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There’s been a little bit of talk lately
about F1 points systems, especially after
Zak Brown mooted the idea of using a ‘only
your best 11 results count’ system this
year.
Now he was specifically only talking about
2020 where we might see teams unable to make
some races or having to withdraw due to medical
emergency as McLaren did in Australia before
the whole weekend collapsed.
This sparked a video by Marc Priestley in
which he looked at giving points right down
the field, which is worth a watch.
But I want to focus on the idea of the championship
being decided by your “best N results”,
where N is some number less than the full
number of races that season.
It may surprise you to know that this was
exactly the system that F1 used for 40 years,
right up to 1990. Only from 1991 onwards have
drivers been adding up all of their points,
good and bad, to get their final championship
score.
In a few notable cases, using only your best
results instead of … all of them, has led
to championship changing effects - Surtees
vs Hill in 1964 and Senna vs Prost in 1988
are the obvious examples.
Not that that’s unfair - you race to the
rules you are given and champions become champions
knowing full well how the scores will be counted.
Anyway, I wanted to see how it would look
today if we brought back such a system properly,
how it would play out, and what it would actually
mean about what we value in a champion.
So my first thought was to look at 2019, but
that proved… rather tricky, as we’ll quickly
see.
The Hamilton/Mercedes combo proved so dominant
last year and the way team strength fell into
pretty well defined tiers meant that shifting
from a ‘use all results’ to ‘use only
your best results’ didn’t really do much.
Let’s look at it in practice.
These are the points scored across the season
at each race by each driver.
We can rearrange these points for each individual
driver from best to worst, like this.
Now we can think of ‘using your best, say,
15 race results’ as ‘discarding your worst
6 race results’ so we can just cover up
the worst results and only add up the ones
we’ve got left and see where everyone stands.
Here’s the thing though. Last year Lewis
won 11 out of the 21 races - over half of
them, plus he finished on the podium 17 out
of 21 times, so no matter how many bad results
you allow drivers to discard, there’s no
way to stop him becoming champion.
For clarity, this is the new championship
score from the top N races, this is their
new championship position and this is how
different each driver’s position is from
the normal 2019 championship finishing position.
So let’s look at all of their scores again
for all twenty drivers.
Now we can just discard their worst result.
Then their worst two results. And so on, and
so on, and so on.... And we see not much changes
last year at all.
Albon gets a brief boost if we look at drivers’
best 9 to 11 races, which allow him to rise
two places in the championship. And if you
discard 13 or more results, Sainz and Gasly
swap places, and then if you start discarding
more races than that, leaving only 6, 5, 4
results on the table then it all gets a bit
silly really and we don’t have to think
about that.
So, anyway - that’s the idea at least. You
allow all drivers to discard their worst N
races - N being a predetermined number, and
add up the remaining points to figure out
their championship score and therefore position.
But with some seasons, like 2019, we don’t
see much of an effect.
So let’s have a look at a more complicated
championship battle. In 2010 we saw five race
winners and a five way fight for the championship
that ended in a four way title battle at the
grand finale.
These were the points scored at each race
by the top five drivers in 2010. As you can
see, the wins, seconds and thirds were all
spread around much more than they were last
year.
We can again rearrange each drivers’ collection
of results from best to worst to see what
happens when you start discarding their worst
results.
And actually, again, as you start discarding
points one race at a time, you see that the
championship order doesn’t change very much
at all.
If you decide to use drivers’ best 15 of
19 results then Webber and Hamilton swap places,
with Hamilton being promoted to third overall.
This is mainly due to the fact that Hamilton
had 4 non-points finishes, to Webber’s two,
so in taking the best 15 results, Hamilton
has been able to discard all his zeros, while
Webber has had to chuck six points away.
This resolves itself immediately if we do
best of 14 and discard one more result each,
returning to the existing championship order
until we get to best of 12 and below.
In fact, if we discard 7 or more worst race
results, Alonso and Vettel will end up level
in a championship winning tie as their best
12 results are identical: five wins, two seconds,
three thirds and two fourths.
So taking drivers’ best results probably
won’t have a massive effect on the championship,
though it might make working out what’s
going on quite difficult when you’re trying
to understand championship ramifications,
mid race.
If we were doing ‘Best 15’, for example,
you’d need to know in your head the 15th
best result of the drivers you’re interested
in and whether they are doing well enough
in the current race to score well enough to
get into their personal top 15 and change
their score.
It also removes the idea of capitalising on
a chaotic race. I showed in the last video
how Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc both
scored second places at different points last
year, but Vettel’s second in Germany was
worth much more as he many scored points over
all of his stumbling rivals than Leclerc did
in a fairly normal Austrian race.
Using the ‘discard method’ of scoring
a championship, both results would be worth
exactly the same and Vettel’s rivals would
probably end up throwing the German result
in the bin to no penalty.
