28 replies to this topic

[Hunt the Shunt Fan]

Could someone please explain why Formula One had a "dropped score rule" for so many years? What were the reasons behind the dropped score rule? Was this supposed to even things out or make the racing more fair or something? Here's what I'm talking about:

1950 -- Best four scores to count
1955 -- Best five scores to count
1958 -- Best six score to count
1967 -- Best five scores from first six races
and best four scores from last five races to count
1988 -- Best eleven scores to count


So what's the reasoning behind the dropped score rule?

[FEV]

In the fifties at least I think the point was to allow drivers and teams to not participate in every race and still have a chance to be in contention for the title. This was very different from the 1920s World Championship and 1930s European Championship were you were penalized for not entering events. It seems the CSI chose to do the exact opposite to what had been done before : maximum points (8-6-4...) scoring instead of minimum (1-2-3-4...) and the possibility to run a partial schedule !

[holiday]

Originally posted by Hunt the Shunt Fan
So what's the reasoning behind the dropped score rule?

There wasn't any.
It always took lengthy explanation from FIA- officials to 'justify' these regulations, and in the end they dropped the dropped score rule and.....nobody shed a tear afterwards.

[byrkus]

Except Alain Prost, maybe...? The same system took him at least 2 titles away (1984 and 1988)!!

[unrepentant lurker]

In 1984, Lauda scored 72 points to Prost's 71.5 points. Niether driver dropped any points. Prost lost that championship because Lauda scored more points than he did, not because of some arbitrary point dropping scheme.

[byrkus]

Yes, you are right. My mistake...

[racer69]

and also because Monaco only got half points.

[PDA]

Sailing still uses a "discard" rule. A Regatta consists of a series of races, and each competitir has a small number of discards to eliminate bad results which may have been caused by equipment failure and are not representative of that boat's true performance. The typoe of ruling is still used in the Olynpics. I don;t know if that was the rationale used in devising the F1 points system, but it was common. I recall that when I was rallying in the seventies, all of the championships had similar discard rules, allowing one to have a chance of winning the series even if one did not compete in all events due to cost constraints etc. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

[Don Capps]

Originally posted by FEV
In the fifties at least I think the point was to allow drivers and teams to not participate in every race and still have a chance to be in contention for the title. This was very different from the 1920s World Championship and 1930s European Championship were you were penalized for not entering events. It seems the CSI chose to do the exact opposite to what had been done before : maximum points (8-6-4...) scoring instead of minimum (1-2-3-4...) and the possibility to run a partial schedule !

Originally posted by holiday
There wasn't any.
It always took lengthy explanation from FIA- officials to 'justify' these regulations, and in the end they dropped the dropped score rule and.....nobody shed a tear afterwards.

FEV and holiday pretty much spot on, although holiday's rather jaundiced view reflects the reality much more accurately after the late 1950's and 1960's than the CSI was willing to ever admit. That the dropped score system lasted so long is really pretty amazing.

When the WDC was not much of a factor in Life, teams and entrants ran whenever and wherever they chose. Some WDC rounds were not as "profitable" as some of the non-Championship rounds. Vandervell was one of the few to concentrate primarily on the WDC rounds and ignore the rest, but this was basically a move calculated with an eye towards the PR value of a "title" rather than the quality of the events.

The CSI fascination with this system always seemed to bewilder people, especially my fellow Americans. It did create some "suspense" at times by artifically manipulating the scores that could be counted, such as 1962 and 1964. I had a friend who simply could never fathom why it was that Graham Hill could outscore John Surtees and yet not be the champion -- or how Clark could enter the equation. At the time, I think I was rather smug about it, but in retrospect I have come to agree with his viewpoint: it is one thing to "drop" points such as is done in sailing or figure skating during an event, but entirely another matter to drop scores earned during a season.

It was just one of of those wonderful ideas of the CSI that far outlived any need -- real or perceived -- that it was created to fill.

[Chico Landi]

Though in 1964 I agree that Hill should have been crowned champion, it was a very close matter, with only two dropped points.

