there are too many points to be gained

[bone]

If Brasil showed one thing, it's not that it's impossible to overtake, but they're all so frightened to bin the car and score 0 points, they become paralised dummies, whose only job is to keep the car between the lines

right now, most teams/drivers running in the midfield, hope the drivers in front make mistakes/bin the car/fuck up strategically, and that way they gain positions and end up in the points.
the one point you gain for 10th, is worth more a lot more than the 0 points you gain when you crash the car for trying to reach 9th (and if you do crash, the driver running 10th suddenly gains a point, pushing your team ever further down the ranking)

back in the day when only the top 6 were awarded points, you had no option to take risks and drive balls out, or you're outside the points by definition

limiting points to the top 6 again wouldn't do anything about the lack of battle for the lead, but would result in one hell of a midfield battle i think!
(they should do something about reliability though, or MB, RB and ferrari would run away with all the points :lol

thoughts?

 

[NooDle]

I agree up to a point, but the problem is not awarding places down to 10th, the trouble is the gaps between the points are too small.

Before it was 10pts for 1st and 6 pts for second, so going for first actually matters. Now its 25 - 18 which is only one point more but its 2,5 and x3 compared to before. So you can 'do a Rosberg' and come second a bunch of times, if the other guy has one dnf, you can still come second 3 times and still be ahead....

 

[bone]

good point!!
just increase the gap in points between positions, and they'll be tempted more to try something and take some risks

 

[mpicco]

Before it was 10pts for 1st and 6 pts for second, so going for first actually matters. Now its 25 - 18 which is only one point more but its 2,5 and x3 compared to before. So you can 'do a Rosberg' and come second a bunch of times, if the other guy has one dnf, you can still come second 3 times and still be ahead....

You mean "do a Prost". He was famous for getting as many points as he needed, not as many as he could, minimizing risk.

I think the big factor is, as anything in life, money. We always hear the commentators saying "x driver from x lowly team is getting a crucial point here which will mean millions of prize money at the end of the year cos they beat Y team!". So of course their teams encourage them to drive a lot more carefully, if they're in a position to get points, rather than fight more and take risks.

Not sure how you fix that, other than not giving any money AT ALL to any team or giving the exact same amount to everyone depending on viewing figures... both of those options would be very tricky either way.