This is a great site for a statto like me..
I came across it looking for an analysis of how the field spread has changed with the introduction of 2009 regs. While you provide an answer of sorts in looking at how many passes, I was really trying to find someone who had looked at how closely cars were able to follow each other.
Muddly Talker (my Dad's name for Murray Walker) always used to say "catching is one thing but passing is another" but it seems to me now that cars are not even able to catch each other. I don't remember it always being this way - even when cars couldn't get past, they could get close enough to have a look - Villenueve at Jarama (I was there!), Rosberg and DeAngelis in Austria, Mansell and Senna at Jerez etc. "Climbing all over the back" of the car in front was a common sight which we do not see any more.
So, my specific question - have you ever looked at field spread times after (eg) 10 laps and compared that to qualifying pace? For example, the gap between 1st and 5th was 0.5 seconds / lap in quali but by lap 10 of the race, 1st was 20 seconds down the road from the 5th placed car (ie 2 seconds per lap slower because of the concertina effect).
Another way to do this might be to look at how often two cars (racing for position) cross the line less than a) 2 second, b) 1 second and c) 0.5 seconds apart at the end of a lap? The data is all in the FIA outputs... I just don't have the time to enter it all into excel!!
It feels more like "passing is one thing but catching is another" these days. Maybe that's what Muddly meant to say all along?
I came across it looking for an analysis of how the field spread has changed with the introduction of 2009 regs. While you provide an answer of sorts in looking at how many passes, I was really trying to find someone who had looked at how closely cars were able to follow each other.
Muddly Talker (my Dad's name for Murray Walker) always used to say "catching is one thing but passing is another" but it seems to me now that cars are not even able to catch each other. I don't remember it always being this way - even when cars couldn't get past, they could get close enough to have a look - Villenueve at Jarama (I was there!), Rosberg and DeAngelis in Austria, Mansell and Senna at Jerez etc. "Climbing all over the back" of the car in front was a common sight which we do not see any more.
So, my specific question - have you ever looked at field spread times after (eg) 10 laps and compared that to qualifying pace? For example, the gap between 1st and 5th was 0.5 seconds / lap in quali but by lap 10 of the race, 1st was 20 seconds down the road from the 5th placed car (ie 2 seconds per lap slower because of the concertina effect).
Another way to do this might be to look at how often two cars (racing for position) cross the line less than a) 2 second, b) 1 second and c) 0.5 seconds apart at the end of a lap? The data is all in the FIA outputs... I just don't have the time to enter it all into excel!!
It feels more like "passing is one thing but catching is another" these days. Maybe that's what Muddly meant to say all along?
