There are many who believe that the Australian Finals system is all well and good but that the real champions are the team who came out on top over the whole season, and the winners of the finals should be given a less meaningful title. The truth is that is not going to change, as unfair as it may seem. However it is not as unfair as the F1 Grand Prix Championship this year.
This year the organisers of the F1 Championship introduced a controversial final-race double points system. No doubt to try and combat one driver pulling away with the Championship and the last race being meaningless. Yet that is the way sport is. If one driver is good enough to wrap up the Championship before the end of the season he deserves to be crowned Champion.
At present Lewis Hamilton is 17 points clear of Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg with three races to go, starting in the USA this weekend. He has recorded nine race wins to the German’s four. Yet depending on results, Hamilton could win in Austin and Brazil and still lose the title if he retired in Abu Dhabi. Which hardly seems fair.
There will no doubt be many who will say that he knew the rules at the start of the F1 season as did all the other drivers, so they have nothing to complain about. This is a fair comment, but how many sporting titles would have changed hands if teams had been rewarded double points in the last game of the season if they won?
“It would suck if that was the case – big time,” Hamilton told the BBC if he were to lose the title in the aforementioned hypothetical scenario. “This is the rule that they have brought in for the first time. Do I really agree with it? I don’t know if any of us agree with it or do not agree with it, but it is the way it is and you just have to deal with it and just hope for the best really.”
Interestingly the man most likely to benefit from the new rule Nico Rosberg was one of the strongest opponents of the double-points idea when it was introduced. He has said he is still opposed to it, but conceded that F1 had to be open to new ideas.
“It is a bit artificial, the double points,” Rosberg said. “My opinion is keep it straightforward, which is the way F1 has been forever.”
Let us hope that when it comes down to the final race the double points plays little or no part in deciding the Championship and it is shelved in 2015.
