Having previously looked at the all-time win list, it's time to examine the points-scoring record in the second of this three-part 'stat attack' series.
The all-time top ten points scorers, as of the Canadian Grand Prix, are as follows:
1. Michael Schumacher - 1566 points (1991-2012)
2. Fernando Alonso - 1460 points (2003-)
3. Sebastian Vettel - 1186 points (2007-)
4. Jenson Button - 1024 points (2000-)
5. Lewis Hamilton - 990 points (2007-)
6. Mark Webber - 917.5 points (2002-)
7. Kimi Raikkonen - 874 points (2001-)
8. Alain Prost - 798.5 points (1980-1993)
9. Felipe Massa - 753 points (2002-)
10. Rubens Barrichello - 658 points (1993-2011)
The extent to which this list is dominated by current F1 drivers should come as no surprise when you bear in mind that a win is now worth 25 points, rather than 8, 9 or 10 points as it was in the past. This change, made in time for the 2010 season, has allowed Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton to amass more points than Alain Prost managed in his entire career in just six years.
Additionally, Fernando Alonso is firmly on course to take the record for the highest career points total by the end of this season - the Ferrari driver is just 106 points - four wins and a seventh place finish - away from surpassing Michael Schumacher's tally of 1566, despite having taken just over a third as many victories as the German in his career.
In the short-term, the battle to set the new standard will thus likely be between Alonso and Vettel. Considering the former's advantage stands at just 274 points, easily attainable in two seasons driving for a top team, the odds strongly favour Vettel making his way to the top of the table not too long after, or perhaps even before, Alonso's retirement.
It's likely Hamilton will also be able to score the 576 points needed to surpass Schumacher, but his near-200 point deficit to Vettel will be difficult to address unless the Brit is able to replicate a Red Bull-style scenario for himself. As for the others in the top ten, 1566 points will probably remain out of reach even with the aid of the current system.
The overwhelming bias towards current drivers in the above list is why I have taken it upon myself to construct a 'normalised' points-scorers list, which reflects how the table would look if the 9-6-4-3-2-1 system, used from 1961 to 1990, had not been amended:
1. Michael Schumacher - 1244 points (1991-2012)
2. Alain Prost - 791.5 points (1980-1993)
3. Fernando Alonso - 681 points (2003-)
4. Ayrton Senna - 599 points (1984-1993)
5. Kimi Raikkonen - 511 points (2001-)
6. Rubens Barrichello - 493 points (1993-2010)
7. Nelson Piquet - 484.5 points (1979-1991)
8. Nigel Mansell - 467 points (1981-1994)
9. David Coulthard - 455 points (1994-2008)
10. Sebastian Vettel - 434 points (2007-)
This list much more closely resembles the all-time win list, albeit also featuring drivers more notable for being among the most experienced ever, such as Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard, at the expense of more celebrated drivers from previous eras. Just outside the top ten are Button (414) and Hamilton (408), with Massa (314) and Webber (292.5) in the lower reaches of the top twenty.
Under this system, Schumacher's record seems far more secure than it is in reality - in order for Alonso to make up the 563 point shortfall, he would have to match his normalised 2012 tally of 83 points a further seven times before the end of his career.
Vettel meanwhile would have to replicate his winning total of 88 points nine more times to overtake his compatriot, which seems a somewhat more realistic prospect given that the Red Bull driver is six years Alonso's junior.
When you consider that points are only awarded down to sixth place, rather than tenth, under the above system, it should come as no surprise that the points tallies of the remaining current drivers would suffer badly.
Under the actual system, Nico Rosberg, with 456.5 points to his name, is up to 15th place in the all-time points scorers list ahead of such illustrious names as Mika Hakkinen and Niki Lauda. Normalise that figure, and the Mercedes driver drops all the way down to 104 points and just 63rd place in the list behind the likes of Jarno Trulli and Nick Heidfeld.
Likewise, Romain Grosjean and Sergio Perez would be outside of the top 100 with just 24 and 18 points respectively, while Adrian Sutil (12), Pastor Maldonado (11), Nico Hulkenberg (9) and Paul Di Resta (8) would be well among the sport's also-rans. Jean-Eric Vergne would have only just scored his maiden point at Canada with sixth place, whilst Daniel Ricciardo would be yet to score having never finished higher than seventh.
So, while 'normalisation' makes the top of the scorers list seem more palatable, it undoubtedly does rather a disservice to those drivers yet to taste major success. After all, the change from awarding points from sixth to tenth place reflects the increasing number of finishers in modern-day F1.
During the 1992 season, just 49% of the starters on average made it to the finish line; ten years later (the final year of awarding points down to just sixth place), improvements in mechanical reliability had increased that figure to 59%. Last year, in the era of near-perfect reliability, the finishing percentage rate was a rather hefty 81%.
That means that it is now extremely difficult for midfield drivers to finish in the top six compared to ten or twenty years ago. This season, the top six drivers have been made up almost entirely of the Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Lotus drivers, with the other teams having been shut out of the top six in all but a small handful of cases.
Near-perfect reliability has also made it much harder for new teams to score points, even with only having to finish in tenth position as opposed to sixth in order to do so. A team like Caterham would probably have had little trouble scoring numerous points twenty years ago, much as Jordan did in their maiden season in 1991, but have yet failed to do so in almost three and a half years of trying.
On that basis, you could make the case for extending the points system down to twelfth or even fifteenth place based on the current average number of finishers - not since the 2010 Australian Grand Prix have there been fewer than fifteen classified finishers in a race.
That of course would do nothing to address the overwhelming bias towards current drivers at the sharp end of the all-time list, but as the paltry 'normalised' scores of the likes of Perez and Di Resta prove, it would be impossible to ever produce a list that would truly reflect the merits of each driver on it. In that respect, alas, we can but continue to speculate...
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