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Hey crew, I've been back at it again thinking about F1 in the shower.

So this year Redbull have an outside chance performance-wise to to mix it with Ferrari and Mercedes on a good day. However, I think most of us agree that they're unlikely to have the reliability to give Dan a real shot at the championship.

Now, I'm going to make a couple of purely anecdotal assumptions to begin with so feel free to correct me if you disagree. First is that the average or casual F1 fan cares a whole lot more about the driver championship than they do the constructors champion. The second is that the casual F1 fan probably doesn't fully understand why occasionally their favourite driver has to start at the back of grid, and this is probably frustrating.

So the problem I'm tackling here is how to impose a reliability penalty on teams WITHOUT penalising the fans or the entertainment value of the series. The answer I've arrived at is to take constructor championship points for going over the PU limit rather than grid penalties.

In theory this is just a more direct way to achieve the same result as is currently in place. IE, a team starting at the back of the grid is highly likely to score less points in that race. However, the difference with directly taking points is that it does NOT penalise the driver or the driver championship.

As I understand it a teams ranking in the constructor championship plays an important role in how prize money is awarded, so there is still a strong incentive to push for higher reliability from the teams end, however the fans and drivers are not penalised in the process.

I had more thoughts on this but forgot them throughout the day, so that should do it as a vague outline, and now the thought is part of the public domain and no longer my burden to carry.

Thanks guys!

I have read your whole post and I don't mean to be dismissive, but: You win as a team and you lose as a team. As soon as you start separating the two where do you draw the line?

wolfticket wrote:I have read your whole post and I don't mean to be dismissive, but: You win as a team and you lose as a team. As soon as you start separating the two where do you draw the line?

No problem at all! I suppose my answer to that would be that they are already separated, which is why we have a constructors and driver championship. I do take your point in the sense that it could further erode that sense of unity though!

The big problem I would have with it is that it's not a penalty with parity down the field. A ten point penalty costs Sauber, FI and STR far more than it costs Merc, Ferrari or Red Bull.

It's frustrating but I think you win and lose as a team. If the driver crashes into the wall you wouldn't still give the team the WCC they would have got.

mikeyg123 wrote:The big problem I would have with it is that it's not a penalty with parity down the field. A ten point penalty costs Sauber, FI and STR far more than it costs Merc, Ferrari or Red Bull.

It's frustrating but I think you win and lose as a team. If the driver crashes into the wall you wouldn't still give the team the WCC they would have got.

I'm actually having a tough time arguing with either of these points, great feedback.

I suppose one way of looking at it would be to separate sporting infringements from purely mechanical ones, although that would still have its own issues.

I think it's silly that if eg an engine fails in practice then a car/driver may suffer a grid penalty as a result. Who wins in this scenario? Particularly if it's a customer team with no control over manufacturing standards. I can't abide grid penalties in these situations

veffy wrote:Hey crew, I've been back at it again thinking about F1 in the shower...

I may well have stopped reading at this point.

But I guess that you are seeking to separate the constructor punishment from the driver. All well and good but they are all part of the same team. It's a little like having a star footballer in a mediocre team - as good as he is, he is unlikely to win any trophies.

veffy wrote:Hey crew, I've been back at it again thinking about F1 in the shower.

So this year Redbull have an outside chance performance-wise to to mix it with Ferrari and Mercedes on a good day. However, I think most of us agree that they're unlikely to have the reliability to give Dan a real shot at the championship.

Now, I'm going to make a couple of purely anecdotal assumptions to begin with so feel free to correct me if you disagree. First is that the average or casual F1 fan cares a whole lot more about the driver championship than they do the constructors champion. The second is that the casual F1 fan probably doesn't fully understand why occasionally their favourite driver has to start at the back of grid, and this is probably frustrating.

So the problem I'm tackling here is how to impose a reliability penalty on teams WITHOUT penalising the fans or the entertainment value of the series. The answer I've arrived at is to take constructor championship points for going over the PU limit rather than grid penalties.

In theory this is just a more direct way to achieve the same result as is currently in place. IE, a team starting at the back of the grid is highly likely to score less points in that race. However, the difference with directly taking points is that it does NOT penalise the driver or the driver championship.

As I understand it a teams ranking in the constructor championship plays an important role in how prize money is awarded, so there is still a strong incentive to push for higher reliability from the teams end, however the fans and drivers are not penalised in the process.

I had more thoughts on this but forgot them throughout the day, so that should do it as a vague outline, and now the thought is part of the public domain and no longer my burden to carry.

Thanks guys!

I have advocated for this for a while now. For failures of any of the mechanical parameters that the FIA limits, making the team forfeit WCC points makes sense. As I remember the FIA have in the past penalized drivers WDC points for personal infractions for personal misdeeds. The FIA does hand out penalty points to drivers like Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean. Grosjean was suspended by the FIA in 2012 for the Italian GP and was replaced by Lotus test and reserve driver Jérôme d'Ambrosio. The team still competed but Romain was not allowed to compete. It makes sense to me that the FIA would penalize only teams for things that are not in the drivers control.


