Paris, Friday: Following last weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix, which was abandoned after just over half distance due to a totally unexpected (no, seriously) deluge that washed out the Sepang circuit, Formula One commercial head Bernie Ecclestone has announced a revision to his “medals-style” system of rewarding drivers for next season.
Withdrawing his head from the sand temporarily to discuss his “universally popular” proposals, Ecclestone said that he was going to accommodate the problem of unexpectedly shortened races in his new system.
“Fundamentally, the idea of giving out half points for races that don’t go the full distance is a good one,” the unreasonably powerful dwarf told reporters. “Obviously there is the question of how we implement that into the medals system.
“Obviously in a shortened race, the teams won’t have worked quite as hard for the result, and while what we have will look like a race, it won’t necessarily be what we had anticipated. Therefore we plan to reward the drivers with things that look like the genuine medals, but aren’t quite what they expected either.”
Ecclestone revealed that the winner of a race curtailed before three-quarters distance would receive a brass medal, because it “looks like gold but is a lot cheaper.” In the same way, a pewter medal would be given to the second-placed driver, and third place would receive a copper one.
How these medals would be implemented into the final results table has not been announced, though Ecclestone denied that this was because he was making it up as he went along. “I know what I’m doing. Really,” he insisted, unconvincingly.
Ecclestone also told journalists that he had been forced to abandon his original plan, of rewarding the top three drivers in a shortened race with ordinary medals sawn in half, after he had been told that defacing FIA property was “like treason, as bad as drilling a hole through a 10p coin or putting a stamp on upside down.”
With thanks to Norbert for inspiration.
