Winter Off-Season 4: New and Shiny Things - Pt 1

Greetings Internet, 

Ah, it is I once more - and I can almost hear the collective groan and grimace echoing through the digital halls of the internet at the very thought of more words cast from this keyboard into the ethereal realm of cyberspace. It has been a slight while since I last plagued your screens with the incomprehensible babbling of a reclusive lunatic, but that sabbatical of silence has come to an end. Today... or potentially tomorrow, depending on how things play out I bringeth news, not particularly original or up-to-date news, but news nonetheless. This news relates to new and shiny things rolling out of the F1 factories across the south of England (those companies outside of this little green rock haven't released their chariots as of yet). It would be nice a race team from up here, in the frozen wilderness of the north take on the southerners and, if they're feeling up to it, the rest of the world after that. One step at a time. Yes that illegible effort at cohesive literature means that there have been some 2015 cars revealed before the first pre-season test takes place at the weekend in Spain. Personally I don't see why the pre-season test sessions can't be held at Croft, apart from the various safety problems and the fact that the run-off area for one of the faster corners is a cornfield there shouldn't be any problems. After all, it would be rather amusing to see the first winter test to be conducted in the snow - yes it would provide no meaningful data for the year ahead, but it would be rather fun.

Force India

It was the team formally known as Jordan who broke cover first in an announcement event in Mexico City. So a British team with Indian backing went to Mexico - for some reason Richard Hammond and the Top Gear team were not nominated as presenters for the release. Force India don't actually have a 2015 car to show to the world yet and won't be attending the first test in Jerez as a result. So what was the point of this fancy show thousands of miles away, well it was badged as a livery reveal with a painted version of the old car with a newer shape nose stuck on the end. 

It appears that Force India have decided that they wanted to make a car that would look the same whether or not you have a black and white or colour television. Also it does make you wonder why the team went all the way to Mexico to display a livery which is the least Mexican one they've ever delivered. Despite the lack of colour it still looks good, sharp and consistent - while the 2014 car was brighter and more distinctive it was a little patchy in design. I do like the nose, whether or not it is one of the development parts from the 2015 car that remains under construction. 

Williams 

The second reveal, and first new car in the form of a digital rendering, and the most striking thing about the new Williams was the nose - which is odd. I looks like a pair of overly flared nostrils from the front. From other angles some commenters online have likened it to an embarrassingly cold shower... The nose seems wider and bulkier than Force India's conceptual nose. 

Around the rest of the car Williams appear to have delivered another low drag car which was rather fast in a straight line. The packaging of the bodywork around the gearbox and rear suspension is very tight and none existent underneath the fin on the end of the engine cover. I assume this can be done due to the design of the Mercedes engine in the back of the car which doesn't have the cooling issues of the Ferrari engine for example. If Mercedes fail to build another unstoppable machine, Williams could be on for a win or two this season.

Lotus 

After what was a very dismal season in 2014 for Lotus, and experimenting with a confusing and very unique twin pronged nose design the team need something considerably faster. One of the key changes for the Endstone team is the loss of the flawed Renault engine which held them back massively. Instead Lotus have the all conquering Mercedes power plant which by default moves them further up the grid. Sauber and Toro Rosso will need to up their game to compensate.

It's back in CGI territory for the Lotus reveal, and the front of the car looks much sharper and more purposeful than their immediate predecessor. But for some reason it doesn't look like the front of a F1 car, despite the clean lines it looks a little thin and malnourished. I imagine however that over the course of the development season, the front wing will become more intricate with various aerodynamic bits and pieces. Plus of course this is only a digital rendering of the car, not the car itself - in the flesh it may be bulkier. On livery terms they, like Williams have changed very little from the previous season. Could do with less red, but Maldonado's money means the PDVSA decals are here to stay for a while longer. 

McLaren

2015 signifies the start of a new era for McLaren as the long standing partnership with Mercedes power picking up Honda power instead - with this change of allegiance the world was expecting a change in livery to go along with it. The omnipresent silver and black combination has been a legacy of that relationship with the German engine manufacturer. McLaren also have to build a car worthy of their new and very experienced driver combination of Alonso and Button.