Care should be take when separating penalties of WDC and WCC point because the teams and drivers should, to a significant extent, function as responsible for each other. Still in this case, the driver is an employee of the team and is not in charge of the quality or durability of the car provided for him or her.

Mort Canard wrote:

veffy wrote:Hey crew, I've been back at it again thinking about F1 in the shower.

So this year Redbull have an outside chance performance-wise to to mix it with Ferrari and Mercedes on a good day. However, I think most of us agree that they're unlikely to have the reliability to give Dan a real shot at the championship.

Now, I'm going to make a couple of purely anecdotal assumptions to begin with so feel free to correct me if you disagree. First is that the average or casual F1 fan cares a whole lot more about the driver championship than they do the constructors champion. The second is that the casual F1 fan probably doesn't fully understand why occasionally their favourite driver has to start at the back of grid, and this is probably frustrating.

So the problem I'm tackling here is how to impose a reliability penalty on teams WITHOUT penalising the fans or the entertainment value of the series. The answer I've arrived at is to take constructor championship points for going over the PU limit rather than grid penalties.

In theory this is just a more direct way to achieve the same result as is currently in place. IE, a team starting at the back of the grid is highly likely to score less points in that race. However, the difference with directly taking points is that it does NOT penalise the driver or the driver championship.

As I understand it a teams ranking in the constructor championship plays an important role in how prize money is awarded, so there is still a strong incentive to push for higher reliability from the teams end, however the fans and drivers are not penalised in the process.

I had more thoughts on this but forgot them throughout the day, so that should do it as a vague outline, and now the thought is part of the public domain and no longer my burden to carry.

Thanks guys!

I have advocated for this for a while now. For failures of any of the mechanical parameters that the FIA limits, making the team forfeit WCC points makes sense. As I remember the FIA have in the past penalized drivers WDC points for personal infractions for personal misdeeds. The FIA does hand out penalty points to drivers like Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean. Grosjean was suspended by the FIA in 2012 for the Italian GP and was replaced by Lotus test and reserve driver Jérôme d'Ambrosio. The team still competed but Romain was not allowed to compete. It makes sense to me that the FIA would penalize only teams for things that are not in the drivers control.


Care should be take when separating penalties of WDC and WCC point because the teams and drivers should, to a significant extent, function as responsible for each other. Still in this case, the driver is an employee of the team and is not in charge of the quality or durability of the car provided for him or her.

As far as I know, no driver has had a point taken away for personal infractions. As I said in the thread previously the trouble with taking points from teams is that it's a much bigger penalty for the smaller teams. Merc won't notice a ten point penalty where as it would be a disaster for Sauber.

mikeyg123 wrote:

Mort Canard wrote:

veffy wrote:Hey crew, I've been back at it again thinking about F1 in the shower.

So this year Redbull have an outside chance performance-wise to to mix it with Ferrari and Mercedes on a good day. However, I think most of us agree that they're unlikely to have the reliability to give Dan a real shot at the championship.

Now, I'm going to make a couple of purely anecdotal assumptions to begin with so feel free to correct me if you disagree. First is that the average or casual F1 fan cares a whole lot more about the driver championship than they do the constructors champion. The second is that the casual F1 fan probably doesn't fully understand why occasionally their favourite driver has to start at the back of grid, and this is probably frustrating.

So the problem I'm tackling here is how to impose a reliability penalty on teams WITHOUT penalising the fans or the entertainment value of the series. The answer I've arrived at is to take constructor championship points for going over the PU limit rather than grid penalties.

In theory this is just a more direct way to achieve the same result as is currently in place. IE, a team starting at the back of the grid is highly likely to score less points in that race. However, the difference with directly taking points is that it does NOT penalise the driver or the driver championship.

As I understand it a teams ranking in the constructor championship plays an important role in how prize money is awarded, so there is still a strong incentive to push for higher reliability from the teams end, however the fans and drivers are not penalised in the process.

I had more thoughts on this but forgot them throughout the day, so that should do it as a vague outline, and now the thought is part of the public domain and no longer my burden to carry.

Thanks guys!

I have advocated for this for a while now. For failures of any of the mechanical parameters that the FIA limits, making the team forfeit WCC points makes sense. As I remember the FIA have in the past penalized drivers WDC points for personal infractions for personal misdeeds. The FIA does hand out penalty points to drivers like Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean. Grosjean was suspended by the FIA in 2012 for the Italian GP and was replaced by Lotus test and reserve driver Jérôme d'Ambrosio. The team still competed but Romain was not allowed to compete. It makes sense to me that the FIA would penalize only teams for things that are not in the drivers control.


Care should be take when separating penalties of WDC and WCC point because the teams and drivers should, to a significant extent, function as responsible for each other. Still in this case, the driver is an employee of the team and is not in charge of the quality or durability of the car provided for him or her.

