F1 Teams

[FB]

Sauber built and prepared the chassis, albeit with BMW money so I'me going with Sauber. I suppose the best description of the team would be BMW Sauber BMW.

 

[Grizzly]

...due to superiority of the car where in decades past, I think there was more equality among the cars.
That was true (the car equality) as recently as the titles of Damon, MS at Benetton, JV etc. It seems to me that that equality began to vanish around 2000, and has never made a return.

Sorry to quote you since I know your view is shared by many, but this is absolute nonsense. Rose tinted glasses I'm afraid. Things got close in the 70's because as you quite rightly say, you bought a DFV and a gearbox, glued some wheels to it and hired your favourite driver. What makes the (marginally) faster car win 9 times out of 10 is the fact we've slowly ironed out all of the other variables with reliability, tyres, crashes etc etc and the majority of that is as a result of the drive to reduce costs.

 

[Dash Racing]

Nice statistics, Grizzly

I think those statistics might be more revealing if we had an average lap time for a circuit that hasn't changed much over the years, and has been raced in every decade - but I think that only leaves Monaco, which isn't really representative of a typical lap time anywhere else. With the average lap time for the decade, we might be able to see how much of a chunk of a lap that average margin really is.

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

Adding to the fine Grizzly work above ... here is the data updated through Hungary 2015 ...

Decade average to date = 8.2 sec

2015 7.4 sec
2014 9.8 sec
2013 11.6 sec
2012 6.1 sec
2011 7.4 sec
2010 6.8 sec

I am going to do some deep dives into my database of F1 stuff and see what I can discover ... I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that the most telling reason why the finishing margins "appear" closer is due to the advent of the Safety Car ... and adding in the driver aids like DRS and KERS / etc ... notwithstanding the comments from siffert_fan and Grizzly above ...

Nothing quite ruins a dominant 20 second lead than a Maldonado-moment

 

[Bleu]

There are also events when the leader has slowed much towards the end. Michael Schumacher was doing that much in his title-winning years with Ferrari - especially when Barrichello was driving in 2nd.

I think he build something like 20 seconds in 20 laps in Spa 2002, yet Rubens was within two seconds at the finish.