The product is strangely light on sponsorship, how a team featuring such a magnificent driver pairing has not attracted a raft of investors is a complete mystery. This livery is almost nostalgic to the years when Hakkinen and DC were at the wheel, the red stripe reminiscent of McLarens in the late 90s and early to mid 2000s. The front of the car looks aggressive and again sharper than the 2014 model, it does bear a resemblance to last years Marussia which was pointy and aggressive. At the rear of the car the bodywork is very narrow as per the overhead shot - with sidepods that seem to taper away more so than the other teams thus far. Here's hoping that this iteration of the McLaren can compete nearer the front.

Mercedes

While many of the teams have revealed their new cars with special announcements and online videos, or a trip to Mexico - Mercedes' didn't quite do any of that. The team took some photos during a shakedown session at Silverstone and that was it. So we don't quite have a good look at the car from multiple angles like the others.

From what we have seen, Mercedes have done something very similar to Lotus in terms of the nose design - which probably bodes a lot better for Lotus than it does for the reigning champions. There is one odd distinction between the teams, other than the paint scheme - and that is the strange camera pods sticking out like misplaced handles on the top of the nosecone. They featured on the previous version of the car and didn't really do the team too much harm then...


Two more cars have been revealed from Ferrari and Sauber, Red Bull haven't completed their car - recent reports claimed that the team had a monocoque in the facotory and that's all of their 2015 car. Toro Rosso have also completed a shakedown event and posted a blurred long range image of their car of which no details could be picked out. Despite the livery reveal in Mexico we haven't seen the real Force India car yet so plenty of things are to be revealed. We are also still waiting on official confirmation as to the state of play with Caterham and Manor formerly Marussia who haven't thrown in the towel out yet. Both teams have been looking for investment to be able to enter the 2015 season, and if they can gain entry they will start with the 2014 interaction of the design. 

Part two will be delivered ideally tomorrow, but my scheduling never really adheres to form...

Winter Off-Season 3: Formula E - The Good, The Bad and The Utterly Ridiculous

Greetings Internet

Merely days into the new year, a whole eight of them now (at least it was the 8th when I first started typing this outburst) the first race weekend draws nearer. This never used to be the case back in the day... which does make me feel old... in recent years the dark and bleak off-season could only be filled with what is now called LOORRS (Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series). LOORRS is an American off-road circuit racing series - sort of like Rallycross, but without the tarmac sections... and using trucks. The broadcasts were from the season gone, so they were several months behind any form of live coverage - but it is marvellously insane. Sometimes the winter months were dashed with the effective dregs of the elapsed year - very delayed coverage of ARCA, a low division of NASCAR and Trophee Andros ice racing. The Andros Trophy was at least replayed in the same week as the actual event - as it was inherently a winter sport - but the actual spectacle falls far short of any expectations. The ice racing does feature the likes of Alain Prost and Olivier Panis - with a recent cameo from Romain Grosjean (yes, it is a French alpine based series) but the tracks are too narrow and the cars do the entire lap sideways so overtaking is virtually impossible without brute force. So we are left with LOORRS - which sits amongst a sea of mediocrity and disappointment and immediately defies all of it. A variety of different trucks and dirt buggies race each other on purpose built dirt tracks with huge jumps and banked turns. It has been the chosen winter entertainment for many years now - hell, I even watched round three on Christmas Day... because that's the world I live in. So if any of you folk have MotorsTV, which I think is on Freeview now, go have a look, it shouldn't be that entertaining, but it is. 

However, the winter months got a little more interesting this time around because something new, and live, entered the arena. Even though it did start in September and extends into late Spring - Formula E has been dumped into the off-season period and it is magnificent, at least in some respects it is anyway.

