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Formula One is a sport with so many rules and regulations that even the people who make them don’t understand them all.

On Tuesday, less than two weeks before the first Grand Prix in Melbourne, the FIA unexpectedly announced a new scoring system for 2009 whereby the Drivers’ Championship would be determined by the number of race wins rather than points scored.  In so doing they rejected FOTA‘s suggestion of a new points structure of 12-9-7-5-4-3-2-1 and effectively implemented Bernie Ecclestone’s medals idea.

The announcement was roundly criticised by drivers and team owners.  Ferrari president, Luca di Montezemolo called the change “absurd” and Toyota’s Jarno Trulli said:

It seems to be that Formula One wants to die and we will all have to go and race in some other championship.

Now, in a statement issued by FOTA on Friday, the teams say the rule change is not valid:

Following the decision of the World Motorsport Council of the 17 March 2009 to change the way the drivers’ championship is awarded, the Teams gathered and unanimously agreed to question the validity of this decision.

The amendment to the sporting regulations proposed by the World Motorsport Council was not performed in accordance with the procedure provided for by Appendix 5 of the Sporting Regulations and, as per the provisions of the article 199 of the FIA International Sporting Code, it is too late for FIA to impose a change for the 2009 season that has not obtained the unanimous agreement of all the competitors properly entered into the 2009 Formula 1 Championship.

Here is what Appendix 5 of the Sporting Regulations says:

RULE CHANGES

1. Changes to the Technical Regulations will be proposed by the Technical Working Group (TWG) consisting of one senior technical representative from each team and chaired by a representative of the FIA.
2. Changes to the Sporting Regulations will be proposed by the Sporting Working Group (SWG) consisting of one senior representative from each team and chaired by a representative of the FIA.
3. Decisions in the TWG and SWG will be taken by a simple majority vote. The FIA representative will not vote unless the teams’ representatives are equally divided, in which case he will exercise a casting vote.
4. Proposals from the TWG and the SWG will go to the Formula One Commission consisting of six representatives from the teams, five representatives from the race promoters and one representative each from the Commercial Rights Holder and the FIA. At least two race promoters must be from Europe and at least two from outside Europe. Decisions of the Commission will be by simple majority. The FIA will have a casting vote in the event of equality.
5. The Formula One Commission may accept or refuse a proposal of the TWG or the SWG, but not amend it. A proposal which is refused may be sent back to the relevant Working Group for further consideration.
6. Proposals accepted by the Formula One Commission will be put before the World Motor Sport Council for a final decision. Proposals which are not accepted by the World Motor Sport Council may be sent back to the Formula One Commission and the relevant Working Group for further consideration.
7. Changes required for safety reasons will be considered separately by the FIA, which will take into account any representations made by the TWG or SWG.

And section 199 of the FIA’s International Sporting Code states:

c) Sporting rules and other regulations

Changes to sporting rules and to all regulations other than those referred to in b) above are published at least 20 days prior to the opening date for entry applications for the championship concerned, but never later than 30 November each year. Such changes cannot come into effect before 1 January of the year following their publication, unless the FIA considers that the changes in question are likely to have a substantial impact on the technical design of the vehicle and/or the balance of performance between the cars, in which case they will come into effect no earlier than 1 January of the second year following their publication.

d) Shorter notice periods than those mentioned in b) and c) may be applied, provided that the unanimous agreement of all competitors properly entered for the championship or series concerned is obtained.

The FIA has responded by saying that if the teams don’t unanimously accept the new rules then they will be postponed until 2010.

Some have suggested that the FIA’s attempt to radically change the scoring system just weeks before the first race was a smokescreen for the proposed £30m budget cap to be introduced in 2010, but the whole thing has been handled rather badly and the FIA just comes across as trying to assert its dominance over the newly united teams.

When the change was announced it seemed like the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone had the upper hand but FOTA’s response and the subsequent U-turn by the FIA just shows where the real power now lies.  The fact is that the teams and drivers are what the fans care about, not the FIA and their rules and regulations and if FOTA decided to set up a rival championship they could potentially take a lot of fans with them.

There were a lot of good ideas in the proposals FOTA presented in Geneva earlier this month (as well as a few dodgy ones) and the FIA would do well to take them seriously.

I’ve said before that awarding the Championship to the driver with the most wins won’t necessarily make for better racing; you just don’t get to be a Formula One driver unless you have the will to win.  There are too many good drivers and it takes too much hard work to get to F1 to be really happy with anything other than first place.  Second is just the first of the losers.  But could the FIA‘s new scoring system actually harm the racing spectacle rather than improve it?  It raises some interesting questions.

