The International Automobile Federation’s World Motorsport Council (WMSC) met before the Formula 1 American Grand Prix, and a number of rule changes were tabled and accepted.

Two of these things affect Formula 1 in the short term:

  • the bonus point for the fastest lap will disappear from 2025
  • the teams have to provide twice as much time to the young drivers during the first free practice sessions than before.

The first change may not need to be explained much: the bonus point awarded since 2019 did not add much to the struggle of the leading teams and competitors, but instead only rewarded the fastest, and thus only increased the difference between the start and end of the field. All of this was topped off by the end game of the Singapore Grand Prix, where Daniel Ricciardo at the wheel of RB (VCARB) took the bonus point away from Lando Norris, who is currently fighting the world championship battle with the Red Bull driver Max Verstappen.

Up until now, the provision of free practice opportunities has been carried out in such a way that each team had to put young drivers with little F1 experience at least once in each of their cars. This is now changing so that they have to provide 2 such training opportunities per car, so that next year “training drivers” can appear four times at the F1 teams.