Formula E was thought up some time ago, and then it seemed very fancy if not a little over-ambitious. The idea of running a high level international championship with all-electric cars was met with both anticipation and scepticism.  Even now the series exists and has been running for a few events in Asia and South America - the plans for the future look equally as far-fetched. This debut season can be considered in many respects to be a very long test session, both for the new technologies and for the response and interest from the motorsport community - in terms of fans, drivers, teams and prospective manufacturers. On the face of it Formula E represents an evolution of racing, one that is more in line with international targets for electrification of transportation. Underneath all of this is something clever - almost using the potential fame and recognition that comes with a new emerging high energy sport to bait manufacturers and technology companies into joining in. Once they get on board - the pressure of competition forces them to develop new storage technologies and energy recovery systems to stay at the front. Ultimately like many other devices designed for the track, these inventions and innovations filter down through mass production into the consumer market. Allowing people like you and I, OK just you - my bank balance is a little on the minimal side for fancy technical gubbins - to see the benefits in road going electric cars - increased range, faster charge times and that sort of thing. But all of that is a few years away yet, when control over Formula E car design is passed onto independent teams and major manufacturers - for now a it is a stock single make category running effectively the initial prototype version of this new age. 

The preliminary development car has seen three races so far, and overall reliability has been no better or worse than can be expected - in terms of technical failure they seem no more fragile than this seasons F1 cars were in the opening rounds. Naturally there are to be some criticisms of the base model, it would be nothing short of a miracle if it was perfect straight out of the box. Obviously the sound was going to be an opening sticking point - a veritable storm of complaints welled up across the internet and the pit lane when the world first heard the new F1 V6 engines. Show them a car that makes virtually no noise and they all lose their minds - admittedly it does take some getting used to. The first all-electric race I saw (on TV obviously, like I'd go outside) was part of the Trophee Andros championship entitled "Trophee Electrique" involving small battery powered buggies for lack of a better description. As it was an ice racing series all you could hear was the occasional scraping sound of the metal tyre spikes on parts of the track where the ice had worn through to the tarmac underneath. It was simultaneously surreal and intriguing - a couple of years later the same set of cars were among the categories taking part in the Grand Prix de Pau event. Like in the earliest days of motorsport - it was the French taking the initiative and promoting the idea. On an enclosed street track like Pau the electric cars can be heard - a subtle whine from the motors amidst the gentle and intermittent noise of tyres being pushed a little too hard. I can certainly appreciate the big angry sound of powerful combustion engine giving it full beans - especially if it happens to be a dull thunderous roar you get in something like a Corvette or Viper GT car, and the SLS safety car - but there is a level of detail you don't get underneath all that noise. While the world argued about the loss of the V8's in F1 - I came to enjoy the clarity of other things you were then able to hear - pit radio, locked wheels and the crowd getting involved. 

However, in Formula E the organisers have clearly decided that the lack of noise is a problem especially from a trackside perspective. Maybe they have a point, who knows - I haven't been to a race of any kind in person so can't really judge noise levels in the flesh. But on the TV broadcasts all those ambient sounds we've been hearing in F1 this season aren't as pronounced as you'd expect. If I think back, even the little electric buggies racing around Pau had more tyre noise than the Formula E cars do. Maybe that is a symptom of the cars having more grip and therefore sliding around a lot less, or maybe it's related to how the broadcaster sets up trackside microphones. Potentially the cars need to be faster - which was another of the running complaints about the category. Either way series organisers have decided that questionable 'electro' music is the perfect answer... hence the introduction of what they call the "Formula EJ" a title which is cringeworthy at best. I half expect and hope that at the end of the season the "EJ" will remove his mascot sized costume helmet and reveal himself to be Eddie Jordan. Thus making the Formula EJ out to be E.J. himself... Personally I see the EJ as a nonsensical gimmick to try and make electric cars seem 'cool' and down with the kids, while covering for a perceived lack of noise problem which isn't really a problem. 

