Sender of Eight

Here's a question: what do F1's new eight-speed gearboxes have to do with their new permanent numbering system? I'll give you a hint - they're both related to the new double-points gimmick they're using to spice up the last round of the championship. Give up? They're all signs the Powers That Be are desperate to have an exciting, down-to-the-wire World Championship this year, and they have absolutely no idea how to go about it.

And they usually handle this sort of thing so well.

Permanent numbers and the double points thing are also part of the ongoing NASCAR-ification of all things. Stock car racing's popularity boom from 1995 to, say, 2008, convinced many sports bosses that NASCAR was the way and the life and all racing series must to imitate its example to be successful - meaning adopting its make-all-cars-equal philosophy and putting big obvious numbers on the doors rather than, say, opening up your sport to Californians like Jeff Gordon rather than the usual rednecks and working hard to give your fans access.

Even the mighty Formula 1 has fallen victim to this line of thinking. Between 1972 and last year, the number for each car/driver combo was based on where they'd finished in the previous year's results. The #1 sticker went to the World Champion, with 2 going to his teammate. If the Constructor's Champion was a different team than the Driver's Champion, then they got 3 and 4. The team that finished next on the Constructor's table was given 5 and 6, and so on down to 21 and 22 (excluding 13, of course. This is a very Anglo sport, with Anglo superstitions). As a concept it bore the hallmark of Bernie Ecclestone, a man so anal about neatness he used to order team truck drivers to pull out and reverse it in again if they hadn't parked their trailers in perfectly parallel rows.

Maybe then the new system is a sign Bernie's grip on the sport is beginning to slip, because the reshuffle is such a dog's breakfast I really doubt it has his approval. The drivers have each picked a number below 99, and that's it, that's the number they'll have for the rest of their careers. While number 1 will still be reserved for the current World Champion, there's no number 2, Maldonado's got number 13, and Hamilton, Button, Sutil and Bottas have all gone for doubles (no word on whether they shouted "dubs get!" as they submitted the paperwork). The idea is that these numbers will become associated with their drivers, not a totally silly idea since it happens all the time anyway, it's just that it's usually more organic. Nigel Mansell was known for Red 5 as much as his porn 'stache, and to fans of a certain age 27 will always mean Gilles Villeneuve (brave choice, Nico Hülkenberg, brave choice). Will the new numbers stick and become part of the texture of F1? Will 44 one day be shorthand for Lewis Hamilton as 05 is for Brocky and 3 is for Dale Earnhardt?

This picture contains everything you need to know about the Bush administration.

My only real objection is that, while this American thing does seem to work, it's a distinctively American thing and I'm not sure we want to get that all-American ketchup on our sweet sticky crêpes. Time will tell I suppose.

What I'm less understanding about is the other bit of Dixie infiltrating our Euro-playboy sport: awarding 50 points for winning the last race of 2014 instead of 25 just sounds like a miniature Chase to me. No point wasting words here - I think it's stupid, contrived, arbitrary and spoils the whole point of the F1 World Championship being a championship. Why not just nominate a race at the start of each year and make whoever wins it World Champion? Hey I know, why not just pull a name out of a hat? It'd cut costs and, if you put off drawing the name until December 30, you'll reeeeally draw out the tension!

In all seriousness, it concerns me that this points tweak will only be around for a year or two, and in the history books ever after that year's World Champion will have an asterisk next to their name with a footnote reminding everyone they only won because the final race paid double. And if the championship is wrapped up before then, what was the point of changing the rules in the first place? All this can do is spoil someone's achievement by making it a technical, in-name-only sort of victory. Last-gasp championship wins are special because they're rare, guys. You can't have a once-in-a-lifetime event every year. If you do, your fans switch off because it becomes devalued. How many spec series have we seen fall by the wayside since the 90's? The racing was close, sure, but it was also pointless. Nobody cared that they were nearly always settled at the last race. It just proved this was roulette by different means.

What does this have to do with their new gearboxes? Well, this entry is already longer than I was planning, so I'll have to get into that next time.