What if F1 Championships were decided by your best 13 results? 

The reason that this worked back then because this is a good way to filter out reliability of the car i would say. Nowadays the cars are so reliabal that this isnt needed anymore

The discard system made more sense with unreliable cars, where driver had to retire frequently due to mechanical issues. But to be honest, I like the idea of drivers racing to win and not settle down for a P4...

I think the discard system is unfair. I feel like it downplays consistency too much.

I think this sounds like something we'd find exciting, but is something we'd soon realise was a bad idea when our favourite drivers are getting torpedoed off the track by someone gunning for the win at all costs

love these more "mathy" videos.

When showing the best 19 races at 3:36, the total for Leclerc is given as 50. I should probably still show 264.

The consistant: Hamilton The improver: Leclerc The wobbler: Vettel The all/nothing: Verstappen In all seriousness, this was an awesome video though

Mr Consistent vs All/Nothing. So, Prost vs Senna?

Amazing to think consistent drivers like Lauda, Stewart and Prost thrived under those pretty unfair old ranking systems. But then again, it's not like they weren't winning races at all.

Can you make a video showing us how you would make your ideal circuit

I like seeing consistency win. It's a bit like a game of chess. whilst going all out can seem good in the short term, this can come back to bite you later on. A smart player will have pieces to sacrifice, and bait the erratic player into taking them. In Formula 1, with current rules the erratic driver is going all out to win, but in term potentially crashing and/or hurting the reliability of the engine and gearbox, which are limited. So, whilst Mr Consistent is scoring points across the season, and is able to capitalise on the failures of others, Mr Erratic is constantly trying to get the most points to make up for mistakes and failures in other races. This is how Ricciardo defeated Verstappen in 2016 and 2017, in 2018 however Daniel copped the worst of the reliability failures at the end of the season. This is also how Hamilton has been so good. He puts his efforts into being smooth and consistent, therefore putting less strain through the car, resulting in less failures, and more points. I always believe that you should be rewarded for playing the long game, and carefully thinking about each race, and work out how to deal with every possible scenario before it happens, so you know how to continue. When I league race, I have 2 or 3 strategy plans, especially on Forza where I am actually quick. If I am at the front, and in clean air, you go long and pit late. If you are at the back, you pit early and use the clean air to undercut everyone, and if you simply don't have the pace, you follow those around you, so you can capitalise on their decisions, and hopefully keep them behind you. Through this I have 3 Forza race wins from about 40 starts, and probably 30 podiums. All this being said, you need to account for crashes and DNF's as well, which is easier said than done. I have had 1 Forza DNF, which was an internet drop out when I was on for a P3. Due to this, and a couple of tough results in my current V8 Supercars championship, I am third in the championship, but 200 points off the lead. After round 1 I was in about tenth, 160 points off. My 2 wins, and 2 further podiums so far have helped, but I haven't been consistent across all the rounds, especially struggling in the reverse grid races where I am caught up in the craziness that my championship rivals seem to get through without trouble. My strategies have helped me here, but I need to smooth out my resutls, because other than 2 wins, a second and a third, my next results are 5th, 6th, 7th and DNF. In the races with those results, my rival won 3 and came second in the 4th. Costing me nearly 250 points, about 30 of which I have pulled back with my 2 wins.

I can guess who would have won the title in 2013. Edit: and 2004.

I think the discard system was something to minimize the randomness of reliability issues that the cars had for a long, long time. In modern era F1, say, 90s onwards, it became less of a factor, and in recent times, even less. So I think the video is spot on at analyzing the sporting implications of such a system, which would be the main area of motivation for making this change. I think we should stick to not discarding anything, but perhaps making changes to the points-per-race if we want to make drivers risk a bit more.

As a former NASCAR fan, I cringe every time point system revisions are brought up.

quarantine: *exists* Chain Bear: THE NUMBERS MASON! WHAT DO THEY MEAN?!

Chain Bear, your consistency is amazing. Every single one of your videos are both interesting and well done, I love it.

Your videos just keep getting better and more polished. I salute you Sir

I think it would have been interesting to compare the existing system to the discard system (11 results) with the point system that was used at that time (9-6-4-3-2-1). There was a discard system because there was not so much differential in points between postions. So that system was designed to give advantage to the drivers who were battling for the win.

Your videos are ALWAYS appreciated, and these kinds of stats-based videos are certainly interesting, but I gotta say, I yearn for more videos about technical aspects of the cars themselves then technical aspects of scoring breakdowns. There's only so many spreadsheets I can watch...

Fantastic presentation!

Great video as always. I really enjoy your delivery...so mellow, smart and smooth. Thanks so much for all your work....i just love the knowledge you bring and share. Your fan forever!!

2019 williams top 15 best results 1 point and (insert 14 zeros)

I'm currently racing in an F2 League on the F1 2019 Game. As I am the "consistent" with currently (after 4 races) one win, one second and two P3's its still hard to beat the guy, who is either winning or scoring "very badly", so your theoretical example is very much true. I guess we will have to change our system for next time, so I could win. But as there are still a few races left, I might still have a chance of winning the Championship And as always: Awesome video, I just love it. As I work a lot with After Effects, I really know how much effort goes into these videos 🎈🎈😎😎

Nice video mate, keep up the good work.

The whole points system needs looking at, the cars are so reliable now it's becoming silly that only top 10 get points and that they are so heavily skewed to one side. With the top 6 locked in to the same drivers every race the remaining 7 teams are fighting over just 4 spots or they have to hope for one of the top drivers to have an issue. Even then it's not enough to make a difference. When a top 6 driver has a manageable issue they still get 10 or 8 points, if they have to retire they don't fall below the midfield standings come the end of the year (both Ferrari drivers retried three times in 2019 and came 4th and 5th, only reason Sainz came 6th is that the 2nd RB drivers swapped mid season).

It's as I suspected. Once people are locked up for long enough, they just spontaneously start doing maths.

The old scoring systems used this "all-or-nothing" approach because the consistency of the car was basically guaranteed to be poor. Getting a few DNFs in the season was basically guaranteed due to engines giving up. With the latest version of F1 cars, consistency seems basically guaranteed and you can expect the car to perform every week. This means that a consistent driver can be measured as consistent by the consistency of their results, where this was once impossible. In my opinion this consistency makes races boring - but that's not caused by the scoring system, rather the scoring system is a symptom of the consistency.

Last time I was here the comment section was in the right place

Going into penultimate race of 1988 Prost was leading by five points against Senna. Yet Prost had no chance to wrap up the title (except the scenario where Senna would be unable to race in the final race) while Senna had one.

you should have use the 2016 season as an example where 2 or more deletions would have changed the champion

A discard system is widely used in sailboat racing. I think it works quite well there because it encourages people to try something different (e.g. go left instead of right with everybody else). However, a car racing track is a lot narrower than for sailboats and this effect might not happen. And of course, there is the issue that penalties (or rather bad results caused by penalties) are discarded as well, making penalties meaningless if just get through with it often enough

I think that it would promote more intense racing in the midfield, but the biggest issues up front are more complicated I think. It would be interesting to try it out for a season when the new cars finally debut.

If you were going to dropped scores I think the best thing to do would be give each driver 2 drop scores per year but they must use them directly after the race they want to drop points for that way if you hang on to say a 5th place at the penultimate round do you drop it as it’s a bit lower or keep your drop for the final round but what if you then win that race and have to drop the score? Maybe this is just another strategy descision to trip Ferrari up but I think that’s the best way to do it

Great video!

I do like the concept. Would definitely encourage more drivers to go all out fighting for the win

Wanted to let you know I really appreciate your videos! Along with Tommo, CrankyYankee, and a few others you really got me into F1, enough I'm buying a racing simulator! To show my appreciation, and because I figure its time anyways, I used your code and got NordVPN for 3 years. Thanks again for the entertaining and informative videos!

This makes it all more impressive that Keke Rosberg still managed to clinch the title under such a system.

Flattening the curve

Great video, honestly, as expected. But why did I have to watch 6 ads that put together last longer than the video itself?!

What if F1 doesn't use points but they add up the time of each race just like they do in cycling?