As far as I know, no driver has had a point taken away for personal infractions. As I said in the thread previously the trouble with taking points from teams is that it's a much bigger penalty for the smaller teams. Merc won't notice a ten point penalty where as it would be a disaster for Sauber.

First one that springs to mind is Schumacher being disqualified from the whole 1997 season and Ferrari keeping points...

dompclarke wrote:

mikeyg123 wrote:

Mort Canard wrote:

veffy wrote:Hey crew, I've been back at it again thinking about F1 in the shower.

So this year Redbull have an outside chance performance-wise to to mix it with Ferrari and Mercedes on a good day. However, I think most of us agree that they're unlikely to have the reliability to give Dan a real shot at the championship.

Now, I'm going to make a couple of purely anecdotal assumptions to begin with so feel free to correct me if you disagree. First is that the average or casual F1 fan cares a whole lot more about the driver championship than they do the constructors champion. The second is that the casual F1 fan probably doesn't fully understand why occasionally their favourite driver has to start at the back of grid, and this is probably frustrating.

So the problem I'm tackling here is how to impose a reliability penalty on teams WITHOUT penalising the fans or the entertainment value of the series. The answer I've arrived at is to take constructor championship points for going over the PU limit rather than grid penalties.

In theory this is just a more direct way to achieve the same result as is currently in place. IE, a team starting at the back of the grid is highly likely to score less points in that race. However, the difference with directly taking points is that it does NOT penalise the driver or the driver championship.

As I understand it a teams ranking in the constructor championship plays an important role in how prize money is awarded, so there is still a strong incentive to push for higher reliability from the teams end, however the fans and drivers are not penalised in the process.

I had more thoughts on this but forgot them throughout the day, so that should do it as a vague outline, and now the thought is part of the public domain and no longer my burden to carry.

Thanks guys!

I have advocated for this for a while now. For failures of any of the mechanical parameters that the FIA limits, making the team forfeit WCC points makes sense. As I remember the FIA have in the past penalized drivers WDC points for personal infractions for personal misdeeds. The FIA does hand out penalty points to drivers like Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean. Grosjean was suspended by the FIA in 2012 for the Italian GP and was replaced by Lotus test and reserve driver Jérôme d'Ambrosio. The team still competed but Romain was not allowed to compete. It makes sense to me that the FIA would penalize only teams for things that are not in the drivers control.


Care should be take when separating penalties of WDC and WCC point because the teams and drivers should, to a significant extent, function as responsible for each other. Still in this case, the driver is an employee of the team and is not in charge of the quality or durability of the car provided for him or her.

As far as I know, no driver has had a point taken away for personal infractions. As I said in the thread previously the trouble with taking points from teams is that it's a much bigger penalty for the smaller teams. Merc won't notice a ten point penalty where as it would be a disaster for Sauber.

First one that springs to mind is Schumacher being disqualified from the whole 1997 season and Ferrari keeping points...

Schumacher actually kept his points. All he lost was his official championship position. The points he scored still count towards all his stats.

mikeyg123 wrote:

dompclarke wrote:

mikeyg123 wrote:

Mort Canard wrote:

veffy wrote:Hey crew, I've been back at it again thinking about F1 in the shower.

So this year Redbull have an outside chance performance-wise to to mix it with Ferrari and Mercedes on a good day. However, I think most of us agree that they're unlikely to have the reliability to give Dan a real shot at the championship.

Now, I'm going to make a couple of purely anecdotal assumptions to begin with so feel free to correct me if you disagree. First is that the average or casual F1 fan cares a whole lot more about the driver championship than they do the constructors champion. The second is that the casual F1 fan probably doesn't fully understand why occasionally their favourite driver has to start at the back of grid, and this is probably frustrating.

So the problem I'm tackling here is how to impose a reliability penalty on teams WITHOUT penalising the fans or the entertainment value of the series. The answer I've arrived at is to take constructor championship points for going over the PU limit rather than grid penalties.

In theory this is just a more direct way to achieve the same result as is currently in place. IE, a team starting at the back of the grid is highly likely to score less points in that race. However, the difference with directly taking points is that it does NOT penalise the driver or the driver championship.

As I understand it a teams ranking in the constructor championship plays an important role in how prize money is awarded, so there is still a strong incentive to push for higher reliability from the teams end, however the fans and drivers are not penalised in the process.

I had more thoughts on this but forgot them throughout the day, so that should do it as a vague outline, and now the thought is part of the public domain and no longer my burden to carry.

Thanks guys!

I have advocated for this for a while now. For failures of any of the mechanical parameters that the FIA limits, making the team forfeit WCC points makes sense. As I remember the FIA have in the past penalized drivers WDC points for personal infractions for personal misdeeds. The FIA does hand out penalty points to drivers like Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean. Grosjean was suspended by the FIA in 2012 for the Italian GP and was replaced by Lotus test and reserve driver Jérôme d'Ambrosio. The team still competed but Romain was not allowed to compete. It makes sense to me that the FIA would penalize only teams for things that are not in the drivers control.


