Drivers lap pace relative to each other?

  • Thread starter Thread starter johnnoble1990
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Bill Boddy said:
no-FIAt-please How many fastest qualifying laps do you have for Alonso and Hamilton? I make it 5 for Hamilton (Canada, USA, GB, Japan and China) and 3 for Alonso (Monaco, Hungary and Italy). The graph does not look like that.
Click to expand

As far as I'm aware, Alonso's Hungary pole was stripped from him for being a cheat, and was therefore inherited by Lewis. I'm pretty sure it was stripped as the infringement was directly related to quali, while I think drivers keep pole in statistics for gearbox changes and stuff. I think in terms of comparing Lewis and Fernando it makes sense to give it to Lewis anyway as he had pole prior to Alonso's final run anyway and of course Lewis was robbed of the opportunity to regain that due to pitlanegate.
 
I thought this thread was about statistics and so the data of pace should not be corrupted by whether or not a driver was stripped of his fastest lap as that just manipulates the results.

What if driver A out qualified driver B for every race but was stripped of his fastest time for every qualifying session due to some infringement or other would that make driver B the the fastest over one lap? I think not..

Like I said in an earlier post there is no reliable way of working this out which makes the question moot and anyway what does it matter? All that really matters is the results after the race on Sunday..
 
Bill Boddy Yes Alonso was fastest on that day, because he stopped Hamilton from running. The record books say that Hamilton had pole for Hungary 2007, so I used them. But if you want to use 'what ifs' then surely Hamilton was disadvantaged when came across Mark Webbers slow Red Bull in Monaco qualifying, he was on-course to outqualify Alonso while carrying more fuel. It's really hard to take into account every single factor when considering how good a driver has performed, hence I used what the record books said. They show that Hamilton was significantly better that season, yet Galahad's stats show his actual advatange was only a small one.

Currently Hamilton hasn't been beaten by a team-mate in qualifying over the course of a season (he lost his actual season streak to Button), a good indication of one lap pace. However Vettel's data shows that he only narrowly lost to Liuzzi in his debut season, does this mean he isn't as good, or does it mean he has simply improved his one lap pace a greater amount since being in F1? Alonso's stats are also hard to read, he isn't undefeated. He was beaten by Hamilton marginally in 2007, but has had more team-mates and the gap between his team-mates in recent years (since 2007) has increased, is this Alonso still improving or is it that he's had slow team-mates since Hamilton? Excellent data but we're still nowhere :)

Mephistopheles Actually, it would be 5-3. Hamilton would have been on pole in Canada, USA, Great Britain, Japan and China. Whereas Alonso would have been on pole in Monaco, Hungary and Italy.
 
Alas noble John, we are no longer discussing your wonderful premise, since the margin by which LH beat FA in quali was questioned we are obliged to examine the usefulness of statistics

Stats side with Hamilton when it comes to out and out speed
 
Cookinflatsix

Well one of the big points of my initial post was that the margins are so small that you can't really pick out a clear winner like that.
 
I really do wish we had Kubica back in F1. His qualifying performances in 2010 really did seem brilliant (well either that or Petrov was abysmal) and I would put him in the 'Hamilton, Vettel, Alonso' one lap pace category. I wonder Galahad do you have statistics on how Kubica fared aginst his team-mates?
 
The starting point for all this has to be with team mates. I was pretty confident putting Jenson 0.2 second behind Lewis, Felipe well behind Alonso, and Webber behind Vettel. The problem clearly lies when choosing how to put drivers from different teams relative to each other.
 
To be honest Wombcat, F1 is probably the only sport where 5 thousandths of a second is signifcant. Perhaps not over 17 races though.
 
Wombcat - no, it certainly isn't. Such is the variability, and small sample size, that relatively few team mate relationships achieve a statistically significant difference.
 
Kubica is a good illustration of between-season variability even when team mates are the same.
Kubica
2006 Nick Heidfeld -0.137
2007 Nick Heidfeld -0.064
2008 Nick Heidfeld +0.132
2009 Nick Heidfeld +0.055
2010 Vitaly Petrov +0.516

To expand on @Wombcat's point earlier, the only statistically significant relationship is the one with Petrov.
Kubica_Summary.webp
 
Alonso gained an unfair advantage by deliberately not allowing Hamilton to run. What he did is the same thing as parking his car on the pit exit and refusing to let drivers out to set a time. Either way history states that Lewis Hamilton started the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix on pole position.
 

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