The format of the series has come under a lot of fire as well - mostly because it does expose a few flaws in the technology and presents a solution which almost defeats the objective of the whole concept. Each race weekend doesn't really encompass an entire weekend - qualifying and the race take place on the Saturday and nothing happens on the Sunday. This is designed to encapsulate everything into a nice fan-friendly package for those at the track - more value for money. This works with the city-centre street track locations, which are often shorter and more compact than the sort of street circuit used in Indycar or Australian racing. A knock on effect of the shorter track lengths qualifying is broken down into to clusters of cars running in isolation - to prevent congestion and blocking issues. So far so good, making plenty of sense at this point. The race itself is about an hour long - on par with a GP2 race length - slower Formula E cars mean that the total race distance is shorter. But, there is a slight problem - at the moment the energy capacity of each car is not enough to allow continuous running for an hour. I initially thought there would be two options to this problem - either charge the car during a pitstop or put new batteries in. Now because charging a Formula E car is going to take a few hours I imagine, that won't really work in a pitstop time frame - even Marussia would be disappointed with a 6 hour stop. Does that mean a Formula E stop involves replacing the batteries with some fresh ones and just heading back out again. No. Instead a driver will swap cars - which looks as cumbersome and daft as it sounds. During a pitstop the driver parks his/her current car in the pit garage, jumps out and gets in a second one - therefore a two car team has to bring four complete cars to each race. For a championship flaunting it's 'green' credentials, the emissions cost of the freight will ultimately offset any savings made by ditching internal combustion engines. In the interests of safety with drivers running from car to car, there is a minimum pit time which must be adhered to, minimum times can restrict strategies to an extent but are not uncommon in other categories where drivers share a car. 

The final potential weakness in this new and developing platform lies within the sporting regulations - which in themselves are for the most part simple and homogeneous in comparison to racing categories the world over. Various parameters are monitored to prevent anyone gaining an unfair advantage in a single-make series, in the same way that they are in F1. Yet in amongst all the other convention rules and approaches is something called 'Fanboost' it has become a term both loathed and despised in equal measures across the internet - and occasionally outside of it. This FanBoost idea involves getting the fan community to vote for their favourite driver each weekend - after a cut-off time the top three vote winners will be allocated the FanBoost Bonus. It works in the same way that KERs used to - the winning drivers can press a button and for five seconds they get some extra power. In essence it allows common folk like you or I to influence the race... I tend to agree with the masses of people who suggest that this is not such a good idea. Formula E should be about competition - and shiny futuristic gagetry - yes social media is part of that future and interacting with the audience is important - but all it has done is turn a sport into a popularity contest. Hopefully as the season wears on things like this will be modified and changed - after all it is work in progress. For example the formation lap was axed after round one because it was far too slow and consumed unnecessary energy, even so - a formation lap of some kind would be nice even if only as matter of tradition and ceremony.

With so much apparently wrong with the new technology and this new championship it should be awful and a waste of a Saturday afternoon viewing. Right? But no, it still works and works well - each of the three races so far have been intriguing in their own right, even the woeful Beijing street circuit for the opening round provided overtaking and great racing. Further more the strength of the grid is fantastic - so many recognisable names with proven track records have been very capable early adopters of the sport. We've had Bruno Senna, Nicolas Prost and Nelson Piquet Jnr in the same cluster of cars racing with one another. Formula E has also provided a new home for a lot of drivers with F1 in their past - including a number thrown from the Red Bull program. Jean-Eric Vergne arrived on the grid last race and immediately put the car on pole (yet somehow still wasn't given a space in F1...). The series also boasts an entry list starring Oriol Servia from champcar fame and Marco Andretti from ALMS and Indycar along with Karun Chandok, Jarno Trulli, Squadron Leader Heidfeld (I know Renault Squadron was only a thing in 2011, but the name stuck) and a one off appearance for the legendary Takuma Sato. You could stick an entry list like that in a grid full of bin wagons and the outcome would be brilliant, which does make me wonder why the FIA Bin Wagon championship has never been suggested. But stick them in the Formula E car and it works wonders - as they can get the most out of the hardware and test it to destruction... occasionally literally. The Squadron Leader himself can testify to the strength of the Formula E chassis after his WEC team-mate Nico Prost nerfed the German off track at the very end of the first race. Prost damaged Heidfeld's suspension in the attack and the Squadron Leader was unable to avoid spinning over a huge piece of curbing which launched the car up into the catchfencing where it bounced and flipped in the air before landing on its side. It was safe to say Prost Jnr was not going to be winning the FanBoost vote after that. Heidfeld was then pushed into the wall in the second race by a different Frenchman before picking up both a pit time and a excessive power usage penalty in round three...