Care should be take when separating penalties of WDC and WCC point because the teams and drivers should, to a significant extent, function as responsible for each other. Still in this case, the driver is an employee of the team and is not in charge of the quality or durability of the car provided for him or her.

As far as I know, no driver has had a point taken away for personal infractions. As I said in the thread previously the trouble with taking points from teams is that it's a much bigger penalty for the smaller teams. Merc won't notice a ten point penalty where as it would be a disaster for Sauber.

First one that springs to mind is Schumacher being disqualified from the whole 1997 season and Ferrari keeping points...

Schumacher actually kept his points. All he lost was his official championship position. The points he scored still count towards all his stats.

I sit corrected, weird decision then

dompclarke wrote: I sit corrected, weird decision then

Just a clever way to look like you're giving a very harsh penalty without actually doing anything.

This doesn't really work.

Imagine this scenario: its five races to go and Ferrari don't have a realistic chance of winning the WCC because Kimi has crashed too often, but Vettel has been consistent and picked up a couple of wins and is 20 odd points behind Lewis and Max who are neck and neck (as are Merc and RBR in the WCC). Ferrari's historic payments mean they are coming out of the season with a healthy pay packet regardless of their WCC position. Under this scenario they could just give Vettel a new engine every race - giving him an unfair disadvantage in the WDC.

Might be a far fetched scenario, (and I've not put that much thought into so it might not be mathematically possible) but I think it illustrates how it could be abused with a bit of thought.

I do appreciate that the OP is attempting to deal with issues that have an effect on the fans and racing. But I also perceive this as a band-aid, and not dealing with the actual disease.

This is Formula One, I (and I am sure, many others) want to see the drivers and cars going 100% all the time. Yet recently, we have seen very slow races, all the drivers driving to deltas because of reliability issues or conserving the tires. I already expressed my opinion on the tires, fix them, don't make them so freaking fragile or requiring running within a very narrow temperature range. The original concept had good intentions on spicing up the show, but the end result is that in too many races, we the fans suffer by a lack of hard racing.

And so it goes with the power unit rules. Yes, the engine manufacturers want to look good by having hybrid engines that last. But I say, screw the engine manufacturers. Formula one is not a benefit for them, it is to serve the fans, to give them excitement and thrills. The solution is to relax the power unit penalties, don't squeeze the life out of the engines and enjoyment.

Mort Canard wrote:Care should be take when separating penalties of WDC and WCC point because the teams and drivers should, to a significant extent, function as responsible for each other. Still in this case, the driver is an employee of the team and is not in charge of the quality or durability of the car provided for him or her.

Just playing devils advicate, but what if the issues are as a result of the way the driver drives? He might be pushing too much, or he bins the car, and forces the team to make the necessary changes.

I agree with the win as a team, lose as a team comment. Perhaps we get rid of the grid penalty and award the penalised team and driver 50% of the points haul they would have received.

A problem to consider is what if a team decides they do not care about the manufacturer points as most publicity will go to the team with the winning driver. So new engine every week to give their lead driver the most chance of winning the championship....and just market being the provider of the winning car.

mikeyg123 wrote:

dompclarke wrote: I sit corrected, weird decision then

Just a clever way to look like you're giving a very harsh penalty without actually doing anything.

This is frequently stated, and I disagree with it every time. Taking away Schumacher's lifetime legacy - his points and wins - was not the point of the penalty, and would have been totally disconnected to what he did anyway; he didn't cheat for any of those wins, so why take them away? The point was to disqualify him from the season, meaning that any future attempt to ram a championship rival to win the championship would be met with instant disqualification, hence rendering it an impossible way to win a championship and meaning that nobody would ever try. The penalty worked: nobody has tried it since, while the previous 9 years saw 4 separate attempts (1989, 1990, 1994, 1997).

If you think Schumacher should have been banned for some length of time I can also see that, but that's a separate argument. I don't see any reason however why his wins earlier in the season should have been rendered void simply because he cheated later in the season.

I think there's a better case for 2007, where Lewis and Fernando arguably shouldn't have been allowed to keep wins they scored in an illegal car, which was illegal (copied from a competitor's intellectual property) for every one of those wins.

Exediron wrote:

mikeyg123 wrote:

dompclarke wrote: I sit corrected, weird decision then

Just a clever way to look like you're giving a very harsh penalty without actually doing anything.

This is frequently stated, and I disagree with it every time. Taking away Schumacher's lifetime legacy - his points and wins - was not the point of the penalty, and would have been totally disconnected to what he did anyway; he didn't cheat for any of those wins, so why take them away? The point was to disqualify him from the season, meaning that any future attempt to ram a championship rival to win the championship would be met with instant disqualification, hence rendering it an impossible way to win a championship and meaning that nobody would ever try. The penalty worked: nobody has tried it since, while the previous 9 years saw 4 separate attempts (1989, 1990, 1994, 1997).

