[Rules] Future Rule Changes

[Taxi645]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

I personally don't have a solution (may post later if an idea comes to mind), but just like not going negative on the points, fans and the media still do the math and report negative points. Why? They do this today with grid penalties. The math generates massive penalties (effectively negative numbers with respect to the last position on the grid), but yet you can't start any further back than last on the grid. My point is that generally speaking the "size" of the penalties is mostly pointless, but everyone is overly obsessed with them. I am not saying I agree with the current situation either.

Richard

In principle you're right of course it would technically come down to the same. However a few reasons it would be practically different and received more favourable by fans:

1 It hurts the constructor, not the driver as it should.
2 It doesn't mess up the qualification and thus race result.
3 It's generally less intrusive to the Grand Prix weekend.


You could do it differently by splitting an absolute penalty in an absolute and relative part. So for instance an engine penalty would mean you lose 5 points plus 5% of your collected constructors points. That way it doesn't overly hit the bottom teams the way absolute constructors penalties would. I would still not let it go negative, but with this approach the chance of that to happen would be much reduced in the first place.

I reckon this would be an acceptable compromise, that would go a long way to solving the issues with the current set up while not being too complicated.