Nice analysis. I've sailed in some RC (IOM)and and big sailboats. In an RC regatta, you get to drop a bad score after a certain number of races...then another after another set number, etc. lots of stuff can happen to you in those races and usually does. (If you ever want to see some cut throat competition, just go and watch a rc sail regatta). One regatta I was in as a beginner, I was beating myself up for not doing better, then to my total surprise, came in third (out of 20+ boats). i had been consistent and it carried me up. I liked it as a midfield sailor..after every gooched race, I had hope cause it was not going to count.

Very interesting. The only thing I think is missing from this analysis is how it would affect midfield teams. I think there the differences are bigger so the impact of changing the system will be as well. Here, the all or nothing type can also be a driver that is just lucky enough to be best of the rest in races where more of the top teams are DNFs. My gut feeling is it would also favour teams that have strengths to particular circuits, instead of teams that build a more allround car. For instance teams with a very good engine but worse chassis (like Williams used to be in '15 and '16) would benefit from this system.

I would love to see a small update on this now that the 2021 season is over, because it was a season that it feels like these rules would have impacted.

The one thing that would be better about this system is that the championship battle would seem to get closer and closer throughout the year. Other than that, I like the current system more as it prioritizes consistency.

It's been a long while, Chain Bear

Great stuff

I like the idea of rewarding drivers who take risks in the race and with strategy to obtain better results. Similar in a way to how the NASCAR playoff system rewards winning drivers with automatic qualification. Implementation of this is F1 seems problematic with the current balance of power. Top teams would still dominate and mid-field teams may risk more for better results but still fall short due to top team dominance. If the field were a little more closely matched I think using the throw-away points system may lead to really exciting races particularly towards the end of the season.

I think that the current system and rewards for consistency is pretty good. Rewarding all or nothing driving or mechanical design seems likely to result in more injuries and broken cars (increasing costs and waste)

Gran Turismo Sport uses a similar point system for their online championship. What ends up happening is drivers really only focus on the races where their car is competitive and I fear something like it may happen in F1. Like Red Bull might just punt their result at Spa to focus on Monaco or whatever

The consistent: HAM The improver LEC The Wobbler: VET The all or nothing: VER/RIC

This is the best F1 content, yeah thats about right.

That's one thing that does not need to change in F1. All races should count. It makes sense in sailboat racing, because there is a lot of randomness (changes or differences in winds, currents, boat traffic,...) that can affect the racing field and performances of competitors differently in the same race, but just ends up incentivizing unreliable cars and reckless driving in motorsports.

Discard at the team level: Pick races to drop but it affects both drivers.

The discard system would still miles ahead of NASCAR’s system, where you can win the first 35 races, but finish 2nd in the final race and lose the championship.

You are the Formula 1 Champion of pedantic what-if scenarios. Please keep up the good work 👍

Everyone love chainbear

Decided I should have a look at another alternative scheme, and see what happens if you run the 2019 F1 season under the British Superbikes showdown format - still the same top 5, but the longer tail on the points shakes up the middle places and makes the mid-season driver change unlikely

From what I can tell the 'discard' system was mostly in place because F1 drivers weren't as locked down as they are today, moving around teams a bit more or pay drivers who only raced for one or two weekends (mostly in the mid or back fields) -- along with the whole field being much more spread out. Although those teams had even less chance for points than a backmarker today. Nowadays (aside from the occasional Red Bull swaps) even a backmarker team will stay with the same drivers for the whole year and will finish closer and more consistently. Williams may be slow and Haas may have its breakdowns, but they're still much better than a Forti for example.

I'd like to see that system. Especially if teams could build all or nothing cars like earlier

I'd say the scoring system change reflected the overall change in societal values. At first, we wanted to prove, with racing, that we can "triumph over the forces of nature". So we valued raw top performance, no matter the cost and how long it can last, -- since we either can triumph, at all, or we cannot. Now that we have a definite proof that we can and we did, the next logical step is to be able to do that in a cost-efficient and consistent manner. So we now value not just any performance but a safe, reliable and cost-efficient performance.

Excel Bear is my favourite youtube channel.

The quote inspiring this analysis wasn't really saying "keep the best 13 races," it was saying "drop the worst two." This would rarely change the championship results very much, wouldn't be anything like as complicated to follow, wouldn't hit the points ceiling until the penultimate race, and wouldn't really enable the all-or-nothing strategy.

