CTA Race of the Year 2015

sushifiesta

Champion Elect
Contributor
So F1 has returned to our lives again for the 2015 season, the second year of the new V6 regulations. Once again, I will be running the CTA Race of the Year competition, tallying up the results from the "out of ten" polls made after every race. I've decided to simplify things this year - there won't be a most disputed race competition and I'm just going to use the plain old mean to award the scores for race of the year. So there's only one number that matters in the tables now!

As the poll from Australia still has some votes trickling in thanks to its prominence on the front page, I will delay announcing the results from that until next weekend (just before the Malaysian grand prix). In the mean time, though, let's have a look at the history of CTA race of the year!

Hall of Fame - Previous Winners

2011: Japanese Grand Prix, 7.3 out of 10.
The out of 10 polls only started towards the end of 2011, by which time Vettel's dominance of the season was set in stone. In fact, the Japanese grand prix was where he won his 2nd championship. It was Jenson who won this one, though, in another race that epitomised Hamilton's difficult season after another clash with Massa. My memory isn't good enough to remember much more about the race...

2012: Brazilian Grand Prix, 9.1 out of 10: A classic end to an F1 season. Vettel had a much better car but Alonso had somehow dragged his Ferrari to places it didn't belong during the year and was still in contention for the championship in the final race at Brazil. What followed was instant drama, with rain in the air and Vettel coming together with Bruno Senna on the first lap, which left Alonso with a great chance of stealing the title. Vettel fought his way back to 4th through the rain, though, and won his 3rd title. Meanwhile, Hamilton looked on course to win his last race for McLaren before a coming together with Hulkenberg, and Schumacher completed his last ever F1 race.

2013: Hungarian Grand Prix, 7.8 out of 10: With the second half of the season completely dominated by Vettel, there were not many particularly good races in 2013. Hungary was the last point in the season where there was any hope someone else could win the championship, with Hamilton taking his first of what will certainly be many wins for Mercedes. He had to complete a few critical overtakes to get the win, whilst Vettel was left frustrated following other drivers and not able to pass. Grosjean pulled off one of the best overtakes I've ever seen, only for it to be ruled as illegal as he marginally went outside the track limits.

2014: Hungarian Grand Prix, 9.3 out of 10: Hungary again, surely not? The 2014 race in Budapest brought rain to the party to spice things up in one of the 3 races won by Ricciardo. Rosberg built up a big gap in the early stages, only for it to be taken from him by a safety car, causing him to fall back a few places and giving the flawless Ricciardo his victory. Hamilton, meanwhile, started from the pit lane in qualifying but nevertheless managed to fight his way through the field and somehow even finish ahead of Rosberg, thanks to some robust defending towards the end (which left Rosberg with a sense of injustice that lead to the incident at Spa).

Hall of Shame - Previous Losers

All of these races were crap, so I'm not going to bother to describe them!

2011: Indian Grand Prix, 4.3 out of 10.

2012: Indian Grand Prix, 4.1 out of 10.

2013: Singaporean Grand Prix, 4.9 out of 10.

2014: Russian Grand Prix, 4.3 out of 10.

All the Races Rated by CTA:


CtaRotyHistoric.PNG


Each Year Sorted by Average Race Score:
CtaRotyHistoricYears.PNG

There are some caveats here. 2012 comes out as the best year but I could not include Monaco due to the format of that poll. Monaco 2012 would have been a contender for the worst race of that year, if not overall, so if it was included it's very likely that 2014 would come out on top. 2011 is only the last 6 races of the season.

I will update this thread through the season with the results for 2015. Who will take the title? Can Hungary take it for the 3rd year running? Will Russia avoid the wooden spoon? We'll have to wait and see...

RULES
  • After each race a poll will be created in a thread with the name "Out of Ten: 2015 <country> Grand Prix". Votes from these polls are used to calculate the CTA race of the year.
  • I will try to create these polls immediately after the race whenever possible. However, other people should feel free to make them as there will be times I can't do it straight away. Please bear in mind the rules here when making the thread.
  • All polls must have only the options from 1 to 10.
  • Polls will be public (i.e. everyone can see everyone else's scores in the poll).
  • Votes cannot be changed after they are submitted.
  • Users must vote in the poll for their score to count. Your vote will not be counted if you only post your score in the thread and don't submit your score in the actual poll.
  • Poll results will be posted the Friday before the following grand prix. There will be some exceptions based on my availability and I may extend it by a few days if there is only a week until the next race and votes are still coming in.
  • Race scores are the mean from each poll to 1 decimal place. If necessary I will use more decimal places or other statistics to declare the winner at the end of the season.
  • All results posted are final, any votes after that time will not count.
 
Last edited:
If Valencia 2011 was polled, it would have gone into the 3's for sure.

Another thing to notice: A lot of the bottom 15 are Vettel wins
 
Last edited:
Some really interesting data sets. I think it's clear to see that the top races are won by a the less dominent drivers in a season while the bottom, less popular races are won by the in form drivers. Hence we see lots of Vettel and some Hamilton 2014. I don't think it's so much to do with driver popularity but to do with winning predictability. It will be interesting to see how this year develops on that basis.
 
Last edited:
Here's the result from Australia - 5 out of 10. The previous 3 years have had scores of at least 7 out of 10 in Australia, so it's by far the worst start to the season since we've started doing these polls on CTA.

ctarotyStandings.PNG
 
Let's not forget that this years figures may be affected by the new profile position for polls. While the sample should be far more accurate of opinion it will also be unlikely to match the trends of previous years. The affect on the average score won't be harmed by the "auto 10" brigade with over 80 people voting, for example.
 
Mephistopheles Your unwavering sense of optimism never ceases to amaze me... ahem.

cider_and_toast I don't think the "auto 10" brigade really have such a big effect on the results. There's not many of them either, after gethinceri retired his voting fingers. If I just exclude the 10 out of 10 votes the score reduces from 5.0 to 4.8 for Australia 2015 (88 votes), and from 7.0 to 6.9 for 2014 (52 votes), for example, so the 10/10 votes actually have a larger effect this year (thanks to them being further away from the mean). There was even a larger proportion of 10/10 votes in 2015 (3 out of 88, 3.4%) than in 2014 (1 out of 52, 1.9%), too, probably thanks to the Hamilton win. I tried various things to reduce the influence of outlying votes, like using the median instead of the mean, but none of them really made a difference to the final standings which is why I've just reverted back to only using the mean this year.
 
Last edited:
I think you will remember that I did not give every race a 10.
Nice to be a Brigadier though, far exceeds any rank I ever held.
 
It's quite funny that the first serious candidate for over all race of the year is due mainly to the fact that it wasn't won by a Mercedes.

The audible sigh of relief travelled twice around the globe and measured 3.5 on the Richter Scale in Brackley. :D
 
7 of the top 10 races are from 2012. That surprises me. I guess thats clearly the front runner in 'best rated season' if thats being looked at.

Edit - although I've just noticed it has the worse race too!
 
Last edited:
It has 3 out of the 4 worst races, in fact. You could possibly make the argument that the bad races in that year seemed worse than they actually were due to the large number of good races in that year.

I have average scores for each year in the original post, 2012 does come out on top but it doesn't include Monaco as that poll had all sorts of weird options. Monaco 2012 was dull so if that was included 2014 it's likely it would have beaten 2012. 2013 and 2011 were heavily dominated by Vettel so lag behind and there were no polls before 2011.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom