Points equivalence for handicap race being reconsidered?

23. November 2014The calendar for the 2015 season of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship is evidently still in discussion, and will only be finalised at the 3 December sitting of the FIA World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) in Doha, Qatar. But it’s unlikely there will be any change in the dates announced on 22 October.
Another resolution taken at the WMSC sitting of 12 September could, however, be revised — the decision, to reward the top 10 finishers of the handicap races with as many points as those in each day’s main race.
It was in 2009 that the qualifying heats, run over 30 km, were done away with. These had been little more than relics from a time when there were used to be many more entrants than available places on the starting grid for the main race. In the early days of European truck racing there were two heats on each day, but for the 20 years till 2008 there was only one, and that too was for many years no qualifying race anymore — every participant was eligible for the ensuing Cup race. The “qualifying” tag remained, nevertheless; the heat continued to be run over two-thirds of the Cup race distance of 45 km, and was good for only half the points.
This changed with a resolution of 10 December 2008, which adopted for truck racing the format prescribed for the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC). Both races on each day would now cover the full distance and both would be designated as Championship races, the first eight finishers from the first race starting the second in reverse order. Unlike the WTCC, however, the winner of the second race would be awarded only 10 points, with one point less respectively for each of the remaining top 10 finishers.
On 12 February 2009 the two-months-old regulation was revised in parts, abolishing the 107 percent rule for qualifying but retaining the points structure. The justification then was that those who finished up ahead in the first race had earned their positions by virtue of their performance in qualifying, and – as such – should be rewarded with more points.
Our article of 12 September examined the differences in championship outcomes had there been full points equivalence. This last season, for example, there would have been no change in the final ranking, but the gaps would have been smaller.
Nevertheless, many are suspicious of the new points regime, predominant among them the top drivers. Understandably, because it’s they who stand to lose the most. They are the ones that set the best times in qualifying, which entitles them to start up in front on the grid and gives them the best chances of finishing ahead. In each day’s first race this means more points won.
In the second race the hotshots have to press through a pack of often decidedly slower race trucks to make it back onto the podium. The risk of getting caught out in collisions is disproportionately higher, and one is predisposed to stay put — there’s little more than one point at stake, more or less. But if the winner of this second race collects five points more than the second-place finisher, and as many as eight more than the third, the gloves are definitely going to be off in what’s more often than not a scrappy contest.
This eventuality was clearly conveyed to the authorities in a briefing for the drivers. Later it was reported that the FIA had promised to revisit the topic and, possibly, place the issue in its entirety back on the table for discussion at the 3 December WMSC sitting in Doha.

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