Zoom With two points in it, why gamble to try and win? The crazy Formula One points structure...

After trailing Felipe Massa home at the European Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton told Eurosport earlier in the week that Formula One can be dull.

For anyone that watched the Valencia procession, this is hardly breaking news but did add to David Coulthard's recent comments to ITV that the current structure of Formula One could perhaps use a shake up.

Among the F1 teams, there is now an Overtaking Working Group (OWG) - really - and the first fruits of its efforts will be in 2009, when new bodywork regulations, slick tyres and 'boost buttons' powered by KERS systems arrive on the grid.

With the points system as it is and only a couple of seconds covering all 20 cars, it is of little surprise that there is currently little passing in F1. However, this is not necessarily so bad according to some.

McLaren Chief Executive Martin Whitmarsh supports the OWG initiative but thinks overtaking in Formula One should remain the rarity rather than the norm.

"I guess there is a point that if it was very easy to overtake during the race you would quickly put the cars in order, with the quickest at the front, and then they would just spread out over the track."

Honda's Ross Brawn, meanwhile, questions suggestions that banning pitstops - thereby taking away the element of fuel strategy - would necessarily make F1 more exciting.

"I think a race could easily be very boring without the pitstops," he said at Spa Francorchamps, pointing out that some of the enduring talking points of the recent Valencia race involved pitstop mishaps.

"I think it's quite an entertaining part of the sport and we shouldn't be looking back with rose-tinted spectacles, thinking it was all so wonderful a few years ago, because it wasn't."

E.A, Source: GMM
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