WHAT IF F1 POINTS SYSTEM WAS DIFFERENT…

Source: Dr. Symanski

Murray Walker always says that F1 is IF backwards. So what if drivers were scored all the way to 20th place? What if we could somehow erase the DNFs from the season?

One of the problems with the current scoring system is that only half the starting grid can get points. Whilst this is far superior and preferable to the older system where only 6 cars would score, it does make it difficult to compare drivers in the mid-field and lower. Especially when sometimes one of the cars would just occasionally limp into the points!

Why not score all positions?

The scoring system does reward top place finishes disproportionally higher than the midfield, so any reworking of the points system should follow the same. This is fairly easily achieved by doubling the number of points, stretching this out to all places, and then interpolating the gaps missed.

Next is working through their finishing position and reallocating points. Retired and Disqualified both score zero. Then we have the next problem of a higher number of points making comparison difficult! A problem easily solved by normalising back to the leader’s total. What we result with is the graph below:

Lewis is the leader, so no points changes and Vettel would still be second, but Bottas is now third.

Next, we look at DNFs, and this is definitely pseudo-analysis! Because for absolute simplicity no assumption that if a driver did finish he’d be taking points away from another driver is made. Using the standard points system again, rather than the extended, this is just simply to find out what if they scored in every race?

In this analysis we simply take both Retirements and Disqualifications as the same; they didn’t complete the race. Total up the points they got from completed races, take the average number of points from those races, and then multiply by the number of races in a season. For example, Lewis didn’t complete one race, but with this analysis, he now gets a little bit more points to cover his DNF.

Looking further down and Perez would ahead of Hulkenberg. The new finishing orders would be:

First four position and no change, but Ricciardo would now be fifth. You can see how his DNFs significantly affected his points total as he was the poorest finisher at only 13 races, with Hulkenberg managing one better. Alonso and Ocon would both overtake Perez, a three-place improvement.

In conclusion, this is definitely an “IF” analysis, but it does serve to show rankings of some of the drivers. Leaders are still leading, those catching up at the rear still straggling. But in the midfield, there’s a couple of surprises where a driver does outperform their teammate with this extended scoring system.

DNFs have a huge impact on the number of points a driver can accumulate if the car is generally fast enough to score points. Care should be taken when looking at this to rate drivers because a higher finisher would put downward pressure on the point totals for other drivers.