If you think Schumacher should have been banned for some length of time I can also see that, but that's a separate argument. I don't see any reason however why his wins earlier in the season should have been rendered void simply because he cheated later in the season.

I think there's a better case for 2007, where Lewis and Fernando arguably shouldn't have been allowed to keep wins they scored in an illegal car, which was illegal (copied from a competitor's intellectual property) for every one of those wins.

I understand the logic of the penalty. I would also have extended a ban into the following season. And yes you could certainly make a sporting argument for the Mclaren drivers to be DSQ'd in 07. I think had they not been in such a dramatic championship fight they would have been.

iano wrote:A problem to consider is what if a team decides they do not care about the manufacturer points as most publicity will go to the team with the winning driver. So new engine every week to give their lead driver the most chance of winning the championship....and just market being the provider of the winning car.

So, much like the good ol’ days, where Grand Prixs were measured as individual races, before they threw in the championship

Dragging the thread slightly back on-topic, the only way I can see deducting WCC points instead of grid penalties working is if the deduction is based on a certain percentage of a team's WCC points. You couldn't simply replace (and this is purely an example) a 5 place grid drop with a 5 point WCC deduction because, as has been mentioned, it's a penalty that is going to punish each team differently. If it was a set percentage of a team's WCC points - again, as an example, 5% of their total - then I'd consider it a more even penalty. Even then it's still not ideal because if a team has a large enough cushion over the next team - or in Ferrari's case, they simply put more focus on the WDC than the WCC - then it isn't going to actually act as a deterrent.

Also, if the point of removing grid penalties is to help avoid situations where drivers are penalised through no (or little) fault of their own, doesn't this just mean teams are going to end up being penalised through no fault of their own? It hardly seems fair if a small team like Haas are buying engines from Ferrari, suffering reliability issues with those engines, and then losing WCC points because of that.

In terms of simplicity, WCC points deductions is definitely the easiest route. But it seems like it would just be replacing one flawed system with another flawed system. Not that I can propose a better solution! In my opinion the only real solution is to remove the limitations on gearbox/engine elements entirely, as that's the only way you'll never have to penalise teams/drivers from using more than they're allowed to. But that's a no-go because as soon as you do that, costs will spiral out of control and that becomes a whole other problem in itself...

So here's some cannon fodder for the thinkers out there.

Start up a 3rd championship for engine suppliers with a pretty decent carrot at the end for the winner. Each component failure costs the supplier points in that championship.

That way it won't affect the WDC or WCC.

Yes obviously there's flaws that are plain to see but would those flaws be any worse than we have now? I don't think there's a perfect answer here but I reckon a suppliers championship could go as close as it's going to get.

Jezza13 wrote:So here's some cannon fodder for the thinkers out there.

Start up a 3rd championship for engine suppliers with a pretty decent carrot at the end for the winner. Each component failure costs the supplier points in that championship.

That way it won't affect the WDC or WCC.

Yes obviously there's flaws that are plain to see but would those flaws be any worse than we have now? I don't think there's a perfect answer here but I reckon a suppliers championship could go as close as it's going to get.

That thought occurred to me also.... but I was thinking that to do it properly you would need to have arms length between engine supplier and all teams. So Ferrari engines supplying Ferrari chassis should have same deal as Haas does. Not sure if that is practical though.

Jezza13 wrote:So here's some cannon fodder for the thinkers out there.

Start up a 3rd championship for engine suppliers with a pretty decent carrot at the end for the winner. Each component failure costs the supplier points in that championship.

That way it won't affect the WDC or WCC.

Yes obviously there's flaws that are plain to see but would those flaws be any worse than we have now? I don't think there's a perfect answer here but I reckon a suppliers championship could go as close as it's going to get.

That’s a good idea. CART did a similar thing in the 90s. They would show championship points based on Chasis, Engine and Tyres. They also had a Nations Cup one year, and would show points based on driver nationality.
Not sure if there was ever any monetary award attached to it, but it’s not a foreign concept

mikeyg123 wrote:

Mort Canard wrote:

veffy wrote:Hey crew, I've been back at it again thinking about F1 in the shower.

So this year Redbull have an outside chance performance-wise to to mix it with Ferrari and Mercedes on a good day. However, I think most of us agree that they're unlikely to have the reliability to give Dan a real shot at the championship.

Now, I'm going to make a couple of purely anecdotal assumptions to begin with so feel free to correct me if you disagree. First is that the average or casual F1 fan cares a whole lot more about the driver championship than they do the constructors champion. The second is that the casual F1 fan probably doesn't fully understand why occasionally their favourite driver has to start at the back of grid, and this is probably frustrating.

So the problem I'm tackling here is how to impose a reliability penalty on teams WITHOUT penalising the fans or the entertainment value of the series. The answer I've arrived at is to take constructor championship points for going over the PU limit rather than grid penalties.

In theory this is just a more direct way to achieve the same result as is currently in place. IE, a team starting at the back of the grid is highly likely to score less points in that race. However, the difference with directly taking points is that it does NOT penalise the driver or the driver championship.