For a debut season so far Formula E is a massive success, the core concept and vehicle design is spot on - but there is plenty of room for improvement outside of that. The organisers have already stated that this season almost acts as a proof of concept model and a launchpad for future iterations - predicting a world where teams and manufacturers get far more involved to build their own cars and technologies rather than being supplied with the same chassis per team. Hopefully that would pave a route away from having car changes mid-race and short restrictive circuits. Other longer term plans suggest having charging lanes built into the circuit so drivers can charge the car by driving on certain parts of the track - I think the technology and the price points will have to do a lot of catching up to do before that becomes a reality. But that's the point - encouraging technological development through sport, and a sport specifically designed to address the problems of energy security and reducing emissions we are all faced with. This is a wonderful series and one that will need investment from rich car manufacturers and tech firms to grow and blossom into something which in a couple of decades time could be more important and more relevant than F1. One can only hope that it doesn't fall the same way that A1GP did - because A1GP was a brilliant idea which delivered brilliant results but dwindling investment and organisation saw it crumble. Hopefully being a FIA run series the prognosis is a lot more stable, once it gains momentum and credibility I think it can cast aside the daft ideas of FanBoost and the Formula EJ and stand up on its own four wheels as something well worth looking out for. That is of course if you can tear yourself away from watching LOORRS instead.

Winter Off-Season 2: The new FIA Super-license points system

Greetings Internet, 

It appears that we have meandered into a new year, an event that probably should have been cancelled due to lack of interest - but alas here it is. So a week into 2015 it is probably time for another update from this dark corner of cyberspace. Yes, I know such a prospect must strike despair into the very souls of anyone who happens to be reading... which in itself is an uncharacteristically optimistic thought... but it has to be done. 

On the general news front, the driver line up for 2015 has pretty much been decided, save for the two teams that suffered financial difficulties towards the end of 2014. Both Caterham and Marussia (under the branding Manor GP) were listed on the official 2015 entry list, but their ongoing struggles make prospects for an actual appearance in Australia in March a little on the unlikely side. Especially now that Marussia announced they collapsed after the result of £31 million debt, which is a lot more than wanted to raise from the crowdfunding. The bow wave of monetary complications threatens to spread a little further when one of the key funding sources for a smaller outfit comes under increased pressure. Several drivers have found themselves in employment purgatory after finding someone else sitting smugly in their race seat. A fate that seemed all but destined for Jean-Eric Vergne, passed over for a main Red Bull drive twice was then also denied a stay of execution at Toro Rosso. Vergne will be replaced by Spaniard Carlos Sainz Jnr - son of WRC star of the same name (just not Jnr). Vergne however has moved over to Formula E, with Andretti Autosport - a team with strong Indycar connections, as well as picking up testing duties at Ferrari alongside another lost soul Esteban Gutierrez. A couple of weeks before the end of the year, the McLaren saga was finally resolved, and that didn't work out too well for Kevin Magnussen who is also now resting in the spare parts bin, or the McLaren pitwall. The inevitable but very prolonged decision saw Alonso confirmed at the team, and Jenson Button was thankfully retained to form a line-up consisting of two world champions. 

Japanese Super Formula

As Blog HQ is home to the internationally unrecognised bonus points championship, as well as many other inane ramblings, this post will be all about points. Instead of adding up to the gloriously underrated honour of bonus points champion, these points add up to decide whether or not someone is deemed good enough for a spot on the F1 grid. Two forces have driven this intervention - the first being Max Verstappen. Lots of questions were raised when the teenager was admitted into the top tier of single-seater racing. Some of those were pointed at the fact that he is nauseatingly young - my fridge is about as old as he is... while others referenced his lack of racing experience. So this new system aims to prevent inexperienced children getting behind the wheel of what is supposed to be the most challenging series in the genre. The two pronged set of requirements determines that incoming drivers need to have scored at least 40 of these mystical super-license points as well as being over 18 at the point when they start their first race weekend. This is in addition to completing the requisite 300km testing distance in a recent F1 car. 

