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NEWS
MOTORSPORT: Retrospective second world title for AJ?
If history were to be rewritten under next year's Formula One points system Alan Jones would be the 1981 world champion as well as 1980Vettel labels double points for last race ‘absurd’
Australia’s Alan Jones would be a two-time Formula One world champion under the double points system for winning the season’s last Grand Prix to be introduced next year.
Already world champion in 1980, Jones finished third in the world championship the next season but won the 1981 Caesars Palace Grand Prix in Las Vegas that, under next year’s system, would have made him champion again.
Britain’s Autosport has analysed the historical impact of the new double points rule and found that there would have been a different world champion in 10 F1 seasons.
“There have been 27 final-race title shootouts since the world championship started in 1950. With double points for the finale that would increase to 46 occasions,” Autosport has reported.
Of the 1981 season conclusion it said: “Famously, [Argentinean] Carlos Reutemann's struggle to seventh at Las Vegas allowed [Brazilian] Nelson Piquet to take the title with fifth. But under the double points rule, Alan Jones’ victory would have given him a second straight title.
“It’s impossible to say how different the race would have been had the drivers been fighting for double points.
“Piquet’s physical struggles are well-documented but he was covering Reutemann and it’s possible he could have gained the two places he needed to stave off Jones had he driven a different race - although he would have needed to be almost a minute further up the road.”
The history books reflect Piquet finishing that season on 50 points, Reutemann 49 and Jones 46.
Under the double points for winning the last GP it would have been Jones 55, Piquet 52 and Reutemann 49.
Perhaps a retrospective second world title is in the offing for AJ!
Australia’s only other F1 world champion has been Sir Jack Brabham, a triple winner of the crown – in 1959, ’60 and ’66.
Recently-retired Mark Webber finished third in the championship three times – 2010, ’11 and ’13.
Webber’s last F1 teammate and world champion the past four seasons, German Sebastian Vettel, has said the change to the points system next season is “absurd” and a poll at f1fanatic.co.uk found 92 per cent of fans opposed to it.
Announcing the change week, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has said it is to “maximise focus on the championship until the end of the campaign”.
In the season just concluded Vettel clinched the title at the Indian GP, leaving the Abu Dhabi, United States and Brazilian races as “dead rubbers” in the drivers’ championship.
Vettel has said that awarding double points at the last race will devalue the work done throughout a season.
“Imagine if in the last Bundesliga (German football league) match there were suddenly double points,” Vettel told German publication Sport Bild.
“This is absurd and punishes those who have worked hard during a whole season.
“I respect the old traditions in F1 and do not understand this new rule.”
Vettel would have lost the 2012 title to Ferrari's Spaniard Fernando Alonso – a dual world champion with Renault – under the new system.
It also would have meant Britain’s Stirling Moss – regarded by many (who overlook Canadian Gilles Villeneuve) as the greatest driver never to win a world title – would have been champion ahead of Argentinean Juan-Manuel Fangio in 1956 and beaten countryman Mike Hawthorn in 1958.
Villeneuve, the late father of 1997 champion Jacques Villeneuve, would have taken the 1979 title ahead of South African Jody Scheckter.
And Frenchman Alain Prost would have won another title in 1984, giving him five, Finn Kimi Raikkonen would have toppled German Michael Schumacher in 2003, and Brazilian Felipe Massa would have been champion ahead of Brit Lewis Hamilton in 2008.
Next year’s final GP will be in Abu Dhabi rather than the traditional finish at Brazil’s Interlagos circuit.
Other changes made by the FIA this week under its recently-re-elected president Jean Todt included permanent numbers for drivers, although the reigning world champion can choose to use No. 1, and five-second penalties for minor infringements during races.
The FIA claimed it had unanimous support for a cost cap to be introduced in 2015, with the details to be finalised by mid-2014 – but such proposals invariably fail in F1.
And teams are strongly opposed to a Pirelli proposal for a minimum of two pitstops for tyre changes in GPs next season.
The teams say it is too close to the new season to introduce such a requirement.
It would need unanimous support of the 11 teams to be implemented.
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Written byGeoffrey Harris
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