As I understand it a teams ranking in the constructor championship plays an important role in how prize money is awarded, so there is still a strong incentive to push for higher reliability from the teams end, however the fans and drivers are not penalised in the process.

I had more thoughts on this but forgot them throughout the day, so that should do it as a vague outline, and now the thought is part of the public domain and no longer my burden to carry.

Thanks guys!

I have advocated for this for a while now. For failures of any of the mechanical parameters that the FIA limits, making the team forfeit WCC points makes sense. As I remember the FIA have in the past penalized drivers WDC points for personal infractions for personal misdeeds. The FIA does hand out penalty points to drivers like Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean. Grosjean was suspended by the FIA in 2012 for the Italian GP and was replaced by Lotus test and reserve driver Jérôme d'Ambrosio. The team still competed but Romain was not allowed to compete. It makes sense to me that the FIA would penalize only teams for things that are not in the drivers control.


Care should be take when separating penalties of WDC and WCC point because the teams and drivers should, to a significant extent, function as responsible for each other. Still in this case, the driver is an employee of the team and is not in charge of the quality or durability of the car provided for him or her.

As far as I know, no driver has had a point taken away for personal infractions. As I said in the thread previously the trouble with taking points from teams is that it's a much bigger penalty for the smaller teams. Merc won't notice a ten point penalty where as it would be a disaster for Sauber.

You are probably right about not having points being removed but there have been quite a number of drivers who have been excluded from one or more races for personal infractions. Their teams were then allowed to go ahead and use substitute drivers to fill the seat for those races.

Obviously you can't just exclude a team for a team infraction and not penalize the driver. What would the driver drive. The solution is to remover WCC points and not penalize the driver.

Herb wrote:This doesn't really work.

Imagine this scenario: its five races to go and Ferrari don't have a realistic chance of winning the WCC because Kimi has crashed too often, but Vettel has been consistent and picked up a couple of wins and is 20 odd points behind Lewis and Max who are neck and neck (as are Merc and RBR in the WCC). Ferrari's historic payments mean they are coming out of the season with a healthy pay packet regardless of their WCC position. Under this scenario they could just give Vettel a new engine every race - giving him an unfair disadvantage in the WDC.

Might be a far fetched scenario, (and I've not put that much thought into so it might not be mathematically possible) but I think it illustrates how it could be abused with a bit of thought.

I agree.

It could and, under the right circumstances, would be abused.

The WDC is largely dependent on the car anyway, so I can't see the point of introducing this type of system.

Edit - As others have said, win as a team - lose as a team. Much as we all occasionally dislike the loss of grid positions as a result of car problems - penalising constructor points rather than driver positions would only open a new 'can of worms'.

Exediron wrote:

mikeyg123 wrote:

dompclarke wrote: I sit corrected, weird decision then

Just a clever way to look like you're giving a very harsh penalty without actually doing anything.

This is frequently stated, and I disagree with it every time. Taking away Schumacher's lifetime legacy - his points and wins - was not the point of the penalty, and would have been totally disconnected to what he did anyway; he didn't cheat for any of those wins, so why take them away? The point was to disqualify him from the season, meaning that any future attempt to ram a championship rival to win the championship would be met with instant disqualification, hence rendering it an impossible way to win a championship and meaning that nobody would ever try. The penalty worked: nobody has tried it since, while the previous 9 years saw 4 separate attempts (1989, 1990, 1994, 1997).

If you think Schumacher should have been banned for some length of time I can also see that, but that's a separate argument. I don't see any reason however why his wins earlier in the season should have been rendered void simply because he cheated later in the season.

I think there's a better case for 2007, where Lewis and Fernando arguably shouldn't have been allowed to keep wins they scored in an illegal car, which was illegal (copied from a competitor's intellectual property) for every one of those wins.

Exediron wrote:

mikeyg123 wrote:

dompclarke wrote: I sit corrected, weird decision then

Just a clever way to look like you're giving a very harsh penalty without actually doing anything.

This is frequently stated, and I disagree with it every time. Taking away Schumacher's lifetime legacy - his points and wins - was not the point of the penalty, and would have been totally disconnected to what he did anyway; he didn't cheat for any of those wins, so why take them away? The point was to disqualify him from the season, meaning that any future attempt to ram a championship rival to win the championship would be met with instant disqualification, hence rendering it an impossible way to win a championship and meaning that nobody would ever try. The penalty worked: nobody has tried it since, while the previous 9 years saw 4 separate attempts (1989, 1990, 1994, 1997).

If you think Schumacher should have been banned for some length of time I can also see that, but that's a separate argument. I don't see any reason however why his wins earlier in the season should have been rendered void simply because he cheated later in the season.

I think there's a better case for 2007, where Lewis and Fernando arguably shouldn't have been allowed to keep wins they scored in an illegal car, which was illegal (copied from a competitor's intellectual property) for every one of those wins.

