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PAST FORMULA 1 SEASONS REVISED UNDER THE NEW POINTS REGIME - WHAT WOULD CHANGE, IF ANYTHING?

1976 SEASON REVISED UNDER THE NEW POINTS SYSTEM
By Carlos De Paula

This season was indeed a two way race between Niki Lauda and James Hunt, with no one else standing a chance to challenge for the championship. Lauda began the year at full power, winning four of the first six races, and finishing second in the other two. Hunt started the year slow, with a single win and one second in these same races. However, as the year progressed, the balance shifted the other way: Lauda went into a slump, and Hunt began winning and scoring regularly.

Part of Lauda’s slump was due to his terrible accident in the Nurburgring, which forced him out of three races and almost killed him. Although at one point he was administered last rites, Lauda rebounded, and came back to try to win the thing. It all came down to Japan, where it rained like cats and dogs. For a man who had seen death so close a couple of months before, risking his life in the downpour seemed foolhardy to Niki. So Lauda took the courageous step of dropping out of the race in the first laps, regardless of the effect in the championship. Hunt did not win the race, but his third place gave him a single point cushion in the final score.

I suspected that matters would be different if the new system were applied, and I was right. If the new scoring system were applied, Lauda would have scored 84 points to Hunt’s 83. Incredibly, the tiebreaker would be Lauda’s 8th place in Canada. Had he not finished in 8th place, then Hunt and Lauda would tie, but the championship would go to Hunt, who scored six victories to Lauda’s FIVE!

So, history would after all be revised. One could argue that Hunt would have pushed a little harder in Japan, to snatch second place. I somewhat doubt it, after all the 3rd place was obtained at great effort at very difficult circumstances.

Third place in the championship would have still been Jody Scheckter, at 72 points, with a difference. Whereas in the original scoring he stood 20 points away from the championship winner, under this new scoring he would have been much closer, merely 12 points away. In other words, he would have still had a fighting chance coming to the US race, had he won both races and both Lauda and Hunt scored very little in the final two.

The rest of the scoring board would look quite similar, except that Jochen Mass, on the strength of many intermediate results, would have jumped from 9th to 6th, from 19 points to 37. Laffite, on the other hand, would drop from 7th to 9th. The biggest drop would be Peterson, placed 11th under the old system, and 14th in the new system, tied with Alan Jones!

Also notable is the fact that Harald Ertl would have scored 3 times, and the Boro would have scored once with Larry Perkins. These drivers would never score in the championship.

As a result, Lauda would have been champion three times in a row, something that only Fangio and much later on, Schumacher were able to achieve. (I am assuming that the new score would not change the 1977 championship, that is!).

Here are the two championship results, under the old and new systems:

 1976 SEASON

1979 SEASON

1982 SEASON

1984 SEASON

1950 SEASON

1964 SEASON

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Last modified: March 28, 2007