[jab]

Originally Posted by Teretonga

If there is no WDC there is no money for Bernie or CVC, they are out of a job and out of pocket....

Not necessarily. FOM can still "run" F1 even if there is no championship. Call it the "F1 Tour" or something. That there is no champion at the end shouldn't make a difference

I know it's an easy way to make the argument go away, but I'm sure it can be done. Other sports have proven this sort of system can work. However, whether the powers-that-be want it to happen is a completely different matter, as they have a vested interest in the status quo

Originally Posted by Chatters

It's wrong to compare Moss to Alonso in terms of popularity- Sir Stirling has had 40 years AFTER he was a GP driver to build a reputation, especially in England.

I could guarantee you more people would have heard of Fernando Alonso then say, Alex Yoong or Yuji Ide, or possibly even Jarno Trulli.

I know, I was just pointing out the rather large flaw in E.B's point

Originally Posted by Born Racer

A tennis tournament is a sort of championship.

So's each individual Grand Prix, then. It's just shorter

Monaco's as important as the championship IMO, in the same way that the Indy 500 is as important, if not more important, than the IRL title. Same for the Daytona 500. I'm sure Monaco would have loads of extra entries the same as the other 2 if the FOM and FIA opened up the entry lists

Originally Posted by Taprobane

If there are 30/40 races a season and teams can pick and choose which ones to enter than apart from the really big ones (i.e Monaco) you might well find teams avoiding each other to win races which would deprive us all of seeing the best race each other. The other alternative is a team like Ferrari dominating by entering every race and therefore getting a significant amount more track time than a team without the backing.

Isn't that the same as tennis, though? Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer don't all enter the same tournaments, for obvious reasons. However, they enter a lot together, including all the major ones

Getting rid of the championship could be great for all the "Grand Slam" Grands Prix, because they would be the ones that all the top teams would enter

I'm sure there would also be a mechanism for making the top teams enter a set number of events with their nominated lead drivers - while there would be entries on a race-by-race basis, as opposed to at the start of the season as at present, they could do what they do in rallying and get the big teams to enter all the races (or a set number) before the start of the season. Not quite sure how they do it in rallying but it works

Originally Posted by ASCII Man

There is, it's called the ATP World Tour Finals.
Only the top 8 players in singles and doubles compete, and it's held at the end of the season.

For the women, it's called the WTA Tour Championship.

Yeah but you can't say that Rafa Nadal's target each year is to win the ATP Finals, and that all the other big tournaments lead up to that - look who won it last year. Nadal's target is to win as many tournaments as possible, particularly the majors. Same for cycling - I'm sure Contador's years always build up to the Vuelta, Giro and Le Tour. I'm sure F1 drivers would take the same approach - win as many races as possible, especially the big ones