Do a video on tyre pressure and suspension stiffness!

I think the topic would be even more interesting, when we assume the old point distribution. Less drivers who get points and the points for win are much smaller compared to the other places.

I think changing to that scoring system really would improve racing (all logistical and legal details aside), which I guess is what people want after all

I would like to see a scoring system that rewards both consistency and risk taking. Allow drivers take (X) best scores and for constructor count all points for the season.

I think number of wins, then number of second places, then thirds like the medal rankings in the olympics could be very interesting

Enjoyed the video. While I wouldn't enjoy this points system, I have always had an issue with the current point system - the winner gets too large of an advantage. The point gap between 1st and 2nd really devalues being 'best of the losers'. My favorite point system was always top 8 scoring points, which I believe is an unsung hero in 2007, 2008 and 2009 championship battles - that felt like every place mattered, while the top 6 and top 10 score systems feel like everyone matters but my man - STEVE. DUDE, HAVE YOU HEARD OF STEVE IN 1ST, HE LIKE REALLY MATTERS. In conclusion, I want a reduced advantage for the winner and for someone named Steve to be in F1.

I like the leclerc count breaking to 50 when he discards 2 results while the rest of it still works fine

In my go-karting league growing up, you were able to discard your worst weekend. It worked in that league because everyone had 3 races a weekend and the lineups/starting position were entirely random. It won't work in a league like F1 because everyone participates in every race and you determine your own starting position. Also, they're the worlds best drivers in the worlds most prestigious racing league. If you need 'oopsie' rounds to win the championship then you don't deserve to win the championship. Yes there are reliability issues, but something that makes this league so unique is the constructors championship. Constructors need to be just as consistent as the drivers if they want to win the champioship.

It seems like an interesting move to allow a few discards just because sometimes drivers really have bad luck, this would allow people to not fall out of the championship due to crashes or failures. This makes for a more interresting drivers competition. However, crashes and failures are just the challenge for the constructors competition, so these results should not be discarded for the constructor championship.

I think there could be separate points added for those who finish pole position or top 5 in grid start to award drivers who have great qualifying but may run into issues during the race resulting in not finishing or finishing way behind where they started.... Say, someone starts pole but finishes the race in 5th, they would receive the points for finishing 5th but they'd also have points added for qualifying best. Give drivers more to look forward too in qualifying. If Hamilton gets pole position, the race is over basically.....

To me it seems that the discard system has two main advantages. It favors the unreliable cars - although that is much less of an issues these days. Secondly, it favors drivers who have more wins and higher finishing places. In the last example that is clearly visible. The guy who have won more races than others, wins the championship. On the other hand, the one who won a couple of times and took some podiums comes second, lastly the midfield guy who never made podium, comes last. In that regard, I think the discard system makes most sense. Coming back to reliability, the discard system would allow teams to push their equipment a lot harder not fearing too much if a car breaks down once in a while

Another issue is that for a top driver/team is that if they see they can't win or get good points, they kan retire for the race and get a free change of gearbox and other parts for the next race and not loosing any points.

Dang you Stuart; you had me convinced we should do a 2020-21 F1 superseason with dropped scores a few videos ago; now you've convinced me we should never do dropped scores! Argh! :P

Using all of them places a better emphasis on consistency, a consistent racer is the champion.

I like that the current system praises consistency

A points system should reward consistency. A driver who can't be consistent can't be considered the best driver in the world, and a car that explodes 50% of the time can't be the best car on the grid. Consistency is key, and discarding races would throw that out of the window

I'd be onboard but only if you could discard one or two races in a modern 20-odd season. Basically remove the engine failure/torpedo driver event once or twice per season. There's nothing worse than losing the champ because someone screwed you in to turn one and you weren't able to get back on track/limp to a point

This also doesn't take into consideration teams changing out engines and components. In a normal season they would only be allowed X PU components and then take penalties once they pass that number. In this drop points format, a team could potentially target races where they know they won't do well and change out everything before the race, drive around in parade mode and move on to the next race with a fresher engine that they can run in higher power modes for longer periods of time. With this new system, ERS components, turbos and gearboxes are basically a free for all and penalties mean nothing since you just throw away a race where you weren't expecting to do well anyways. I can just see a quarter of the field starting from pit lane after changing whole power units at specific races they don't care about. I can't wait for Williams to have a pole at a track like Monaco (I know it's cancelled this year) and all 18 other cars starting from pit lane since they know they don't need full power to get around there anyways.

