rotate race by race to a new team. That way every driver gets a shot at each car and - as
such - a hypothetically equal shot at the title cause, over the year, they’ve all
used equal machinery. Similarly, every team gets to use each driver
so the points gathered overall will reflect the quality of their car.
Now breakdowns and crashes will still happen but the risk is now spread out among teams
and drivers. Each driver will get their share of unreliable and bulletproof cars and each
team will have to have Romain Grosjean at some point. All’s fair.
Now, for this to work you’d need to have at least as many races as their are teams.
Which we have. In fact, each driver can visit each team twice in a 21 race calendar. And
then on the twenty first race - the finale - just put the best drivers in the best cars
(based on the title standings) and use a reverse grid. What an exciting climax.
This will never happen due to the ridiculous amount of money spent on commodifying drivers
to a team but can you imagine? Who would pay the drivers’ salaries in this case? Would
we have to go full communism? Do I care? Not much!
So this has been my propaganda video in support of F1 going fully socialist. You have been
sucked into my political web and admit it - you love it. We, the people, should take
control of Formula 1 back from the oligarchs and rename it Formula All. This has been Chain
Bear. Vive la revolution!