Thursday October 31st, 2002

By Alan Baldwin

History shows that Michael Schumacher ended a 21-year drought for Ferrari by winning his third Formula One title in 2000.

It says that Jacques Villeneuve went one step further than his late father Gilles and became Canada's first World Champion in 1997.

Finland's Mika Hakkinen was a double World Champion, no woman driver has ever captured a full point and Italian Luca Badoer made a record 50 Grands Prix starts without scoring.

None of the above facts would hold water if you took the new Formula One points scoring system, to be introduced next season, and re-applied it to the past.

History cannot be rewritten with such dry calculations and a new qualifying format adds another imponderable aspect, but it is the sort of intriguing teaser that shows just how much points mean prizes. Eddie Irvine doubtless has better things to do with his life than to tap away at a pocket calculator but were he to do so he might feel robbed.

Giving points to the top eight finishers in the 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 sequence instead of 10-6-4-3-2-1 would have made Irvine World Champion for Ferrari in 1999, the year that teammate Schumacher broke his leg at Silverstone.

Irvine would have ended the season on 96 points to Hakkinen's 88, with the Finn's last win in Japan redundant since the Ferrari driver would have been 12 points clear going into the final round. In real life, Hakkinen won his second title by two points.

Schumacher Shunts

Irvine would still not have been Ferrari's first champion since South African Jody Scheckter in 1979.

Schumacher would have got there first, beating Villeneuve comfortably in 1997. The German would have gone to that season's now-notorious final round in Jerez with an unbeatable 11-point lead over the Canadian instead of a single point advantage.

There would have been no reason for him to try to shunt Villeneuve off the track, as he did successfully with Damon Hill in Adelaide in 1994 for his second title with Benetton. In all probability, that 1994 incident would not have happened either.

Hill would have arrived for the showdown in Australia with an eight-point lead rather than lagging Schumacher by one. The Briton could have simply sat behind the German, knowing the title was his for the taking. With both going out, Hill would have been champion.

Schumacher would then have had to wait until the following season for his first title while Hill, champion again in 1996, would have matched his father Graham's record of two titles. Or would he? Probing further back shows that Hill senior could have been a quadruple champion - in 1962, 1964, 1965 and 1968 - on points alone.

The world might still be waiting for the first man to win titles on two wheels and four. Britain's former 500cc motorcycling champion John Surtees won his only Formula One title in 1964 with Ferrari but Hill would have scored 53 points to his compatriot's 50.

However in those days drivers only counted their six best results - a fact which would have swung the pendulum back towards Surtees by a mere point since he only had six scoring finishes to Hill's seven.

Badoer Scores

Hill would have missed out in the same way in 1965, beating compatriot Jim Clark 63-60 on points under the new system but finishing 13 behind Clark, who had six wins, once the superfluous scores were discarded.

Italy's Lella Lombardi would have put women drivers well and truly on the map with two points finishes in 1975.

Badoer, now the Ferrari test driver, would have picked up two points in only the fourth race of his career at Imola in 1993 with Scuderia Italia. Sadly for the Italian, change means that his record of 50 pointless races is likely to stand for years to come - or until another format takes over.

Tail-enders like Gaston Mazzacane, Alex Yoong, Esteban Tuero and Ricardo Rosset would all have taken points if past races were scored under the future system.

See the standings of every season with the new points system here.

Published at 14:27:14 GMT