My biggest worry is that it won’t produce a championship that is as close run as we have had the last two years.  Thanks to the old points system, introduced to minimise the Schumacher effect of one driver running away with the Championship after a few races, we didn’t know until the last lap of the last race of 2008 who was going to be crowned Champion.  Will it be likely, or even possible, that we can have the same tension under the FIA’s new scheme?

Then there is the effect on those teams in the mid-field and those at the back of the grid.  Often the closest and most exciting battles in a race are for the lesser places.  Will drivers still race as hard for 5th and 6th position when they know it won’t really make a difference for them, especially in the later part of the season?  I know, this goes against what I said earlier about a driver’s innate aggression but it could be disheartening to know that under the old scheme a driver could still have a long shot at the Championship but under the new scheme they really have no chance.

It is also interesting to consider how the new engine rules could interact with this system.  Jenson Button pointed out the possibility of a team having a great start to the year and not having to work much for the rest of the season:

I think the public will struggle to understand why a driver with 60 points can become champion instead of the one who has 100. I understand the logic behind it and I find it interesting. For sure it’s an incentive to always go for the win, but it seems risky too – after nine races, we could find ourselves with a driver that has already won the title and can stand still eating ice cream, while the guy in second in the standings is just 18 points behind.

The new engine rules for 2009 state that a team may only use eight engines.  If a driver uses a ninth a penalty is applied.  It is conceivable that a team could use a fresh engine in each of the first 8 races of the season and if they won them all then the penalties the driver would receive in later races wouldn’t matter as he would have already sown up the Championship by the middle of the season.

A crazy idea?  I don’t know.  It is a fairly extreme interpretation of the rules and a big gamble but in theory it could work.

We won’t really know the full effect of the decision until the season gets underway but I still think FOTA’s points plan was a better solution.

Bernie Ecclestone thinks the new scoring system announced by the FIA on Tuesday could give Jenson Button a crack at the Championship in 2009.

Official Aussie bookmaker, IASbet.com currently has Jenson Button priced as favourite to win in Melbourne ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, Rubens Barrichello and Lewis Hamilton.

When Bernie was asked by Autosport about his predictions for the championship at an Australian Grand Prix press conference he said:

I suppose an awful lot will depend on these regulations, but if Brawn has got it right, then there is a chance that for the first three races we could maybe see Jenson winning.

Now that it is not points that decides the championship, if he has three races in his pocket then it is not bad – although I suppose in the end you have to look at the old timers like Alonso, Kimi, Felipe and Mr Hamilton.

I think he’s right and I’d love to see Jenson challenging for the Championship this year.  God knows he’s been waiting a long time for a car that could give him a serious chance at it.  But my favorite Bernie comment from the press conference was this, when asked about the legality of the Williams, Toyota and Brawn diffusers:

I guarantee whoever wins the races in Melbourne will be told they are cheating, and it doesn’t matter who it is.

Unfortunately, I think he’s right there, too.

Well this is one way to generate some publicity before the start of the season.

In a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council in Paris on Tuesday the FIA decided to ignore almost all the proposals of FOTA and introduce a new scoring system for 2009 where the World Drivers’ Championship will be decided by the number of wins rather than points.

In rejecting the new points system proposed by FOTA , the FIA have, in effect, decided to go with Bernie Ecclestone’s ‘medals‘ scheme, just without the actual medals.

Here is what the FIA press release says about the new scoring system:

The WMSC accepted the proposal from Formula One Management to award the drivers’ championship to the driver who has won the most races during the season. If two or more drivers finish the season with the same number of wins, the title will be awarded to the driver with the most points, the allocation of points being based on the current 10, 8, 6 etc. system.

The rest of the standings, from second to last place, will be decided by the current points system. There is no provision to award medals for first, second or third place. The Constructors’ Championship is unaffected.

The WMSC rejected the alternative proposal from the Formula One Teams’ Association to change the points awarded to drivers finishing in first, second and third place to 12, 9 and 7 points respectively.

This strikes me as a weird decision.  Personally, I don’t think the current points system needed changing at all.  It produced two of the closest, most exciting Formula One seasons we’ve seen over the last two years and I can’t see how changing it would have made them any better.  But apparently a large number of fans want to see drivers rewarded more for wins and I think FOTA’s proposed points system of 12-9-7-5-4-3-2-1 would have achieved that without fundamentally changing the scoring system for the Drivers’ Championship.  If Bernie’s system produces more aggressive driving from second place then that can only be a good thing but I have my doubts.

Not content with one radical announcement the FIA have also introduced an optional budget cap of £30 million in 2010.  The cap is optional because while teams may continue to spend as much as they wish, those teams who choose to stay within the cap will be given much freer reign with the regulations.  Here is what the press release says:

As an alternative to running under the existing rules, which are to remain stable until 2012, all teams will have the option to compete with cars built and operated within a stringent cost cap.

