A meeting of Formula One team principals in London has approved several rule changes to improve competition and, hopefully, revive flagging fan interest in the sport.
Most notable in light of several controversial Ferrari finishes this year is the ban on team orders whereby a team’s management would decide that one of their drivers should give way to the other. Team orders have been an acknowledged part of the sport for years but Ferrari’s blatant last-corner antics in Austria and the United States brought the matter to a head when disappointed fans booed and jeered the result.
After Ferrari won 15 out of 17 races this year the FIA Formula One Commission was under pressure to find a way to make the races more interesting as race attendance and TV viewing figures went down when the results appeared to be a foregone conclusion and all of the championships were decided with several events still to run.
The teams rejected some radical proposals including a handicapping system to add ballast to the fastest cars and a ludicrous idea to have drivers switch teams for each of the first 10 races of the season.
The commission did approve some changes to the way qualifying will take place and how championship points will be awarded. Next season points will be awarded to the top eight finishers instead of the top six with less of a gap between the race winner and the other places in the hope that the championship will be less of a walkover. Points will be 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 instead of the current 10-6-4-3-2-1.
After problems with some drivers being held up by slower cars in qualifying F1 is switching to having each car qualify alone on the track similarly to the way that CART and the IRL do now on ovals. Qualifying sessions will now be held on Friday as well as Saturday with the Friday results inverted to decide the running order of the cars on Saturday so that the fastest cars on Friday will run last on Saturday when the track will presumably be faster since the earlier cars will have cleaned the track of dust and laid down more rubber for the later drivers to benefit from. The new qualifying process will also address some team and sponsor complaints by ensuring that all of the cars are shown on TV instead of just the more successful teams.