With three races down – is the new points system working if Felipe Massa is leading?
With three races completed, Bahrain, Australia and Malaysia there have been three winners so far, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Sebastien Vettel but it’s Felipe Massa who leads the Championship. It may be by only 2 points but it seems strange that a points system that was designed to give winning races more emphasis is being led by a driver who hasn’t won yet.
The table itself is very close with 9pts covering the first 7 drivers:
| 1. Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 39 |
| 2. Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 37 |
| 3. Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull Racing | 37 |
| 4. Jenson Button | McLaren | 35 |
| 5. Nico Rosberg | Mercedes GP | 35 |
| 6. Lewis Hamilton | McLaren | 31 |
| 7. Robert Kubica | Renault | 30 |
Though I doubt this will hold all season it does mean that you can hold onto the people who are winning even if you don’t manage it yourself. I’m sure that Felipe Massa will be wanting to win and justify that position at the top but with all the different people who seem to be in with a shout of the championship – or at least winning – this year it could be that the wins are spread so thinly that it really will matter that you came in sixth or ninth instead of fifth or eighth.
The new points system does at least seem to have ensured that everyone is still ‘there’, within a fifth place of the lead. That’s 3pts in last seasons terms which would make the leader board seem very much closer.
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