This was something I did back in 2013 and, with a quarter of the field being rookies now, I thought it would be good to revive for the 2015 season.
So what is the Rookie Championship? Well any driver who has competed in 5 races or less before the start of the 2015 season are eligible. That means we currently have 5 drivers eligible in Fellipe Nasr, Carlos Sainz Jr, Max Verstappen, Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi. Obviously if other drivers meeting the criteria come in at a later point they will be eligible too. In each qualifying session and race they will be ranked in their result order and allocated points. There will be a qualifying championship, a race championship and an overall championship with the title of Rookie Champion going to the overall winner.
Scoring wise we'll be using the good old 10-6-4-3-2-1 system. Importantly a driver has to be a classified finisher to score points in the race and set a time to score points in qualifying. So to give an example if in Australia the race finishes:
Sainz 10th;
Verstappen 12th,
Nasr 14th,
Merhi 18th
Stevens 19th
In the Rookie championship would be:
1st - Sainz - 10pts
2nd - Verstappen - 6pts
3rd - Nasr - 4pts
4th - Merhi - 3pts
5th - Stevens - 2pts
Now I realise there is a slight flaw in this on deciding who the best rookie is by the fact that due to different car performances they won't be even. I agree that the Manor boys don't really stand much of a chance but I guess thats just the way F1 is. I did discuss this last time with our resident maths wizz sushifiesta and a 'handicap' system was talked about but I couldn't decide on it in the end and just went for good old fashioned straight fight. For what its worth I think Nasr, Sainz and Verstappen are on pretty equal footing this year so it will be interesting.
So I'll be doing this all season and welcome comment, encouragement, criticism etc. If I had to bet on this one I think I'd probably put my money on Sainz as the winner. Anyone else want to try a prediction?
So what is the Rookie Championship? Well any driver who has competed in 5 races or less before the start of the 2015 season are eligible. That means we currently have 5 drivers eligible in Fellipe Nasr, Carlos Sainz Jr, Max Verstappen, Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi. Obviously if other drivers meeting the criteria come in at a later point they will be eligible too. In each qualifying session and race they will be ranked in their result order and allocated points. There will be a qualifying championship, a race championship and an overall championship with the title of Rookie Champion going to the overall winner.
Scoring wise we'll be using the good old 10-6-4-3-2-1 system. Importantly a driver has to be a classified finisher to score points in the race and set a time to score points in qualifying. So to give an example if in Australia the race finishes:
Sainz 10th;
Verstappen 12th,
Nasr 14th,
Merhi 18th
Stevens 19th
In the Rookie championship would be:
1st - Sainz - 10pts
2nd - Verstappen - 6pts
3rd - Nasr - 4pts
4th - Merhi - 3pts
5th - Stevens - 2pts
Now I realise there is a slight flaw in this on deciding who the best rookie is by the fact that due to different car performances they won't be even. I agree that the Manor boys don't really stand much of a chance but I guess thats just the way F1 is. I did discuss this last time with our resident maths wizz sushifiesta and a 'handicap' system was talked about but I couldn't decide on it in the end and just went for good old fashioned straight fight. For what its worth I think Nasr, Sainz and Verstappen are on pretty equal footing this year so it will be interesting.
So I'll be doing this all season and welcome comment, encouragement, criticism etc. If I had to bet on this one I think I'd probably put my money on Sainz as the winner. Anyone else want to try a prediction?