Where's the evidence that the car had any parts on it that had been influenced by competitors intellectual property? McLaren was found to be in possession of documents and that there was no evidence of their information having being passed into the team or used in their car.

Also I would argue that the cars were not illegal even if they had contained parts influenced by these documents, illegal would mean not being able to pass FIA tests and inspections to compete in the championship, therefore the drivers should keep their points from that perspective.

iano wrote:

Jezza13 wrote:So here's some cannon fodder for the thinkers out there.

Start up a 3rd championship for engine suppliers with a pretty decent carrot at the end for the winner. Each component failure costs the supplier points in that championship.

That way it won't affect the WDC or WCC.

Yes obviously there's flaws that are plain to see but would those flaws be any worse than we have now? I don't think there's a perfect answer here but I reckon a suppliers championship could go as close as it's going to get.

That thought occurred to me also.... but I was thinking that to do it properly you would need to have arms length between engine supplier and all teams. So Ferrari engines supplying Ferrari chassis should have same deal as Haas does. Not sure if that is practical though.

I'd go a step futher and say that this would only work with engine manufacturers not owning teams at all. If you take the engine penalties so they don't affect the team just the engine championship then Ferrari/Merc etc would have a new engine every session whereas the customer teams wouldn't due to cost and therefore wouldn't be able to run their engines as hard.

I suppose you could get around this by making season engine costs to customers set regardless of number of units used and that customer teams must have unrestricted access to the same number of units used by the Manufacturer/factory team. This was every time Mercedes fit an extra unit to one of their cars Williams and FI have immediate access to do the same...

Don't think it's practical, but...

I don't like the idea particularly.

A couple of situations that I feel could easily arise that would be issues.
1) It's the last race and the constructors is sewn up but the WDC is on the line. Might as well give your guy a new set of bits because the points are meaningless.
2) Negative points situations?
3) Mercedes scored 668 points in 2017. Sauber scored 5. How do you balance how many points are taken? You can't really base it on previous years results, between potential for significant changes in fortune or even new teams coming in. Do you do a %? If so, take 50 full power units in Australia when you have 0 points anyway.



However, I do agree that fans generally care about the WDC more than the WCC. I know a lot of the time they coincide unless McLaren win the WDC but the WDC doesn't really matter to me for many reasons. Either it's a close title or the team that wins the WDC has a poor 2nd driver with some exceptions but generally works. I like the battle for it but the result is pretty minor for me. Can provide a little excitement but if, say, Hamilton passing Glock in 2008 was gonna change the WCC not the WDC, I might not even remember it today.

I do agree that it is not great from a driver to end up at the back of the grid through no fault of his own. I do agree that it's a bit odd to explain to your mates why you insist Alonso is great but seems to start at the back all the time (not so much recently). I also fully admit that I don't have a solution of my own other than keeping the status quo.


Got a crap night sleep last night so may not have thought this all through but that's my take on it.

My only alternative that I think could be workable would be time penalties to be added to your race time at the end of the race rather than a grid penalty, allowing you to attempt to run a 'normal' race (albeit giving you the oppertunity to try and minimise the damage by going flat out all race) but even then, it unduly punishes the slower teams compared to the guys at the front who could potentially bolt and cancel out any time penalty (and in the early Merc dominance years, this would be been abused to all hell) and you then get into the murky world of trading time penalties for performance upgrades that potentially outweigh the loss of time before you even start the car etc....

It's a situation where you are damned either way, take away the grid drops and the teams will take every inch with new parts, keep them as they are and you are going to get some silly penalties come the end of the season.

So I guess the best solution is for the FIA to do away with this ridiculous component conservation philosophy and find a formula that's affordable and practical so the teams can have have as many components as they want and we can do away with these dumb penalties.

dompclarke wrote:

Exediron wrote:

mikeyg123 wrote:

dompclarke wrote: I sit corrected, weird decision then

Just a clever way to look like you're giving a very harsh penalty without actually doing anything.

This is frequently stated, and I disagree with it every time. Taking away Schumacher's lifetime legacy - his points and wins - was not the point of the penalty, and would have been totally disconnected to what he did anyway; he didn't cheat for any of those wins, so why take them away? The point was to disqualify him from the season, meaning that any future attempt to ram a championship rival to win the championship would be met with instant disqualification, hence rendering it an impossible way to win a championship and meaning that nobody would ever try. The penalty worked: nobody has tried it since, while the previous 9 years saw 4 separate attempts (1989, 1990, 1994, 1997).

If you think Schumacher should have been banned for some length of time I can also see that, but that's a separate argument. I don't see any reason however why his wins earlier in the season should have been rendered void simply because he cheated later in the season.

I think there's a better case for 2007, where Lewis and Fernando arguably shouldn't have been allowed to keep wins they scored in an illegal car, which was illegal (copied from a competitor's intellectual property) for every one of those wins.

Where's the evidence that the car had any parts on it that had been influenced by competitors intellectual property? McLaren was found to be in possession of documents and that there was no evidence of their information having being passed into the team or used in their car.

