A new F1 points system to reward backmarkers — how it could work

Backmarker battles can provide just as much F1 entertainment as fights at the front, so why don't the drivers get championship points? Here's how a new system could reward the top 18 finishers — and rank them more accurately

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Zhou Guanyu follows Alex Albon in the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Zhou's heroics in passing Albon at Abu Dhabi earned him 0 points

Joe Portlock/F1 via Getty Images

The fireworks were already in the air and the crowds were gathering by the podium but the 2022 season wasn’t yet over for Zhou Guanyu on the final lap of last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

In a decisive move, Zhou launched his Alfa Romeo around the outside of Alex Albon‘s Williams. Maximising the grip from his fresher tyres he seized the place and raced towards the finish line to secure…. nothing.

The battle for 12th place may have been bold and entertaining but under Formula 1‘s scoring system, where only the top ten receive championship points, it went unrewarded.

“Sometimes you have the best race, finish 15th or 16th and you’re not rewarded with any points at all”

The same was true earlier in 2022 for Pierre Gasly, overtaking on the circuit where it’s impossible to pass and moving up from 17th on the Monaco grid to finish 11th. “I’m a bit sad not to be awarded a point in the end because I felt like I probably deserved it,” said Gasly after the race.

TV pundit and former Super Aguri F1 driver Anthony Davidson believes that Gasly did deserve a point — along with the drivers who finished around him. No stranger to fighting at the lower end of the field for the fledgling Japanese team, Davidson has called for the tenacity, bravery and racecraft of backmarkers to be rewarded, while speaking on a Motor Sport podcast.

So what might that look like? We’ve devised a new points system, based on Davidson’s suggestion, that awards points to the top 18 finishers, while maintaining the incentive to fight for higher places and wins, which we have made substantially more valuable than lower-placed finishes.

At the moment, points are only given to the top ten. In an era of increasing reliability, this means that half the grid may finish without points.

Current F1 points system

Finishing Position Points Awarded
1 25
2 18
3 15
4 12
5 10
6 8
7 6
8 4
9 2
10 1

 

Speaking as part of our My Big Break podcast series, Davidson said: “Sometimes you have the best race and finish 15th or 16th. I had many of those in that [Super Aguri] car and you’re not rewarded with any points at all and I kind of feel like that’s a shame.

“I think points going further down will definitely help resolve that.”

Our theoretical extended points system takes that suggestion and awards points right down to 18th place. To enable this, the number of points awarded has been greatly increased but the rewards for finishing in the top ten remain similar. So a win remains as valuable as it was before – earning around 39% more points than second.

The top five places bring outsized rewards compared to lower positions, giving drivers extra incentive to fight for a higher placing instead of playing it safe and settling for the points they have.

Extended F1 points proposal

Finishing Position Points Awarded   Finishing Position Points Awarded
1 60 10 12
2 43 11 10
3 36 12 8
4 30 13 6
5 25 14 5
6 20 15 4
7 18 16 3
8 16 17 2
9 14 18 1

* F1 sprint race format remains the same, as does the fastest lap bonus point

As well as rewarding backmarkers for success in their individual battles, this points system would also benefit drivers who consistently finish ahead of their rivals — in the bottom ten — but lose out in the championship thanks to a freak result.

Teams would also have a reason to keep running when there’s no hope of any points, rather than retire their car to conserve its components.

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“As a driver you can put in such a fantastic performance and you’re rewarded with absolutely nothing. Then if your team-mate, that you’re fighting in a lowly position, in a very fluky race scores one point, they beat you in the championship,” said Davidson.

“That’s really irritating when you’re fighting in those low positions because you’re like, ‘well, they shouldn’t be [ahead]’.

“Take Robert Kubica and George Russell in the Williams for example, Robert beat George in the [2019] championship and you think, ‘well, it doesn’t show the true story does it?’

“That one race Robert drove well, he got a point, it was Hockenheim in that really chaotic race, everyone crashed and even Max Verstappen did a 360 [spin] and Lewis [Hamilton] went off.