But in 1988, it's simply RIDICULOUS that a driver with 11 points ahead of the other (that's a win and a 5th place at that time) lost the title. OK, Senna and Prost knew the rules before the beginning of the season, so they should built their tactics according to them. But the gap of points scored is so huge that this season proves how absurd and unuseful this rule was. It rewarded a driver that comitted two rookie mistakes (Monaco and Monza), very inconsistent, but was faster than the other one.

I always believed that you can win a race by being fast, but a championship by being consistent. There are several examples of that, like Emerson in 74 (just three wins in a very tight battle for the title) and Piquet in 87 (three wins agains six from Mansell), who were wise enough to pick up points when a win was not possible.

Though all the Suzuka '89 fuzz happened, I was inclined to be furious with Ballestre and Senna's nonsense-disqualification, but I just sat quiet and smiled when the brazilian came up with all the blah-blah-blah that Prost could only win this way, and never in a sportive way. What about 88 and 90, Senna? Was that according to the true spirit of sport?

I believe that this rule also played a key role to this succession of terrible moments in F-1. Prost knew he was the best in 88 but couldn't get his title, so he knew 89 should be his one way or another. This a typical "Senna's point-of-view" of things, but the Media never looked this way and always agreed to the more eloqüent brazilian (Senna had exactly the same speking style as Fangio, check it out! - the man was pure marketing when it comes to Media) .

Some say (Nigel Roebuck sure does) that the F-1 definitily changed in 01/5/1994 (not being a sport anymore to be more a show, a media event). I disagree, it changed really in 1988, where the clash inside McLaren brought a huge spot to the sport. Just a year before, Piquet and Mansell were also highly-level team mates and didn't liked each other, but never crossed the border of sportive dispute (just a bit through media interviews, but always in an acceptable level). Senna and Prost brought this to a personal level: there were not two sportsman fighting for a sportive win, but two men willing to die (at least one was, according to the other) to reach their goals.

This killed the sport that was known as F-1.

Sorry to being a bit (much) off-topic, but it just came out!


Now back to the thread...

[fines]

I have a different view of all this, and actually think dropped scores are a good thing. Firstly, it's a mechanical sport, so some no-scores are almost inevitable and shouldn't punish the team and driver unduly. Secondly, and most importantly, dropped scores favour winners over consistent finishers. Don't get me wrong, I admire strong finishers, but for me a real champion has to actually win races. There's this one instance in motorcycle racing, when a rider won six races in succession, then finished second twice more and lost the title in the ninth and last round when a small mechanical problem put him out of the points! Would've never happened with dropped scores.

[holiday]

Originally posted by byrkus
Except Alain Prost, maybe...? The same system took him at least 2 titles away (1984 and 1988)!!

It even took him three titles away!!
1983 - 1984 - 1988


1 9 8 3

Dropped Score Rule
Prost vs Piquet
59 - 57 points
4 - 3 wins

Scoring System since '91
claim: Prost WC '83

response to claim:
"In 1983 Prost was beaten by Piquet 57:59 points. He won 4 races that year to Piquet's 3. Neither driver scored more than 11 times so didn't give up any points. Today's point system will give Piquet the title with 62 points to Prost's 61.
Therefore Prost is 6 times WC if we use today's scoring system!"

response to response to claim:
In Brazil 1983 Keke Rosberg was 2nd but disqualified. No driver got 6 points in this race. Today every driver would climb up one place (3rd becomes 2nd, 4th becomes 3rd and so on). A. Prost was 7th in this GP... (do I have to say more)

Prost WC '83, because of
- 1 win more than Piquet -> 58 p.
- 6th place instead of 7th place in GP of Brasil -> 59 p.
- in case of equal points the number of wins is decisive -> 4x AP vs 3x NP

Prost WC '83!


1 9 8 4

Dropped Score Rule
Prost vs Lauda
71,5 - 72 points
7 (race in Monaco included) - 5 wins

Point System since '91
Prost WC '84, because of
- 2 wins more than Lauda -> AP 73 p. vs NL 72 p.

Prost WC '84!


1 9 8 8

Dropped Score Rule
Prost vs Senna
87 (105) - 90 (94) points
7 - 8 wins

Point System since '91
Prost WC '88, because of
- more points than AS -> AP 105 P. vs AS 94 P.