Also I would argue that the cars were not illegal even if they had contained parts influenced by these documents, illegal would mean not being able to pass FIA tests and inspections to compete in the championship, therefore the drivers should keep their points from that perspective.

Alonso also won the 2nd race of the season in a Mclaren 1-2, when did Mclaren obtain the Stepney documents? Is that known?

Exediron wrote:

mikeyg123 wrote:

dompclarke wrote: I sit corrected, weird decision then

Just a clever way to look like you're giving a very harsh penalty without actually doing anything.

This is frequently stated, and I disagree with it every time. Taking away Schumacher's lifetime legacy - his points and wins - was not the point of the penalty, and would have been totally disconnected to what he did anyway; he didn't cheat for any of those wins, so why take them away? The point was to disqualify him from the season, meaning that any future attempt to ram a championship rival to win the championship would be met with instant disqualification, hence rendering it an impossible way to win a championship and meaning that nobody would ever try. The penalty worked: nobody has tried it since, while the previous 9 years saw 4 separate attempts (1989, 1990, 1994, 1997).

If you think Schumacher should have been banned for some length of time I can also see that, but that's a separate argument. I don't see any reason however why his wins earlier in the season should have been rendered void simply because he cheated later in the season.

I think there's a better case for 2007, where Lewis and Fernando arguably shouldn't have been allowed to keep wins they scored in an illegal car, which was illegal (copied from a competitor's intellectual property) for every one of those wins.

It did work, but I still believe the FIA only did it because MS didn't win. I cannot for the life of me imagine the FIA disqualifying MS if he had won the title.

Also, as someone else stated - this idea of docking the team points is all very well, but you have to take into account that you are giving the teams a back door to giving a driver a fresh engine whenever they like... how is that a good thing or fair?

The problem is teams will just prioritise.

Tight championship with 3 races to go? Let's just give Vettel a new engine every race, most fans focus on the WDC anyways.
Next year Hamilton is annoyed at not getting the same treatment, so he gets a new engine every race from the beginning of the season.

When solving a problem you need to consider all the new things you'll break.

dompclarke wrote:

Exediron wrote:

mikeyg123 wrote:

dompclarke wrote: I sit corrected, weird decision then

Just a clever way to look like you're giving a very harsh penalty without actually doing anything.

This is frequently stated, and I disagree with it every time. Taking away Schumacher's lifetime legacy - his points and wins - was not the point of the penalty, and would have been totally disconnected to what he did anyway; he didn't cheat for any of those wins, so why take them away? The point was to disqualify him from the season, meaning that any future attempt to ram a championship rival to win the championship would be met with instant disqualification, hence rendering it an impossible way to win a championship and meaning that nobody would ever try. The penalty worked: nobody has tried it since, while the previous 9 years saw 4 separate attempts (1989, 1990, 1994, 1997).

If you think Schumacher should have been banned for some length of time I can also see that, but that's a separate argument. I don't see any reason however why his wins earlier in the season should have been rendered void simply because he cheated later in the season.

I think there's a better case for 2007, where Lewis and Fernando arguably shouldn't have been allowed to keep wins they scored in an illegal car, which was illegal (copied from a competitor's intellectual property) for every one of those wins.

Where's the evidence that the car had any parts on it that had been influenced by competitors intellectual property? McLaren was found to be in possession of documents and that there was no evidence of their information having being passed into the team or used in their car.

Also I would argue that the cars were not illegal even if they had contained parts influenced by these documents, illegal would mean not being able to pass FIA tests and inspections to compete in the championship, therefore the drivers should keep their points from that perspective.

From memory the emails between Alonso and PdLR discussed all the Ferrari settings, wheel base measurements, brake settings, weight distributions, tires pressures, camber angles, etc. They also somehow knew that Kimi was coming in on lap 18 in Australia. All these were evidence in the emails and SMS's provided to the FIA. Even if they didn't "copy" the car itself, having the knowledge of different setting that they could incorporate in their testing (and potentially improving in certain areas) are enough to gain an advantage. For example the tyres, they used solely Bridgestones in the 2007 season, a tyre that Ferrari has been using for a long time, but Macca was on the Michelins until then. Knowing what kind of gas and gas pressures to use was an obvious advantage.

Some of this info could not obviously be replicated. It was too far in the season to change the camber angles, weight balance, etc. But they certainly got some info about settings, especially the tyres. Also some aero maps, drag and downforce settings.

All in all, it was difficult to prove what info had found it's way into the car. But it is evident that they used it to the car's development, as PdLR was using different settings in his testing sessions to see if the Ferrari settings were worth using or not. Montezemolo obviously took this and ran with it, saying that the WDC would be won by a car that was a little bit of a Ferrari or a full Ferrari.

But, as I read somewhere, it is a bit like poker; it is good if you know if you have an ace, but it's arguably even better to know if the other guy has one... Knowledge is power.