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Formula 1 has rightly dropped one of its most ridiculous rules - the bonus point for the fastest lap.
The FIA World Motor Sport Council announced on Thursday that F1 is going to scrap the fastest lap bonus point for 2025 after six seasons of use, just one race after it stole headlines at the Singapore Grand Prix.
The point was reintroduced in 2019 in an attempt to create a talking point and give drivers an incentive to push later in the race. It's failed to do the latter and while it's done the former on plenty of occasions, it's usually been a talking point for all the wrong reasons.
Take Daniel Ricciardo's Singapore farewell being overshadowed by the controversy over RB sacrificing his - admittedly already dire - final race to help Red Bull block title rival McLaren from scoring an extra point.
It's far from the only occasion where the fastest lap has rewarded underachievement either.
Last month while advocating for the rule to be dropped, Edd Straw totalled up the distribution of the point, finding that the fastest lap point was only taken by the winner 36 times in the 122 races since it was reintroduced. It's also been taken by a driver finishing in every position all the way down to 18th.
That means there have been 13 occasions where someone outside the top 10 has, intentionally or not, blocked a top 10 finisher from receiving the point.
Claiming the point isn't exactly a marker of great sporting achievement either, given the offset between a driver on fresh softs at the end of a grand prix and a driver who has spent 20--30 laps managing a harder compound.
I'll leave the final word to Edd…
EDD STRAW ON THE NONSENSE OF THE FASTEST LAP RULE
Points should recognise achievement in F1. As the fastest lap bonus can so often be breezed to by a driver who makes a late pitstop (for instance 18th-placed Austrian GP finisher Fernando Alonso, pictured above), or earned by chance by an offset strategy that advantages you later in the race, it makes it a random triviality ill-befitting a genuine sporting competition.
That the fastest lap does sometimes go to the quickest driver doesn't change that.
This rule is a triviality, one that might as well be replaced by a random-point-allocator rule that gives the bonus point to whoever is drawn from a tombola.
The only answer? Get rid of it. At best, it adds nothing, at worst it creates farcical situations. Good riddance.