Prost WC '88



Alain Prost, 7 times champion according to today's scoring system:
1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1993

[holiday]

I freely admit that I was more than a bit annoyed at the fact that the anachronistic dropped score rule took 2 titles from Prost away (the one in 1983 is a bit esoteric, of course), since I felt that Prost deserved them more than his team-mates by giving 100% at every race throughout the entire season and not giving away easily any race, a race philosophy which simply wasn't rewarded by the then scoring rule. Quite the contrary in fact, it was virtually punished.

For example, it was a big laugh that in '88 Prost scored in the last two races (Portugal, Spain) before the showdown in Suzuka two wins which would have amounted to 18 points. Fact is, because of the dropped score rule he only gained 6 out of 18 points in those race!! Against a opponent of the caliber of Senna 12 points more or less was a matter of life and death.

But what was annoying me most, was the fact that the meaning of whole races was made insignificant by the then scoring rule! I mean, people were travelling all over the globe, working a whole weekend their arses off, fans were waiting in anticipation for an interesting race on TV and then.....in hindsight it was all meaningless, since the results of the race were later completely dropped!! I even remember sitting before TV with pen and notebok, since the calculations that the dropped score rule required were trickier than one might expect.

I cannot remind ANY sports where results were made completely meaningless like this!
In my eyes the overdue abolition of the dropped scoring rule in 91 was something of a belated confession that it was a completely nonsense rule only kept alive for so long through the relative immobility of the concorde-agreement.

I am sorry, but I always have and will refer to the WC of 1988 as a 'scoring-rule-WC', not a real one.
It's a hypotheque in my eyes.

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by fines
I have a different view of all this, and actually think dropped scores are a good thing. Firstly, it's a mechanical sport, so some no-scores are almost inevitable and shouldn't punish the team and driver unduly. Secondly, and most importantly, dropped scores favour winners over consistent finishers. Don't get me wrong, I admire strong finishers, but for me a real champion has to actually win races. There's this one instance in motorcycle racing, when a rider won six races in succession, then finished second twice more and lost the title in the ninth and last round when a small mechanical problem put him out of the points! Would've never happened with dropped scores.

I was going to make exactly the same point. We want winners not points gatherers.

[rtcoman]

Originally posted by fines
There's this one instance in motorcycle racing, when a rider won six races in succession, then finished second twice more and lost the title in the ninth and last round when a small mechanical problem put him out of the points! Would've never happened with dropped scores.


Did they use that 20-17-15-13-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 rule?

[holiday]

Originally posted by Roger Clark
I was going to make exactly the same point. We want winners not points gatherers.

This doesn't hold.
The fact that a win is more worthy than any other placement is reflected through the progressive scoring system. In terms of points a victory is 40% percent (!!) more worth than a second place. Isn't it enough? I think it is.

[Roger Clark]

66% actually, but I still think that too many drivers are pepared to settle fora safe second or third rather than take risks and go for a win. Whether a points dropping rule would change that, i wouldn't like to say.

[Prostfan]

Another question concerning points:

Austrian Jo Gartner (who died in Le Mans) made 5th place in 1984 Italy GP. Yannick Dalmas was 5th in the Australian GP 1987. Both have made no points according to the lists everywhere. Why?

[Prostfan]

If you apply today's scoring system to 1958, S. Moss would have been champion (at last!)
Hawthorn 46 points, 1 victory; Moss 46 points, 4 victories.

1964 would have seen Graham Hill instead of Surtees as champion:
G. Hill 43 points, Surtees 42 points

And 1983, 1984 and 1988 Alain Prost.

[unrepentant lurker]

Originally posted by fines
I have a different view of all this, and actually think dropped scores are a good thing. Firstly, it's a mechanical sport, so some no-scores are almost inevitable and shouldn't punish the team and driver unduly. Secondly, and most importantly, dropped scores favour winners over consistent finishers. Don't get me wrong, I admire strong finishers, but for me a real champion has to actually win races. There's this one instance in motorcycle racing, when a rider won six races in succession, then finished second twice more and lost the title in the ninth and last round when a small mechanical problem put him out of the points! Would've never happened with dropped scores.

Well, that's motoracing. If a driver is leading at Lemans and his car breaks down with ten minutes to go, how does he classify? He doesn't, even if he's done more laps than the eventual winner.