Is this a good thing? Should all second places
be worth the same? Or should a second place
where you kept your head when all others were
losing theirs be worth relatively a bit more,
where you fought through the rain and chaos
and kept it all together? What do you think?
Another thing to note is that the championship
points reach a ceiling and the points graph
will abruptly change shape once you reach
the maximum number of races you can count.
For example, if we did a best 13 races in
2019, the maximum number of points any driver
can score is 13 x 26 = 338 points.
Once drivers complete race 13, they can only
get closer and closer to this points ceiling
by improving their ‘best 13’.
So while the actual top five drivers championship
points looked like this across the year…
If we did best 13 results, the graph would
look like this, folding down toward their
best possible result.
And, it’s a lot trickier to work out immediately
at which point drivers drop out of championship
contention. Normally you just look at a driver’s
championship score at the end of a race and
look at the difference between theirs and
the championship leaders. If it’s less than
the races remaining x the maximum score (in
this case, 26) then they are still mathematically
in the championship hunt.
But in this case, once you get past N races,
let’s stick with 13 in this case, a win
isn’t worth 26 points. A win is worth 26
points minus your 13th best score. So it could
be worth just 15 points, or 7 points, depending
on your current collection of results.
So in the case of 2019, after round 13, if
Hamilton wins all remaining 8 races with the
fastest lap, that will only be worth 67 to
him. But if Leclerc wins all remaining 8 races
with fastest lap, that will be worth 140 points
as the wins are replacing worse results than
they are for Hamilton. It’s… more complex.
Let’s move to the end of round 16 at Russia.
OK so now Hamilton has won nine races and
his ‘best 13’ score is 298 to Bottas’s
235.
Now Bottas can potentially win the next 5
races, which would normally be a maximum of
130 extra points - enough to reach Hamilton’s
298. But those five 26 point races are going
to replace one second places, three third
places and a fourth. So actually, five more
wins for Bottas is only worth 54 points, meaning
his maximum score after Russia is just 289
points. So Bottas can’t possibly win the
championship - Hamilton has just wrapped it
up with five rounds to go.
That’s ...pretty complicated. But it worked
for 40 years, I guess.
OK, so I feel we’re losing sense of this
for all the numbers in play, so let’s break
it down a bit.
Let’s create a fake scenario to look at
what kind of driver a discard system favours.
And that’s the real question we want to
ask whenever we talk about changing the points
system - what kind of racing does this favour?
So let’s create four different driver profiles
and put them in a fictional ten race season.
Our four drivers are:
The Consistent, The Improver, The Wobbler,
and the All or Nothing
The Consistent basically scored the same every
time. No wins, but some middling points and
low podiums. They’re picking up good points
every time.
The Improver generally gets better with every
race - but the important thing about them
is they have a wide spread of results.
The Wobbler is pretty erratic. When everything’s
going well they get wins and podiums, but
they have off weekends where they’re picking
up smaller points.
The All or Nothing either wins or fails to
score at all. They’ll risk everything to
come first, throwing it off the track in pursuit
of glory.
As you can see, over the whole championship,
each of these drivers scores identical points.
But as before we can rearrange their scores
from best to worst like this.
And, as we start discarding their worst results,
a clear ranking appears.
The Consistent is the most disadvantaged by
the discard system. They’ve actually been
doing well all year, racking up decent points,
but being then only driver with no wins, you
might think it’s pretty fair they come last
of this four.
Second worst off is the ‘Improver’ who
has an even spread of results, including a
win. But their best results were a bit better
than The Consistent’s best and their worst
results a little bit worse. So they were able
to discard a smaller collection of points.
The Wobbler was able to do a bit better still
as their collection of points was further
skewed to one end so they could chop off relatively
few points.
And the All or Nothing racer did best of all,
as they can discard a full 5 races of results
without losing any points.
And this kind of looks pretty cool - rewarding
drivers who go for the win at the risk of
losing it all. But bear in mind, drivers would
still have to try and be consistent across
the season to keep their results plump with
points and ask yourself this: is it really
risking it all for a win if you know you can
just discard the result if you crash out pushing
for glory?
If Verstappen crashed into a wall chasing
Hamilton down for the lead under the normal
points system he would lose 25 points to Hamilton.
If he crashed under the discard system, he
could simply pretend the race didn’t exist
and use his other, better scoring races instead.
Though of course he would have to make sure
there WERE better scoring races there as a
safety net.
But overall, the discard points system still
favours getting as many points as possible
(which is good), while collecting your points
in a skewed way. The only way it’s going
to affect your championship is if you’re
scoring overall a similar sum of points to
your rival, but never really hitting the highs
that they are. Then you’ll get hammered.
So the discard system wants you to aim big.
Score as many wins as possible, or (if you’re
in a midfield team), grab the maximum number
of points each race that you can. Don’t
settle for 5th if you think you can get 4th.
And this is good. Is it good enough to bother
changing back to this system for normal seasons
and deal with its complications and limitations?
In my opinion… no. In your opinion? Well...
you’ll have to let me know.
