Interestingly, if Bernie Ecclestone’s plan of awarding gold medals to race winners had been in place this season, Jenson Button would have wrapped the Championship up after the Singapore GP the other week.

Bernie wanted to reward first places with gold medals, seconds with silvers, and so on – like at the Olympics – to work out where everyone stood.

Should that have occurred, Button would be champ already. But going into the last two races of the season, the top six would be slightly different.

Here are the amounts of first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth places they’ve all got so far, in current Championship order:

Jenson Button – 6, 1, 1, 0, 2, 1
Rubens Barrichello – 2, 3, 1, 1, 1, 2
Sebastian Vettel – 3, 2, 2, 2, 0, 0
Mark Webber – 1, 3, 2, 0, 1, 1
Kimi Raikkonen – 1, 1, 3, 1, 0, 1
Lewis Hamilton – 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1

Which would have changed the order, on medals, to Button, Vettel, Barrichello, Hamilton, Webber and Raikkonen.

Second and third places etc would still be up for grabs, but Jenson would be World Drivers’ Champion, and he’d have little to do at Brazil and Abu Dhabi other than drive around with a smug, satisfied grin on his face.

But amusingly, the thing Bernie really doesn’t like is having a Championship sewn up too early in the season, which is exactly what would have happened if he’d got his way.

I think they call that shooting oneself in the foot.

The FIA put some info out about the medal system when they said it was going to come in for 2009, that was slightly different from Bernie’s proposal. They wanted the WDC to be decided from amount of wins, but then the rest of the places would still be on points, which means nothing would currently be different.

Other than Button being king already.

I’m sure Bernard is as glad as we all are that the teams refused to race to his or the FIA’s proposed rules. I don’t think the idea of a medals system will be brought up again, like it was supposed to be for 2010.

Good riddance, I say.

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