On tap this week:
- Three-car teams will hurt F1
- Wins don’t count, points do
- Double points finale tally
- Newman gets in the wrong way
- Quote of the Week: Why Massa got lost
- Record breaking Márquez brothers
With two teams already failing and another three on the brink of ruin, Formula One looks to be moving quickly to ensure three-car teams make their debut in 2015 to fill out the starting grid.
Seeing this idea come to fruition can't be anything but bad for the sport.
With Caterham and Marussia already gone from the grid, and Lotus, Force India, and Sauber looking more and more like they are one crash away from bankruptcy, turning to the big teams to fill the grid makes little sense.
Yes, there are the arguments about future world champions like Mario Andretti and superstars like Canadian Gilles Villeneuve getting their first F1 starts as guest drivers in third cars, but that's not what will happen this time.
Instead, the third cars will be used by the big teams to further their own interests and continue to drive smaller outfits out of business. Should a third Ferrari, Red Bull and possibly McLaren line up on the grid next season - as many think may happen - the top teams would essentially lock the small teams out on most days and make their survival impossible.
Making matters worse is the fact that the teams with an extra car will have more data to use to find speed, essentially adding a test driver to the weekend to pound out extra laps and help develop the car.
Should that be the case, fans would see Mercedes and Williams quickly petitioning the sport to add a third car too, because they would be at a disadvantage on that tilted playing field. Any minnow left by that time would certainly disappear, and F1 would become a paddock of five or six three-car teams.
It's also a dangerous game because the three-car concept also raises the cost bar for those coming into the sport. This would make it even more difficult to find new entrants should one of the existing outfits decides it's had enough of the $500-million annual budgets and packs it in.
Random thoughts
Much has been made of the fact that Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg could be the 2014 world championship despite having fewer wins than teammate Lewis Hamilton.
Should Rosberg take the title in Abu Dhabi with a win combined with a Hamilton meltdown, he would have six victories to his teammate's 10. It wouldn't be the first time that a champion had fewer victories than a rival, something that happened as recently as 2008 when, you guessed it, Hamilton took the title by a single point over Felipe Massa. In that year, the then Ferrari driver scored six wins to Hamilton's five.
Like it or not, F1 is a sport where consistency counts and all points scored go toward the championship tally. It is certainly not fair to criticize Rosberg for scoring points when Hamilton couldn't, and using his solid results throughout the season to stay in contention into the final race of 2014.
If Rosberg wins the title in Abu Dhabi in two weeks, he will be in good company when it comes to drivers who took a world championship without winning the most races.
The list includes four-time world champion Alain Prost who went home with two titles in 1986 and 1989 without scoring the most victories. A pair of three-time champions, Niki Lauda and Nelson Piquet, only topped the win charts in one of their title seasons.
The club also includes John Surtees (1964), Denny Hulme (1967), Jody Scheckter (1979) and Nico's dad, Keke Rosberg (1982).
By the numbers
The double points F1 finale will decide the season champion, with Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg going for the prize in two weeks in Abu Dhabi.
Many worried that a driver with a huge advantage that would have delivered the title otherwise would be derailed by the 50 points up for grabs in the Persian Gulf emirate. However, that won't happen with Hamilton leading by 17 points after Rosberg's win in Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix. Even under the old points system, the title fight would have gone to Abu Dhabi.
To take his second title, Hamilton only needs to cross the line second, even if Rosberg wins. Should Rosberg be second to another driver, all Hamilton has to do is finish fifth to be world champion. Should Hamilton fail to finish, Rosberg would only need to end the race in fifth place to take his first world championship.
Under the regular points system, things would be a little different. To be champion under that haul, Rosberg would need to win or finish second and have Hamilton not be any better than seventh or 11th respectively. Anything worse than second for Rosberg would mean a Hamilton title no matter where the 2008 champion ended the day. In either scenario, any tie would go in Hamilton's favour because he has more wins. And Hamilton wins the title if he finishes ahead of Rosberg.
Despite it making things easier for him in the finale, one of the drivers speaking against the double points is Rosberg.
"I find it artificial and I don't like it in general," he said after the Brazilian Grand Prix.
"Of course, now, with the way it is, it's great for me now, at the moment, but you know that's just because of the situation."
Where the double points may really matter is the constructors' battle where Ferrari is 44 points behind, but can still catch Williams for second and McLaren remains in the hunt for third overall even though it is 51 points adrift of the Scuderia. In a normal points paying race, the most a team can score is 43, but in Abu Dhabi a 1-2 result will add 86 markers to their team's total.
A great day for one team combined with a disastrous one for another could change things around. And with the share of television money decided by the final standings, a bad weekend in Abu Dhabi could prove costly in more ways than one.
Technically speaking
With one corner to go in the last NASCAR "eliminator" Chase for the Cup race at the Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday Ryan Newman couldn't move up the one place he needed to advance into the final round using talent, so he went dirty instead.
With Kyle Larson holding down the coveted spot ahead, Newman simply made a bee-line for the side of his rival's car in the last corner and used him as a brake, with the fellow Chevrolet driver ending up in the wall. Newman cruised the final few metres to the finish line and into the Chase finale next weekend in Miami where he will be one of the four drivers who can win the 2014 NASCAR title.
"I wasn't proud of it, but I will do what I got to, to make it to this next round," Newman said after the race.
"I didn't want to do what I did at the end, but I did what I had to do and kept it as clean as I possibly could."
It's a good thing Newman drives in NASCAR because that tactic would have delivered a penalty in just about any other racing series.
Unfortunately, in NASCAR, putting another driver into the wall is fair game. That said, it would be regrettable for the sport of racing should Newman emerge triumphant in Miami next weekend after his performance in Arizona.
Besides, sooner or later, something's got to give as driver continue to take matters into their own hands, said Jeff Gordon, who was knocked out of the Chase final four when Larson hit the wall.
"That's the system that we have," he said.
"Wait until next week when the championship is on the line. You're going to see a lot more than that. That's what NASCAR wants this to become to create intensity and interest and that's what's going to happen. You have to expect it. But just like what happened on pit road last week, there are lines that need to be drawn or somebody's going to cross the line and they'll have to back everybody up."
Quote of the week
"I stopped in the McLaren because they change our garage this race and we are a lot more in the middle and McLaren with the similar colour, not white, but you know I thought it was our garage. They were ready."
– Williams driver Felipe Massa explaining why he pulled his car into the McLaren pit on his final tire stop in the Brazilian Grand Prix before accelerating again to get to his team's box.
McLaren's crew was waiting for its driver Jenson Button, who arrived right after Massa.
The last word
While double MotoGP champion Marc Márquez grabbed many of the headlines by setting several records in motorcycle racing this year, there's one he couldn't have broken without his younger sibling Alex.
When the younger Márquez took the third tier Moto3 title on Sunday in Valencia, Spain, he and Marc became the first brothers to win world titles in the 66-year history of the motorcycle championship series.
In June, the pair also became the first brothers to win world championship races on the same day when Alex won the Moto3 tilt at Spain's Circuit de Catalunya, while Marc took the victory in the MotoGP race.
The elder Márquez broke several records as a rookie in 2013 and added many more this year, including youngest double champion, most race wins in a season (13), and most poles in a season (13).
Last season, Marc Márquez became only the fourth motorcycle racer to win titles in the three world championship categories along with Mike Hailwood, Phil Read and Valentino Rossi.
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Jeff Pappone