F1 Fuel Adjusted Grids & Qualifying Times 2009

[Brogan]

The red and green text just indicates whether a driver's fuel adjusted position increased or decreased.

Good point though, I'll add it to the first post.

 

[Brogan]

I've added a couple of columns to the first table; gap to 2nd and gap to last, both for actual and fuel adjusted times.

It shows that Sebastian Vettel was a whopping 0.690 seconds ahead of the next fastest driver at the British GP.

 

[Brogan]

Based on GM's idea, I've added a chart to the first post showing the fuel adjusted best Q3 times for each team.

I've also added a chart for each table to make it easier to visualise.

 

[Brogan]

After literally minutes of searching for the perfect format to display the data, I've now found it

Below each table is a new chart showing the relative position of each driver for both actual and fuel adjusted times.

What it shows for example is that Sebastian Vettel's actual qualifying time for the British GP was quicker even than everyone else's fuel adjusted time, which is a fairly impressive feat.

 

[Brogan]

I noticed an error with the formula so I have updated all the posts.

While doing so I took the opportunity to add the gap from the fastest time for actual and fuel adjusted and also updated the grid order charts to make them reflect a staggered grid.

 

[hamlet36]

Hi Guys

I love this site. Just one question: How do you account for the different levels of fuel consumption the different engines have? Here are my estimates for Brasil:

Mercedes: 2,0
Ferrari: 2,1
BMW: 2,1
Renault: 1,9
Toyota:2,1

Cheers

 

[Brogan]

Hi,

Thanks and welcome to the site.

To be perfectly honest, the fuel consumption of the various engines is one variable that isn't included in the calculations, simply because we don't have the data available.

What we do is take the fuel per 5km value from the Williams site and apply it to all engines.
We then factor in a time variable which is the average amount of lap time gained per lap of fuel burnt.

Of course this inevitably means the data isn't going to be totally accurate but without hard data from each team, it's only going to be an approximate calculation anyway.

Hopefully it's close enough to give people an idea of how each driver performed relative to the rest of the Q3 participants.

Unfortunately this system won't apply next year otherwise we would have refined the formula to make it as accurate as possible.

 

[Galahad]

The other thing to say is that even cars with the same engine will have different fuel consumption figures according to the downforce/drag ratio - which in itself doesn't remain constant as wing settings change from race to race.

Force India consistently run further on a given weight of fuel than McLaren or Brawn, probably because their car is inherently very low drag.

So the best we're ever going to manage is something broadly indicative, but better than nothing of course.

 

[Brogan]

Lewis Hamilton takes pole at Abu Dhabi with a massive margin of 0.667 seconds over the next fastest qualifier.
The biggest gap this year by far.

He also holds the largest fuel adjusted gap from pole to 2nd at 0.603 which was set at Singapore.