“So it’s one of those races where if you survived, you are going to score a point and that’s what happened with Robert. Of course he did the job that day but all the other days, George was easily fastest.”

ACT

In a 21-round championship, Kubica only finished above Russell three times yet was classified ahead in the championship

But should the championship attempt to reflect the competitive order?

Some of F1’s best-loved races involve an underdog triumph in spite of the normal competitive order: Panis in Monaco, Maldonado in Spain, and Gasly — as well as Ricciardo — in Italy.

And should scoring points be made less meaningful? You’d never again see a driver in tears after scoring their first point, as was the case for Russell, who finally hit the top ten in 2021.

We’ve mapped last year’s race results onto our extended points system (sprint and fastest lap points remain the same) to see how it might affect the order.

2022 season scored by extended points system

Position Driver Points Official 2022 position
1 Max Verstappen 1061 1
2 Sergio Perez 719 3
3 Charles Leclerc 718 2
4 George Russell 661 4
5 Lewis Hamilton 602 6
6 Carlos Sainz 575 5
7 Lando Norris 359 7
8 Esteban Ocon 325 8
9 Fernando Alonso 269 9
10 Valtteri Bottas 208 10
11 Sebastian Vettel 206 12
12 Lance Stroll 190 15
13 Daniel Ricciardo 189 11
14 Pierre Gasly 182 14
15 Kevin Magnussen 141 13
16 Zhou Guanyu 122 18
17 Alex Albon 122 19
18 Mick Schumacher 117 16
19 Yuki Tsunoda 115 17
20 Nicholas Latifi 63 20
21 Nyck de Vries 14 21
22 Nico Hulkenberg 10 22

 

The gap Verstappen holds over the rest of the field remains just as significant, while Nicholas Latifi remains rooted at the bottom, only above last year’s part-timers.

But there are changes in the midfield. To maintain the significance of a top ten finish, we’ve made some of those places more valuable than they are now: under the extended system, finishing seventh earns almost a third of the points of a winner. The current system awards just under a quarter of the points.

From the archive

That — along with a single point for finishing 18th in the opening round — would have enabled Sergio Perez to make it a Red Bull driver 1-2 in the championship, and a similar effect sees Hamilton vault Carlos Sainz.

Elsewhere the system has the desired effect: Daniel Ricciardo had an average finishing position of 12th in 2022, but two outlying results — fifth in Singapore and sixth in Australia, pushed him to 11th in the championship with 37 points.

If points had been available outside the top ten, his total would have been boosted considerably, but so would that of the drivers around him, and so Ricciardo drops behind the two Aston Martin drivers in the extended scheme.

Most of the changes in the bottom ten reflect drivers’ genuine performance: Zhou and Albon move up in the extended points system because they generally finished races ahead of Mick Schumacher and Yuki Tsunoda: the latter two were classified above them in the official standings thanks to a pair of outlying results each.

2022 Saudi Arabian GP

Should F1 adopt a similar format?

Lars Baron/Getty Images

If the same system was applied to the 2019 championship, Russell would have finished on 75 points (rather than 0) compared to Kubica’s 43 (instead of 1), eliminating the effect of Kubica’s anomalous German Grand Prix result.

However, such a system, akin to IndyCar’s, would attract plenty of criticism, especially since many believe that F1 already dishes out too many points. Between 1961 and 2002, points were only awarded down to sixth; the current format has been used since 2010.

“The other argument is that ‘oh yeah, you don’t get awarded points just for turning up,’ but in a way you should do as a driver,” said Davidson

“Like if you finish 18th instead of 19th and you heroically beat your team-mate in the last lap, that last corner, you send a lunge down the inside and you beat him to the line, I want something for that thank you very much.”

“I think in a day and age where cars are so reliable now, it wasn’t like that in the past.

“If you finish the race, you were probably going to get a point back in the ’80s and ‘90s. I think the points system is a little bit outdated in many ways.”

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