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Bernie Ecclestone’s medal system – whereby gold, silver and bronze medals would be awarded to the top three drivers at each race, with the driver with the most golds at the end of the year being crowned champion – has come in for a lot of criticism from drivers as well as fans. I thought it would be interesting to take Bernie’s idea and look back to see how many times a world champion had won fewer races than his rivals.

In a blog post last week I analysed every year of the FIA F1 World Drivers’ Championship and found that drivers have been winning the Championship with fewer wins than their competitors at a pretty consistent rate since the Championship began.  In fact in very first season, in 1950, it was won by Nino Farina even though Fangio won the same number of races.

Now it seems the FIA has had the same idea and come up with broadly the same results.  Do they read my blog or have they been working on this research for some time?  To be fair, the FIA have applied the full Bernie treatment to the results, taking account of silver and bronze medals, whereas I just looked at the number of wins but my little post certainly didn’t trigger the same amount of discussion.

All across the tubes fans are arguing about medals vs the current points system, the old points system vs the current points system and even coming up with new and improved points systems that include bonus points for fastest laps. BlogF1 asks where the market research is.  Seems like the FIA just needs to read the comments.

Image: GAUTREAU-KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty Images

Of all the changes made to the Formula One regulations for 2009, one of the most controversial has been the Kinetic Energy Recovery System or KERS.  These devices store energy created under braking which can then be converted into power at the touch of a button, giving a power boost of up to 80hp.

All the teams have spent vast sums of money developing KERS but it is still not clear which of them, if any, will deploy the device when the season begins at Melbourne in March.

This expenditure also seems to be at odds with the current cost-cutting drive in Formula One.  In fact it’s hard to find many people with a good thing to say about KERS.

Renault’s Flavio Briatore:

We know already that for 2010, with the option of the standard KERS, whatever money we spend this year is for one year only. And in this kind of environment I think it’s completely unnecessary.

Ferrari’s Luca di Montezemolo:

I’m not against the principle of KERS – it’s very important to put in front of the teams research that benefits the environment – but the way it is at the moment is a mistake.

And now it seems  Bernie Ecclestone has never wanted it:

I have always been against KERS. Whatever they use in F1 they won’t use in a road car, but if that is to be the idea then why not develop it in touring cars. It costs a lot of money when we are trying to save it.

About the only person who seems to want KERS is BMW’s Mario Theissen:

KERS is important for Formula One because it will put F1 into the role of a new technology pioneer. Obviously, we think KERS is important to BMW because we have put a lot of effort on it.  We agreed that the cost of KERS was quite significant, but the real thing is that when we discussed it a month ago the money had been spent already on development, so it would be the worst thing to spend money on something you don’t use.

There is something in economics called a sunk cost; a cost that cannot be recovered once it has been incurred.  The money spent on KERS development so far is a sunk cost and Theissen argues that it would be the “worst thing” to have spent money developing KERS if it was not used.  But there is also something called the ‘sunk cost fallacy’ or the “Concorde Effect” named for the fact that the British and French governments continued to pour money into the Concorde project long after it was clear there was no real economic case for the aircraft.

This is also known as “throwing good money after bad”.

It will be interesting to see what effect the use of KERS will have in F1 racing in general and overtaking in particular but just because you have already spent money on something doesn’t mean you should continue spending money on it.  Concorde was a stunningly beautiful piece of engineering but if KERS doesn’t end up contributing to F1 in any meaningful way the FIA shouldn’t be afraid to drop it.

Image: Martin Hartland