How easy was that! Ray Charles could drive that car to a WDC ...

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

Had some time paid for on the Steve Majors supercomputer (VIC-20 for those who don't know) ... and had been playing around with some stat's to demonstrate how dominant a car / package has been as we toil under the current Stuttgart led domination of our WDC and WCC .... seeing some lively discussion on the Seb V vs Dan R thread ExtremeNinja / Mephistopheles ... and a comment from siffert_fan that was along my lines of thought ...

So I simply took each of the recorded completed lap positions of each driver in each race and added them together ... and then divided by the number of completed laps ... so if you ran around in 1st place all race for 50 laps ... 1x50 = 50 ... divided by 50 = 1.0 ...

For the 2014 season ... through R09 @ Silverstone the table shows ... Gap (to best Avg) measures column Avg ... i.e. the average position held by that driver over the period listed ... in this case nine races through Silverstone ...

=> An astounding dominance from Mercedes (amazing innit')
=> Danny "Chops" Ricciardo the best of the rest ...
=> And then it gets interesting ....

For comparison ... here are some past seasons where the WDC was won in a rather dominant fashion ....


Sebastian Vettel in 2011 and 2013

Michael in 1995, 2001, 2002 and 2004

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

Nigel in 1992

A true comparison to what we have seen this season so far ... but he had a 3rd party in Senna reasonably consistently scrapping with him here and there .... nothing like that has happened this season other than the Williams being "close" in Austria ...

Senna & Prost 1988 /1989

Jackie in 1969, 1971 and 1972

GOAT Jim Clark 1965 ... Black Jack in 1966

Jim ... the only other dominant performance ....ala Mansell in 1992 and Mercedes in 2014 ... imho ....

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

siffert_fan .... Mansell in 1992 and GOAT Jim Clark in 1965 ... in my opinion the only comparable truly dominant performances of man and machine seen ala Mercedes in 2014 ...

and at least in 2014 we have two drivers equally matched ... so far

 

[siffert_fan]

For me, the most amazing thing is Clark's horrible finishing record in 1965, yet still being WDC. A true measure of the man's greatness.

 

[KekeTheKing]

Lot of data there ZakspeedYakspeed , nice work!

It's been clear for a while that this season's best historical comparison is 1988. And at the moment it's even tighter than that epic campaign. In fact, you can't really get much closer than what we've seen so far in 2014.

These figures also emphasize why so many people are calling into question what we viewed last year. How is it possible that one driver can so comprehensively destroy his teammate and the field one season, yet hardly make an impact in the next? Luckily we're only halway through 2014 so things can (and will) change rapidly, which is why I will wait til the end of this season at least to start making authoritative judgements.

Thanks again ZY

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

I was thinking the same thing ... 1988 is the most relevant season vis a vis a completely dominant WDC/WCC team mate battle ...

I actually feel for Seb this season ... he has rarely had a chance to put in a good shift over a race weekend due to issues not normally of his making ... a similar (and reverse) comparison to look at is Button ... the 2008 Honda was about the equivalent of a Marussia ... and then the regulations change .... a "new" team ... flash in the pan ... with a jump on the field in interpreting the rules and four months later he is driving the equivalent of a 2011 spec RBR or maybe a slightly less dominant 2014 spec Mercedes to WDC ...

Swings and roundabouts ... as I think Brundle once said ... 80% car / 20% driver ...

 

[KekeTheKing]

There are a ton of interesting little nuggets to be gleaned from these tables. Here's a few I've noted so far.

In 2011 JB was 2nd in the WDC, but falls to 4th with this metric, behind his teammate even. Coulthard falls even further in 2001, from 2nd to 6th with Surtees suffering the same fate in 1966.

In 1988 Senna scored fewer total points than Prost, but he still comes out on top with this metric. On the other hand, Jackie Stewart was 2nd in 1972, but leads the pack with ZY's formula.

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

And for you .... I give you 1982 ... to finish first you must first finish ....

look at the woeful reliability .... early turbo's and hard racing ....

 

[KekeTheKing]

I am always amazed that Jabouille, Arnoux, Prost, and Co. could soldier on like they did knowing their car was 50/50 to even make it home.

1982 is probably the strangest season of all time. You name it and it happened in 82. Including the Champion being DQ'd from Round 2 and sitting out Round 4.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Thanks for these stats. Really great stuff. Glad our conversation sparked such an interesting investigation. As things stand at this moment in time this looks like the closest title fight we have ever seen.

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

Back when F1 was a lot less formally organized ... and they had the cohones to actually DQ someone

 

[siffert_fan]

It appears that, with the exception of 1965, reliability played a huge role in determining WDC. Reliability is more of a given today than it used to be.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

They DQ'd Riciardo from The podium in Rd.1, this year. If not for Merc, he would be favorite for the title this year.

 

[Monkeyhead]

There are a ton of interesting little nuggets to be gleaned from these tables. Here's a few I've noted so far.

In 2011 JB was 2nd in the WDC, but falls to 4th with this metric, behind his teammate even. Coulthard falls even further in 2001, from 2nd to 6th with Surtees suffering the same fate in 1966.

In 1988 Senna scored fewer total points than Prost, but he still comes out on top with this metric. On the other hand, Jackie Stewart was 2nd in 1972, but leads the pack with ZY's formula.

The metric favors fast but unreliable cars/drivers. For example, in 2001 Coulthard was collecting a lot of 3rd and 4th places with not really impressive driving, but at least he managed to finish most races - reliability was a big asset back then. In 2011 Hamilton was clearly faster than Button, but he managed to collect Massa in nearly all races, while Button's average is also negatively affected by his "impossible" win in Canada.

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

The metric simply measures how the car/driver were performing whilst competing in a race ... when comparing that to points collected and laps completed ... yes ... you can see how some car/driver combinations capitalized on what they had ... and others didn't ... be that from just not being good enough or because of retirements ... mechanical or driver error ... or both ...

Your comments on Hamilton / Button above illustrate the metric ... Hamilton was in better positions than Button during a race ... more often than not ... but was not able to capitalize on what he had ... some self inflicted ... some not ... Button more often than not kept his front wing out of someone's rear tyre or sidepod and banked results ...

Likewise your comments on Coulthard ... JPM, Mika, Ralf and DC were very closely matched with this metric, behind Michael's sacrificial lamb Rubens ... who DC managed to beat in the WDC ... JPM, Mika and Ralf all suffered more retirements than DC, whilst DC and Rubens completed about the same amount of laps with DC prevailing for 2nd in the WDC ... so he might not have been that impressive but he still managed to be the best of the rest behind Michael ...

 

[Bleu]

Problem with that calculation is when driver has a race where everything goes badly. Remember Michael Schumacher and 2004 Chinese GP? That race really makes him/Ferrari look worse than they actually were. My quick calculations shows 2.2 for Schumacher if that race is dropped.

Similar races have happened for other dominant teams/drivers as well. Ayrton Senna would be 1.6 for 1989 if he had retired on the first lap due to that collision with Berger.

 

[no-FIAt-please]

I'd like to see this for 2012. To see how Vettel, Alonso, Raikkonen and Hamilton were ordered in laps lead. Still suspect Vettel will be ahead because of that fantastic run of 3 or 4 races where he led almost every lap.

 

[teabagyokel]

Laps Lead

 

[FB]

The only lap worth leading is the last one.

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

Lap by Lap updated through Singers R14_19