The cost cap is £30m (currently approximately €33 or $42m). This figure will cover all expenditure of any kind. Anything subsidised or supplied free will be deemed to have cost its full commercial value and rigorous auditing procedures will apply.

To enable these cars to compete with those from teams which are not subject to cost constraints, the cost-capped cars will be allowed greater technical freedom.

The principal technical freedoms allowed are as follows:

1. A more aerodynamically efficient (but standard) under body.
2. Movable wings.
3. An engine which is not subject to a rev limit or a development freeze.

The FIA has the right to adjust elements of these freedoms to ensure that the cost-capped cars have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage when compared to cars running to the existing rules.

This is quite a radical move.  FIA president Max Mosley has wanted to introduce budget caps for a while now but in the past said they would be hard to enforce.  Supposedly giving teams a choice makes this easier although I’m not really sure how.  There is a Q & A with Mosley on the FIA site where he says:

We involved forensic accountants from Deloitte and Touche as well as financial experts from the current teams. The vast majority of payments are traceable and any benefits in kind can be valued. There were a number of meetings. It became clear we could do it. The problem was getting the current teams to agree a figure. Also, the majority wanted a lot of exclusions such as land and buildings, the team principal’s salary and the drivers. We would also need the right to carry out very intrusive audits and impose severe penalties for overspend. However these difficulties no longer arise because each team will now be able to choose whether or not to run under the cost cap.

On the face of it, this sounds like an interesting idea and could reward smaller, technologically innovative teams like Williams but it is also a major upheaval in the regulations and it could be confusing having effectively two different classes of cars competing.

Of course, the FIA’s decision to ignore practically all of FOTA’s suggestions didn’t go down too well with the teams:

With regard to the decisions taken today by the FIA World Council, FOTA would like to express its disappointment and concern at the fact that these have been taken in a unilateral manner.

The framework of the regulations as defined by the FIA, to be applicable as from 2010, runs the risk of turning on its head the very essence of Formula 1 and the principles that make it one of the most popular and appealing sports.

Given the timeframe and the way in which these modifications were decided upon, we feel it is necessary to study closely the new situation and to do everything, especially in these difficult times, to maintain a stable framework for the regulations without continuous upheaval, that can be perplexing and confusing for car manufacturers, teams, the public and sponsors.

FOTA are obviously unhappy that these new regulations have been voted through without consultation and it will be interesting to see the response from the newly united teams.

Mark Hughes has written an interesting piece on the ITV F1 website about the problems McLaren have been having with their new car.

McLaren won the 2008 Drivers’ Championship and were among the favourites going into the 2009 season after early testing.  But recently the Woking squad have been falling further and further behind the other teams and drivers Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen have been lapping a couple of seconds off the pace.  After much speculation team boss Martin Whitmarsh confirmed McLaren weren’t sandbagging and those lap times were the best they could do.

But how could such a beautiful car be so slow?  And how could something with a nose like the Renault be faster?  It all comes down to the black art of aerodynamics.  While McLaren have banks of supercomputers running CFD analysis and a state of the art wind tunnel back in Woking, all it takes is one little disturbance in the airflow to effectively “switch off” a perfectly good aero part.

McLaren’s problems highlight the importance of aerodynamics in Formula One.  With no development allowed on engines, aerodynamics is where most of an F1 car’s speed can be won or lost.  Take the Brawn GP BGP 001; it has the same engine as the McLaren, but better aero and Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello have been putting in some scorching lap times.

The good news for McLaren fans, according to Hughes, is that once the McLaren engineers find the problem it should be pretty straightforward to fix.  The question is can they find the problem before they give away too many points?

In other aerodynamic developments, the Brawn GP diffuser’s legality has been called into question along with the Toyota and Williams.  According to Cologne newspaper Express, the BGP 001 design links the floor with the diffuser in a sneaky (and illegal) way to generate more downforce.  The FIA have already inspected the Toyota and Wiliams cars and found them, in their opinion, legal.  As Max Mosley says:

The current FIA view is that Williams and Toyota have been clever and found a loophole in the rules. It’s probably wrong, but they’ve exploited the wording of the rules in a clever way.

But because of the way these things work, the teams have to wait until Melbourne if they want to lodge an official protest.

And finally, Williams have decided to remove the cockpit-mounted ‘skate fins’ that appeared on their car in testing.  It seems like FIA technical delegate Charlie Whiting didn’t like the safety implications of two massive spikes on either side of the driver’s head and I can’t say I disagree.  They did look kind of cool though.