{"id":116673,"date":"2025-09-03T12:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T12:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/116673\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T12:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T12:15:09","slug":"f1s-ridiculous-rule-that-couldve-made-the-2025-title-fight-fairer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/116673\/","title":{"rendered":"F1\u2019s ridiculous rule that could\u2019ve made the 2025 title fight fairer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLando Norris<\/a>\u2019s title campaign just got a little trickier. His DNF at Zandvoort effectively burns his only \u2018joker\u2019 for the second half of the year, meaning he can\u2019t really afford any more retirements if he wants to beat Oscar Piastri<\/a> to the title. The Australian boosted his chances with yet another win, but which score will he have to drop at the end of the season?\u201d<\/p>\n

This kind of summary may sound odd to today\u2019s Formula 1 fans, but if the world championship had kept its 1970s-style scoring, the Piastri\u2013Norris battle wouldn\u2019t look as bleak for Norris as the current 34-point gap between the two McLaren<\/a> drivers suggests.<\/p>\n

Back in the era when technical retirements were commonplace \u2013 and drivers lined up knowing there was a very real chance they wouldn\u2019t see the flag \u2013 the system made sense. It was only from 1991 that drivers actually kept all the points they scored across the season in the official classification.<\/p>\n

From the early years of the world championship, only a selection of results counted \u2013 a driver\u2019s worst scores were dropped. In practice, everyone had \u2018jokers\u2019 to burn during the campaign, most of which were swallowed by mechanical DNFs. The logic was to dial down the role of luck and let the fastest driver\u2019s best results decide the title.<\/p>\n

In 1950, only the four best results out of seven races counted. Then, it became five or six depending on the calendar. And from 1967, the season was effectively split, with a set number of results counting from the first and second halves of the season. In the 1967 season, each driver\u2019s worst result from both the first and second halves of the year was dropped.<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Joe Portlock \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

If that approach \u2013 with one dropped result per half-season \u2013 still applied to today\u2019s 24-race calendar, Norris\u2019s Canadian GP<\/a> retirement wouldn\u2019t trouble him at all. For Piastri, things would look slightly different: he\u2019d lose two points from Melbourne as his worst early-season result \u2013 not decisive, but a nudge.<\/p>\n

Zandvoort, though, is the bigger swing.<\/p>\n

Under dropped scores, it would still be a blow for Norris, but it would simply be his non-counting result \u2013 meaning he couldn’t afford any more DNFs to retain a realistic chance of winning the title. In Piastri\u2019s case, it would mean he couldn\u2019t count his 18 points from Hungary yet, because second place there would be his \u2018worst\u2019 score of the second half. Ultimately, under that system, if he were to finish first or second in all remaining races, he would effectively lose those 18 points.<\/p>\n

Weird? Definitely. Unnecessarily complicated? Sure. Unfair? Well\u2026 that\u2019s at least debatable.<\/p>\n

What happened to Norris at Zandvoort can easily prove decisive \u2013 and likely will \u2013 in a world where a win pays 25 points and a retirement pays zero. Think of Lewis Hamilton<\/a> in Malaysia 2016: if his engine hadn\u2019t failed, he\u2019d have had a much better shot at beating Nico Rosberg<\/a> to the title \u2013 and, without taking anything away from his former team-mate, he\u2019d have been a worthy champion that year, too.<\/p>\n

The fact that McLaren\u2019s only technical retirement this year struck Norris is surely a hard one to accept for the Briton. Yes, F1 is a technical sport. But does the current 34-point gap really reflect the performance delta between him and Piastri? In qualifying it\u2019s often a matter of thousandths. It\u2019s fair to say the Australian has been more consistent and very fast this year; Norris isn\u2019t far off, to say the least.<\/p>\n

\"Ayrton <\/p>\n

Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.<\/p>\n

Photo by: Ercole Colombo<\/p>\n

In 1980, the system shifted to \u2018best 11\u2019 results per year, which did serve its purpose of rewarding outright winning more than relentless second places. But the 1988 season hastened the rule\u2019s demise: Alain Prost scored more points across the year, yet lost the title to Ayrton Senna under the \u2018best 11\u2019 rule. As car reliability improved, the luck factor shrank, and the dropped-scores concept was finally shelved.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another factor: complexity. Any formula that excludes a driver\u2019s worst results adds a layer of arithmetic that doesn\u2019t help when you\u2019re trying to bring new fans closer to the sport. In football you learn 3-1-0 scoring at primary school; keeping F1 simple matters too. There\u2019s no realistic way for that old system to come back.<\/p>\n

But would it make today\u2019s title fight fairer? Perhaps, a bit. Right now, Norris has to compensate heavily for bad luck \u2013 and you wouldn\u2019t expect a tennis player to start a set down because of something outside their control.<\/p>\n

Then again, F1 is, by design, different. The technical element \u2013 even when it feels unfair \u2013 is part of the spectacle and a challenge.<\/p>\n

The points-scoring system is an interesting point of debate \u2013 and it\u2019s always an entertaining exercise to try to apply different systems to historical results to see how much would have changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, ultimately, a sports championship doesn\u2019t exist to identify the single \u2018strongest\u2019 athlete in the abstract; it exists to determine a winner under predefined rules. Those aren\u2019t always the same thing.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

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