So in addition to defining a degree of experience required to be eligible for a F1 drive the system also, potentially inadvertently, deals with the contentious issue of rich pay-drivers. Those members of the F1 fraternity who arguably only made it onto the grid on account of a substantial bank balance rather than a demonstrable amount of talent. The argument over who deserves to be offered a seat and who shouldn't is one that occurs every season, usually while pointing an accusatory finger towards the back of the starting line-up. Historically is has been the smaller teams that have found themselves in need of a paying driver - simply to offset the exorbitant cost of competing. The most infamous recent example being Max Chilton - who it is reported supplied funds in the region of £7m per season to retain his seat at Marussia. Of course the point at which the line is drawn to separate a pay-driver from a driver with sponsorship support is constantly moving. For example Alonso - a double world champion - will have sponsor support from the likes of Santander and Telefonica, does this lump Fernando in the same category as Chilton; I suspect not. It's the midfield where the difference becomes all that more difficult to discern, take Sauber for one - they have hired Felipe Nasr because of his connections to Banco Do Brasil as a source of funding. But the Brazilian has proven to be reasonably quick in GP2. If the team didn't need the money there were more successful drivers in the same category who haven't been picked up yet. On that note you could suggest that Nasr's sponsorship bought him the seat, while Jolyon Palmer is largely ignored and Vandoorne is walled up in McLaren's overflowing driver pool. 

Under the new system, not only does a potential driver need to have spent time in a lower formula to build experience, they need to be performing very competitively too. This is where the super-license points come into play, the FIA have effectively ranked a number of development categories in terms of their relevance to F1 (more on that later). Any driver aspiring to compete at the highest level needs to finish strongly in these championships to super-points - only the last three years contribute to a driver's tally of super-points. A championship title naturally offers the most super-points and a higher ranked championship has a larger top score. This means that the likes of Marussia/Manor GP and Caterham can't simply pluck a driver out of GP2 or World Series by Renault purely on the contents of their piggy bank, because they won't have accumulated enough super-points. On the surface this seems like a perfectly logical idea, promoting the most capable drivers into the sport in the interests of a more thorough competition. Could it be that the FIA have finally developed a foolproof system based on actual reasoning?... well as you might have guessed. No. Because the points system they have developed is, well, a bit crap. They are as follows.

Championship	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th
Future FIA F2 Championship	60	50	40	30	20	10	8	6	4	3
GP2	50	40	30	20	10	8	6	4	3	2
FIA F3 European Championship	40	30	20	10	8	6	4	3	2	1
FIA World Endurance Championship (LMP1 Only)	40	30	20	10	8	6	4	3	2	1
Indycar	40	30	20	10	8	6	4	3	2	1
GP3	30	20	15	10	7	5	3	2	1	0
Formula Renault 3.5 (World Series by Renault)	30	20	15	10	7	5	3	2	1	0
Japanese Superformula	20	15	10	7	5	3	2	1	0	0
FIA Certified National F4	10	7	5	2	1	0	0	0	0	0
National Formula 3	10	7	5	2	1	0	0	0	0	0
Formula Renault 2.0 (Eurocup, ALPS, or NEC)	5	3	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

As you can see the list is rather limited, no mention of the FIA's new futuristic series "Formula E" or DTM - a series with F1 connections and from which Di Resta progressed. There is no consideration for further reaching series from other categories such as NASCAR, WTCC (even if it is considerably worse than many national touring car series) or Australian V8s. Admittedly the machinery involved wouldn't bear too much relevance to F1 but they are still important categories. One case in point is Juan Pablo Montoya left F1 for NASCAR and then back to Indycar - so a transfer in reverse might not be so alien a concept. It would be a bizarre rarity, but one very much worth seeing. Why can't we have interdisciplinary drivers being eligible for selection - Sebastian Loeb went from dominating WRC to competing strongly in circuit racing in the WTCC (neither series offers super-points) and even spent some time at Le Mans in a GT1 Ferrari (again no points for that) back when we had GT1 cars. 