I think it also increases the All or Nothing approach at the earlier races, as you still have plenty of races to get your 13 scores in. I think you could get some really weird tactics towards the back end of the season as well, let's say Hamilton had wrapped up all his good scores and didn't really benefit from getting the wins, but Leclerc was close to overtaking Bottas on points, would Mercedes send hamilton out to disrupt Leclerc so that Bottas got a better boost to his points. It could be a very interesting system, and maybe leade to some more exciting racing with drivers going for it more and then defending their totals towards the end of the season.

What about if every position was rewarded with points: 1. 50 2. 44 3. 41 4. 38 5. 34 6. 31 7. 28 8. 25 9. 22 10. 20 11. 10 12. 9 13. 8 14. 7 15. 6 16. 5 17. 4 18. 3 19. 2 20. 1 Note: 3 pts for fastest lap, 1 pt for constructors champ for fastest pit stop and you have to finish (90%) to get points.

The discard system helps to reduce the influence of mistakes by other drivers taking out top contenders. Which is nice.

So discard system incentivises winning? Seems good.

I still think that the point system needs to give points to all finishers. They want closer racing and that's nice, but it adds more to have a closer championship. Its exciting seeing a driver win by 2 points versus 98. I believe 20 points all the way down to 1 promotes harder and fairer racing because literally every position matters.

Could switch to the NASCAR point system, where if you win the first race, you can completely check out until the last couple of races.

A fair system today might be a driver being able to discount 1 or 2 races for the Drivers championship, due to reliability or bad luck, but the Manufacturers championship should count all the races

Maybe this would stop drivers from "just settling" for whatever position they are in and fighting a bit harder, although they generally fight pretty hard the way it is currently

f1 with nascar playoff points system sounds cursed but worth trying

I like the discard system concept because I believe the racing would be more exciting. It may be less fair for the competitors, as the video shows. In the end it's mainly hypothetical and unlikely to be readopted.

It’s interesting how each of the models relate to a world champion’s season: “The consistent”: Keke Rosberg, 1982 “The improver”: Sebastian Vettel, 2012 and/or 2013 “The wobbler”: Jenson Button, 2009 “All or nothing”: Jacques Villeneuve, 1997

This system will definitely make f1 more competitive and more entertaining

Is there another consideration here though that says that perhaps if teams new they could discard 5 races, for example, they would push their cars/engines harder knowing they could afford some breakdowns if things went badly wrong? Might make for some interesting races if cars were less reliable than they are these days.

Discards might actually work to curb down a bit a too dominant team too - I once tried computing the standings of the past Season while counting only the best two thirds of races (13 out of 20, a similar proportion to the 11 of 16 in the '80s) and not only there was a narrower eventual gap between Mercedes' and "rest-of-the-field"'s drivers, but Bottas might have remained in contention for the Title against Hamilton for a bit longer (still, the latter would have won with at least one race to spare). Because by now cars have more consistent performances throught the various circuits, and their capacities outweight those of the drivers even more than it was in the past, I'd say counting just the best results might still have sense.

The discard points system was dropped in 1990 by Jean Marie Balestre to protect Alain Prost, a consistent pilot of the aggressive Ayrton Senna, so now we have drivers that most of time do their job carrying the rule book under their armpits and the races are so boring, compared the old ones.

This video shows that everyone should drive like grojean in this point system

You know what might be interesting? Having a Pit Stop cost a wdc point. First pit stop doesn't cost a point, considering it is mandatory. No logic behind it whatsoever, but it might change the wdc table.

To be honest, I prefer a system that rewards a consistent driver. I don't really like rewarding reckless drivers. My favorite points system was actually 10,8,6,5,4,3,2,1. It almost helped Kimi get the 2003 season which I really enjoyed.

I guess this system was used because the cars used to break down so much, it wasn’t deemed fair in the drivers. Was looking at the stats for the 99 season the other day, they had less than 10 finishers multiple times! Crazy

In an age where the cars brokedown after every race, this system is what you needed