🇺🇸 F1'24: R19 - The purple problem

The extra point available to the top 10 drivers at a Grand Prix is going away from 2025. It has found itself in the news for a few races, with Daniel Ricciardo taking the accolade (without getting a point), removing the point from Lando Norris in Singapore in what turned out to be the Australian’s final F1 race.

Fast forward to Austin and it was Esteban Ocon’s orange Alpine burning through COTA faster than anyone, taking the point away from Franco Colapinto and Williams as the two teams continue to jostle for eighth and ninth in the Teams’ Championship and the extra finance that comes with it.

Whatever the reasons for it, it’s clear that the extra point has lost its meaning as a sporting device. Pitting for soft fresh tyres with a couple of laps to go, driving one lap quicker than everyone on a fully rubbered in track with low fuel is the pinnacle of Formula 1, but not if it means dropping from mediocrity to pointlessness.

Or is it?

Surely in a sport all about speed and stopwatches, celebrating the fastest lap should be a thing, shouldn’t it? Rewarding the purple icon next to your name with a point to add to your weekend feels natural. The problem is F1, where if the spirit of a rule can be exploited, it will be.

Every single rule in the sport’s book is examined and tested by a bagful of lawyers and creative thinkers, who read the interpretation and think “what if we did this?” - with the fastest lap, it started as a way to spice things up. But even when the rule was introduced in the Before Times in 2019, F1 acknowledged that it might be used as a way of blocking another driver. 

If F1 wanted real drama, and keep the points consistent, F1 had an obvious rule staring them in the face. If a driver outside the top 10 finishes with the award, roll the point over to the next race! So the points lost in the ether by Ricciardo in Singapore and Ocon in Texas would be available in Mexico. The downside here is that teams would have more motivation to take the lap, final position be damned, because they might be able to steal it next race.

Even in 2021, when it was Max Verstappen vs Lewis Hamilton, both drivers in the midst of their title fight took six fastest laps each in the season. Imagine the outrage if a driver won the culmination of a full season by a fastest lap? At Portugal (aaah, bring back Portugal), Verstappen thought he had the extra point before being told at the end that he had violated track limits, handing the point to Valtteri Bottas instead.

The late race drama isn’t normally followed on camera as the winner crosses the line, with it being reduced to a footnote on the cool down lap and it simply hasn’t mattered to the championship standings in any material way.

And the fastest lap has also led to an unwanted record for a current driver on the grid. Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll pitted late in Monza for a set of softs attempting to set the fastest lap. He failed, finishing sixth overall. Fast forward again to Austin, and Stroll’s 162nd race was the 162nd Grand Prix without setting a fastest lap. He now owns the unwanted record of most starts without the accolade, taking it from Johnny Herbert.

But what if there was a way to celebrate Formula 1’s worship of speed and create a race within a race? Here’s how I’d solve it. I’d keep the point for fastest lap, but would change the way it’s measured. Instead of being a one-lap sprint at the end of the race, I’d make it a tally. Excluding lap 1, the point would go to the driver who has the most fastest laps over the course of the race. 

So for example, on everyone’s lap 14, work your way down the timesheets and give the fastest driver a mark. Most marks in the race gets the point. I’d be confident enough to not restrict it to the top 10 either, because if you were in contention for it over the course of the race, you probably would be higher up the order anyway.

If you want to keep that point for fastest lap as a one-shot event, the logical argument is to give a point away for pole position. If you maintained that in 2024, going into the Mexican race, Verstappen’s lead over Norris would be extended by another two points as the Dutch driver leads 8-6 on poles. The risk here comes from an anti-climactic event of a driver clinching a world title through Saturday qualifying, nullifying the Grand Prix. And inevitably, with a point on the table, how do you sort out a driver taking pole, and then taking a grid drop? Or a driver who clinches pole position, but fails to start on the Sunday?

With F1 being a team sport, the other place you could award a point is when the cars aren’t moving at all, and award a point for the fastest pit stop. Here. you’d need a definition of what a pit stop is etc and add extra jeopardy to the seconds when the drivers are relying on teamwork and synchronicity for a point.

While there seems to be a desire to have an extra point up for grabs in Formula 1, the drama and controversy isn’t worth it. Keeping things simple is key to a sport mired in jargon, keeping people from taking the plunge into following. 

With the excitement of Red Bull vs McLaren vs Ferrari vs Mercedes fighting it out in a cage match, the focus doesn’t need to be on the teams stuck on the outside looking in, especially if there’s no reward for it. That reward for achieving something shouldn’t be removing a point from somewhere else. Anti-motorsport shouldn’t be what F1 is about, so, repeal, rather than reform is the right move here.

1  I wrote that Portugal article back in 2021, so the content embeds don’t work, because we’ve moved from Medium, to Wordpress, to Substack, to Here…