The FIA has lost the plot

Yesterday's decisions by the World Motor Sport's Council were quite weird. Firstly, the decision to keep the points system but award the world championship to the driver with most wins is completely inconsistent.

I understand why they have decided to do it, they hope that drivers in with a shot of the world championship and winning races will go all out for the win. But how can it be sensible that driver A wins 5 races and crashes out of all other races through stupid mistakes beats driver B who wins 4 races and finishes 2nd in all 13 or 14 others? I know that example is a bit far fetched, but there will be uproar and the person who wins the world championship will not be deemed worthy.

In 2008 both Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton could have won the world championship, and Hamilton won under the points system and Massa would have won under the most wins system. But the point was that they both drove well at times, and made some silly mistakes at others. They both deserved the championship.

I think having a simple system of points along the lines of the FOTA suggestions with a greater differential for coming first would have been sufficient. Now we seriously can have two world champions a year! How bone headed.

The second decision is even more serious. To allow a voluntary cap of £30 million for the permission to have no technical restrictions is just plain barmy. The cap is very low, and most teams would have to make large redundancies. Not great in the current climate. And the drivers' salaries have to come from that £30 million too!

But what about the implications of no technical restrictions? We don't know all the details yet, but what can this mean? Can ground effects come back, can turbo engines? What has Max Mosley's driving force in the FIA been about? Safety. How can this ever square up with the lack of technical restrictions? It can't. For as long as I remember, the FIA and it's predecessor the FISA have been imposing restrictions to slow down cars for safety reasons, the teams naturally have gone to limits to recoup the speed. If those restrictions were lifted, all the old technology can come back and the cars could go 10 seconds a lap faster, containing drivers who drive without a salary (probably those traditionally at the back). Absolutely ridiculous. As Lynne Faulds-Wood used to say, it would be a grid of absolute death traps.

Of course, this is likely to be Max Mosley's usual tactic of going for something completely ridiculous in order to split the teams and then go for a compromise which is further than the teams ever wanted. I hope he doesn't succeed and the teams threaten to break-away from this annual madness.

Squiffy.