No GT car qualifications are considered, and even the World Endurance Series entitlement is specifically limited to LMP1 - a category with a very limited number of entries to start off with. More to that point, LMP2 and LMPC feature more developing and emerging drivers than LMP1 to begin with... On top of that the equally strong American endurance equivalent is completely ignored - likely on the basis that is has no LMP1 category, LMP2 and Daytona Prototypes are the top class there. It very much narrows the channel and ultimately will increase demand for the championships which do earn super-points, this in turn bumps up entry fees and therefore pushes the pay-driver debate further down the hierarchy. GP2 teams will become inundated with richer drivers pushing their way ahead of faster but less well supported opposition. I tend to assume that Jean Todt and the rest of the FIA didn't think on the ramifications beyond the microcosm of F1, and how the super-points ranking would influence the global system of driver progression.

The second problem with this system is the ranking, one that appears on the surface to be a deliberate stab at Red Bull's development program. Due to their affiliation with Renault the majority of their drivers have progressed through Formula Renault 3.5. Vergne, Vettel, Ricciardo, Alguersuari, Sainz Jnr all used the category as a launch pad. Since a Red Bull protege in the form of Verstappen proved to be the catalyst for this whole super-points idea the Red Bull System bears the brunt of it. Formula Renault 3.5 is not on par with GP3 - it is far closer to GP2 but the points system doesn't reflect that.  I have seen arguments on the internet over the past day or so pointing out that this super-points ranking could be harmful to the business model of Renault's development program by making it less attractive to prospective racers. Both their 3.5 and 2.0 litre categories have been given an unusually low score, to the point where European level competition is favoured less than national level F3, and considering the state some of those categories are in it defies belief - British F3 last season had races with fewer than six cars involved... 

Additionally why is the Japanese Superformula ranked so poorly - it is known that the cars in that division are the closest on performance to F1 machinery. Coverage in this part of the world is rather negligable so I can't comment on the quality of the field or the competition - but the skill involved must score it better than that. Also in what universe is Indycar ranked lower than GP2... the American series is fiercely contested to the point where a GP2 graduate can't jump across the pond and dominate proceedings. Several drivers who have made the switch have done very well - Mike Conway being the first to do so - but is it worth more points than that. To top the whole thing off - the highest ranked category is a series which doesn't exist yet... how does that work. So you can compete in all kinds of championships but you can still be outscored by a figment of the FIA's imagination... Seriously. 

At the lower end of the spectrum the table ranks Formula 4 above Formula 3 at the national level... which completely defeats the object of numbering the tiers of national motorsport if 'upgrading' from F4 to F3 involves less super-points. But from what I think is going on, at least in the UK is that F4 is taking over the mess they made of Formula Ford as part of the TOCA package and the series that was Formula 4 becomes something else... In short the further down the ladder you go the less sense it makes because the amount of potential feeder series increases considerably. You could suggest that National F3 and F4 as well as European Formula Renault 2.0 sit on a similar - if not lower tier than the US 'Road to Indy' championships: Star Mazda and Indy Lights. There is also Formula Toyota in New Zealand to take into account. The list goes on and on as soon as you start to integrate more national racing systems... none of which are really considered in this new super-points system.

In conclusion, here is another example of the powers that be rushing through a new concept. Yes at the very core of the idea it makes sense - striving for a stronger quality field and restricting inexperience - but the approach is too narrow and could easily exclude very capable drivers. If Mark Webber decided that the WEC wasn't working out too well, if Porsche constantly find themselves behind Audi and Toyota - a comeback would fall foul of the rules. Three consecutive 4th or lower placing in the WEC end of season results would only net the Australian 30 super-points which isn't enough. I suppose you could say that the whole system is a huge over-reaction to a perceived problem that didn't really exist. Verstappen is an anomaly, just as Raikkonen was when he moved from national Formula Renault here in the UK straight into a Sauber in 2001. Developing an entire scheme to prevent occasional anomalies doesn't make sense - even if the outcome does carry a hint of logic and rationality. I expect, and hope for changes and improvements to the system in due course altering the weighting of different classes and the expansion of the narrow selection of eligible series. The powers that be may have stumbled onto an idea which has merit but managed as per usual to screw the whole thing up...