As for your motorcycle example, I would say that the points system doesn't really reward a driver for winning, but for being consistent. Like NASCAR. If you were to apply the F1 system to that, your driver would have scored 72 points. The best another driver could hope for would be 3 wins and 6 seconds for 66 points.

Even with 9 points for a win, that comes out to 66 points for your driver with 63 points for the second place guy.

[unrepentant lurker]

Originally posted by holiday
I freely admit that I was more than a bit annoyed at the fact that the anachronistic dropped score rule took 2 titles from Prost away (the one in 1983 is a bit esoteric, of course), since I felt that Prost deserved them more than his team-mates by giving 100% at every race throughout the entire season and not giving away easily any race, a race philosophy which simply wasn't rewarded by the then scoring rule. Quite the contrary in fact, it was virtually punished.

The dropped point rule only took one title away from Prost. In 1983, neither driver dropped points, Prost simply didn't score as many as Piquet. Further, if 10 points had been awarded for a win, Piquet would have had 58 points going into the last round while Prost had 62(giving him the extra point for Brazil). Piquet would have known he need a second place in order to win and would have driven accordinly, not letting 3 drivers pass him after Prost dropped out.

[josh.lintz]

Originally posted by Prostfan
Austrian Jo Gartner (who died in Le Mans) made 5th place in 1984 Italy GP. Yannick Dalmas was 5th in the Australian GP 1987. Both have made no points according to the lists everywhere. Why?

Strange as it sems, their missing points have to do with the teams they drove for. A team has to run the same number of cars all year long in order to score points for that car.

Because Osella ran only one car until the San Marino GP in 1984, the number of the car (#30) was never eligible for points toward the Constructor's Cup or the Driver's standings. So even if Ghinzani was entered in the #30 car at Dallas, and Gartner in the #24, Ghinzani would not have scored his two points. Berger doesn't get credit for his 6th place, either. ATS only started entering 2 cars at the Austrian GP.

The same scenario applied to the Larrousse-run Lolas. Only Alliot's #30 car was entered for entire season, the #29 car of Dalmas was only entered at the last 3 races of the '87 season.
Of course, Larrousse's no-show at Rio landed him a US$50,000 fine...I suspect it would be much greater a fine nowadays!

My guess is that it prevents a Ferrari-at-Monza-in-1976 scenario: allowing two teams competing for the title to enter extra cars to hinder the other's championship aspiratons.

[holiday]

Originally posted by unrepentant lurker
The dropped point rule only took one title away from Prost.

Actually, it would have been three: 83, 84 and 88. The dropped score rule also included minor changes already factored in in my survey. (Look at my post from the 13-Dec-01 21:56.)

Beside, Piquet might have driven faster after Prost's car expired, but there was a certain reason why he was wise enough not doing it, wasn't there? The faster the car, the more probable a mechanical failure or a spin off. Even more so in the Turbo days.

[unrepentant lurker]

I think we are disagreeing about terminology here. Prost lost the championship in 88 because they threw out some points. As it also happened to Hill in 64.

All of the other examples in this thread are new "champions" based on the weight of a win in their particular time. This is a completely different arguement than about actually discarding scores. I could dream up a point system that would make Moss a 5 times champion, but whats the point. In '58, everybody got 8 points for a win and one for fastest lap (the discarding of scores actually helped Moss in this situation as Hawthorne lost 7 points). In 83 and 84, a win was worth 9 points.

The thread is generally about the evils/goodness of discarding results, not about the correct weighting of a win - 8, 9 or 10 points. The assertion that Prost was "robbed of his 83 and 84" championships is ludicrous. Everybody knew what they needed to do to win when the season started.

As for Piquet, he was on top of his game and knew exactly what he was doing. If he needed to win that day, he could have.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Maybe it was to help reign in a runaway champion? Usually if anyone gets hurts by dropped scores, its the points leaer isnt it?

[holiday]

Originally posted by unrepentant lurker
I think we are disagreeing about terminology here. Prost lost the championship in 88 because they threw out some points. As it also happened to Hill in 64.

All of the other examples in this thread are new "champions" based on the weight of a win in their particular time. This is a completely different arguement than about actually discarding scores.....
The thread is generally about the evils/goodness of discarding results, not about the correct weighting of a win - 8, 9 or 10 points.

