As Fernando Alonso pointed out in Brazil: “You can also win because of a
mechanical failure, or a penalty that wasn’t fair. So from that point of
view there are always different things that can affect the championship.
Double points is just one more thing.”
Part of the objection to double points in the case of this season is that it
could punish a driver who has patently had his team-mate’s number for almost
all the year. The statistics are emphatic: 10-4 in victories. Yet it would
not be the first time a driver has won when many believed another deserved
it more. Just look at Alonso in 2012 (incidentally, the Spaniard would have
been crowned champion had double points been in place then).
It is particularly cruel when the title tussle is between team-mates. When
Bernie Ecclestone came up with the idea at the end of last year, it was
designed to prevent another situation we had in 2013, where Sebastian Vettel
ran away with the championship. Double points would not have affected the
result then. It would have at least kept the interest going for a while
longer.
Now that the fight is between two drivers in the same car, the injustice will
be all the more obvious. As I wrote a few weeks ago, it could also wreak
havoc with the constructors’ championship. A sterling effort by Williams
this year could be undone. Marussia’s crucial two points from Monaco and the
£30 million of prize money it brings could be snatched away from them.
But there are respectable voices – admittedly in the tiny minority – who have
questioned what all the fuss is about. Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion,
argued earlier in the year: “If you go to Wimbledon and you are in a
knock-out competition it then gets more crucial and more important the
closer you get to the final – and the final is worth a lot more points than
the first round.”
It is a mightily hard sell, but we should at least ask ourselves: how exciting
would these last few races be without double points? F1 fanatics, of course,
would follow it anyway. For the casual viewer it is a different story.
Double points is a case of risk versus reward. The risk, of universal
condemnation, strikes me as far too great to have implemented it in the
first place. However, if the final race goes off without trouble, without
any major interference in the outcome of the drivers’ championship, then the
reward will be a far more compelling narrative than we would have otherwise
enjoyed.