Well, it's not like the teams wouldn't bother showing up on the grid. The cars would all still be racing, and whatever they learned would be applied towards the next season's car obviously. Hamilton and Massa are natural born racers. They won't quit racing and trying their best just because the team has begun development of next year's car. At some point though, you have to know when to start working on the next car. Look at all the teams that were doing poorly last year. As soon as it was apparent that they didn't stand a chance in hell of winning the championship, they began development on this year's cars and for the most part, those teams have definitely profited from doing such. Yes, in some regards its a cop-out, but it makes some sense too, imo.

 

So everytime a team comes out hot like Brawn we can expect half of the grid to give up and start looking forward to next year?

 

I would hope not. This is pretty unprecedented that the usual top dogs are now scrounging for any points they can get at this point. I definitely think it's in their best interest to start focusing on next years car ASAP.