The FIA have released their "analysis" into the possibility of introducing Bernie Ecclestone's proposed medal system into the sport. The results are long, tedious and really prove that it ain't broke, so let's not fix it.
Ecclestone's proposal to see gold, silver and bronze medals awarded to the top three finishers, rather than the traditional points system, was put forward as a way to ensure that the driver with the most wins over the course of a season would take the championship. Even though nobody ever really thought that was the point. The long and utterly pointless analysis from the FIA, which basically just involved going through Wikipedia and checking who won the most races each year, shows that Bernie's system would have produced different world champions on 13 occasions, and would have seen the WDC-less Stirling Moss, Didier Pironi and Felipe Massa all awarded titles, with the likes of Jody Scheckter, Nelson Piquet and Denny Hulme all losing their WDC credentials.
Further to that, though Michael Schumacher would remain clear at the top of the record books as a seven-time world champion, Alain Prost would join Juan Manuel Fangio on five wins, with Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna both increasing their haul to four and Nigel Mansell improving to three titles.
Amusingly, one by-product of the medal system would have been that Bernie Ecclestone's time as owner of Brabham would have yielded no titles.
In general then, the proposed system would have had no effect on 37 of the 59 drivers titles to date, while fourteen title battles would have been concluded earlier, with only eight lasting longer. However, the number of final race showdowns would increase by one. So basically the numbers are shuffled slightly, but the overall picture is the same.
Although no FIA spokesman made a statement, any such statement would probably have read like "Well this was a complete bloody waste of time wasn't it. Still, it's the winter break, and we're bored."
The full report can be downloaded from here if you're having trouble sleeping.
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