No, this isn't correct. You can't separate these two rule changes as both were interconnected purposefully.
There was a logical reasoning behind the stocking up of a win from 9 to 10 points in 1991: The dropped score rule did favour wins over point gathering factually. As the new scoring system replaced the dropped score rule, the higher evaluation of a win was meant by the FIA as a compensation for this factum! It did make sense.



I don't want to get further into the Prost discussion, but let me remind you of the following:

Drivers in the 80s who were affected by the dropped score rule:
- Prost: 1983, 1984, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990
- Piquet: 1987, 1990
- Senna: 1988

No pilot ever was more hurt by this rule than Prost.
The more as in all those years he was running for the WDC!
In 1988 for example Senna would have paid dearly for his driving errors at Monaco and Monza.
In 1989 the WDC would have been decided before Suzuka.
In 1990 Senna wouldn't have dared to crash into Prost deliberately at Suzuka (the second last race) as the WDC was mathematically open until the very last race, anyway.

The anachronistic dropped score rule has cost Prost dearly and the long overdue abolition in 1991 just after AP was seriously hampered by it in the three previous fights for the WDC, didn't make it easier to accept this rule altogether.


If you race 16 races, 16 races have to be taken into account.
If you wanna count 11 races, then just race 11 races.

That's the bottom line. It's easy like this.


Edited

[Chico Landi]

Originally posted by holiday


If he could win that day, why was he behind Prost for 30 laps until the Frenchman's turbo engine expired....? He needed to win before Prost that day...

Sorry to disappoint you, but what race are you talking about? Piquet started the South African GP, the last and decisive round, in second (pole was Tambay) and took the lead from the green lights on. Refuelled at the 28th lap and came back still in front of everyone. Prost's turbo broke at the 35th lap, when the french was 4th.

Only then Piquet eased the pace, letting Patrese and Lauda by. After the austrian retired, he was back in second, and only with three laps to go De Cesaris got close and the brazilian let him by.

[holiday]

Huups, should have bothered to back up my memory with forix
Prost was already on third as his engine expired, by the way

[unrepentant lurker]

Originally posted by holiday


No, this isn't correct. You can't separate these two rule changes as both were interconnected purposefully.
There was a logical reasoning behind the stocking up of a win from 9 to 10 points in 1991: The dropped score rule did favour wins over point gathering factually. As the new scoring system replaced the dropped score rule, the higher evaluation of a win was meant by the FIA as a compensation for this factum! It did make sense.

This arguement, even if it was the FIA party line, still makes little sense. Points gathers were the ones who were hurt by the system, but they were also the ones who won races. Not only that, the penalty for consistancy was very different.

Up until 1966, only 50 or 60% of races would count towards the championship. In 1953, only the best 4 of 9 WC events counted.

From 66 to 80, it was more like 85% of races would count.

And then up until 90, it was about 70%.

A few statistics from FORIX:
Between 1950 and 1990, there was a grand total of 2916 results that could earn WC points. Actually, a few more since it was possible that the 1 point for fastest lap could go to a non-finisher, but I'm not going to work that out. Of that total, only 81 were discarded because of this. That's a mere 2.77%.

Of those 81 results, 38 belonged to the WDC for that year.
Or drivers had results discarded 50 times, 20 of those being for the WDC.
Or 250.64 points were discarded, 136.64 belonging to the WDC.

1951 Fangio was champion, scoring 37 points but 6 were discarded.
1952 Ascari was champ, scoring 53.5 but 17.5 were discarded (one-third )
1953 Ascari is champ again, scoring 46.5 points but discarding 12 points.
1954 Fangio is champ, scoring 57.14 points, but discarding 15.14 points.
...
1962 Hill is champ scoring 52 points, but discarding 10 points.
1963 Clark is champ scoring 73 points, but discarding 19 points.

1964 is of course the year Hill should have one. There were other drivers loosing points, but ones and twosies. Some years only the WDC lost points.

From 1967-1984 No points were dropped - except a rash in 79,80.

From 85 on it was ones and twosies, usually the WDC. This is excepting 88 of course, where Prost lost 18 bigguns.

Anyway, my point is that the point collectors were the race winners, one and the same. 1988 aside.

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to everyone I'm off.