Are The FIA Seeing Sense Over The Medals?

Are The FIA Seeing Sense Over The Medals?

According to The Times newspaper this morning, the FIA are apparently not entirely convinced by Bernie Ecclestone’s latest idea of scrapping points and awarding drivers with medals for their performances in races next season. For 59 seasons the Drivers World Championship has been decided by the amount of points earned, but under Ecclestone’s new scheme, the world champion would be the driver with the most gold medals, or to put it another way, the most wins. Ecclestone has stated that he expects the FIA to pass the ruling next month, but it seems it isn’t going as straight forward as he may have hoped.

The FIA must approve the new idea before it can be implemented, but Ecclestone yesterday said that the teams are happy for this change and that he expects everything to go well when he presents to the members of the FIA World Motorsport Council in December. The reasoning behind Bernie’s desire to change the structure of the championship is to encourage overtaking. Ecclestone stated he became fed up with complaints about the lack of passing in recent years and feels that if the championship was decided by the number of wins, then a driver would be more likely to make a pass on another.

Despite the fact that nearly all Formula One fans who read my previous article on this and left comments were not happy (which from my impression, is indicative of the general feeling), Ecclestone is adamant it is the way forward for the sport. However, he needs the FIA on his side for it to all go through. And although The Times newspaper are often seen to be out-of-sorts with the FIA – The Times is a sister paper to The News Of The World – they are happily reporting that “he [Ecclestone] is not expected to get it [endorsement from the FIA].”

I mentioned yesterday that Bernie’s statement of the teams being on-board for this seemed very strange. I’m yet to see a quote from any of the ten squads and they all appear to be very quiet at the moment. I wonder if Bernie is negotiating something at the moment, and this is what he gets from table, or if he really has lost the plot? As Eddie Jordan has exclaimed, “he’s tinkering with something that in my opinion he has lost the understanding of.”

4 comments

  • do you think bernie has concocted this whole charade in order to give the fia more credibility?

    now the fans are gonna go “ya, max has done the right thing”.

    still, it’s the right thing to do.

  • do you think bernie has concocted this whole charade in order to give the fia more credibility?

    It honestly wouldn’t surprise me – Bernie and Max have a strange somewhat devious working relationship.

  • There are two reasons or the lack of overtaking. Stupid technical regs and stupid circuit design. THe overtaking working group has already said that they have failed with next season’s regs and we know who is responsible for taking us to all the stupid circuits.

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