Driver with most wins will be champion in 2009

Rule change for F1 in 2009

With less than 2 weeks before the start of the 2009 F1 season, a brand new rule change has been announced.

After months speculating about Bernie's 'medal system' - it's now confirmed that the driver with the most race victories this season will be crowned World Drivers Champion in 2009.

The silver and bronze idea has been dropped and points are still awarded 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 for the top 8 finishers.

Points will not matter for the overall championship winner, unless of course two or more drivers have the same amount of race victories come the end of the season.

What do we think then?

Well... Bernie is right that this should hopefully get more top drivers thinking harder about how they are going to finish a race on top rather than settle for 2nd and 3rd place finishes. We'll see how it pans out.

My only concern though is one team may have nailed these 2009 spec regulations and come out the starting blocks much quicker than other teams. Effectively, the drivers title could be decided by mid way through the season as other teams play catch up with car performance.

Also worth mentioning...

People may also question whether this is another so called 'Ferrari Rule' as it has been widely mentioned that last years world champion would have been Felipe Massa and not Lewis Hamilton.

Massa ended the season with 6 wins to Hamilton's 5 - but lets take the Spa result into account. If you change that result back to how the race originally finished and it's Hamilton who would have been drivers champion, not Massa.

Ironically, it was Hamilton going for a race victory in the last 3 laps that created all the drama of the Belgium Grand Prix - which is the whole point of this rule change.

As I say, we'll see how it pans out...