One horse championships

[marksawatsky]

I joined this forum because there seemed to be so much good information, knowledgeable people and few trolls-I have not been disappointed.

 

[cider_and_toast]

Ok, I've just re-calculated the 1988 season using the current scoring format.

To that end, McLaren would have scored 669 points with Ferrari scoring 237. This makes Ferrari's total 35% that of McLaren's.

A slight increase on the original 33% but not a massive ammount (I ammended the original figure of 32 by rounding up correctly )

I'll get to the other years as I can.

 

[sushifiesta]

Looking back over the 1988 season it was just ridiculously dominant. Having played with different points systems in the past, it's also true that it rarely makes much difference. I'm happy to assume that it makes little difference in any of the cases if you don't want to go to the effort of doing more.

Just as a point of comparison, this is what you get looking at simply the percentage of race wins in a year for a team (I stole the stats from statsf1):

1) McLaren, 1988, 94%
2) Ferrari, 2002, 88%
3) Ferrari, 1952, 88%
(Mercedes win all the remaining races this season: 84%)
4) Ferrari, 2004, 83%
5) Mercedes, 2014, 81% (to date: 13 out of 16 race wins.)
6) Ferrari, 1953, 78%
7) Williams, 1996, 75%
8) McLaren, 1984, 75%
9) Lotus, 1963, 70%
10) Red Bull, 2013, 68%
(Mercedes win no more races this season: 68%)

The top 5 from your original list all appear somewhere in this list, but the rest are different

 

[cider_and_toast]

I managed to do the first 6 and they look like this:

1988 was 33% - New Scoring system 35%
1984 was 40% - New Scoring system 51%
1996 was 40% - New Scoring system 49%
2002 was 42% - New Scoring system 56%
2004 was 45% - New Scoring system 46%
1971 was 49% - New Scoring system 42%

So, there's been no change at the top highlighting just how extraordinary the 1988 season was in terms on one team dominance. It's interesting to note that when both cars points are included in the case of 1971 the second placed team's percentage total decreases by 7 percent. That suggests, if I went back and reviewed that era again, there would be a fairly big shift among some of the percentages in favor of the title winning team. It's worth also noting that BRM who finished second to Tyrrell that year, entered 8 cars at various stages of the season so I had to check and count any of the 8 that may have scored points. This still wasn't enough to massively shift their total.

It also shows, that in the top dominant years, the lead team scores on average twice as many points as the team in second place.

 

[cider_and_toast]

For further comparison, here is the 2014 result based on the system last used in 1978. The result of the best finishing car is counted and there worst result from the first 8 and last 8 races of the season is dropped.

(I'll use the new scoring system so it can be compared again with 1971 as well as the other modern WCC years)

Merc would score a total of 343 points (with Rosberg's Second in Canada and Hamilton's third in Hungary being dropped)
Red Bull would score a total of 218 points (with the DNF/DSQ dropped from the first half and Daniels 7th in Russia in the second half)

This leads to RBR scoring 64% of Mercs total. Not too far from the current 61% using the modern scoring methods and all cars.

For further comparison, if we use the 1978 9-6-4-3-2-1 model of scoring and the 78 model of constructors championship calculation we then get the following:

Merc would score 123 points
RBR would score 64 points

So RBRs total is now 52% of Mercs total points scored.

What this shows is that the old scoring method of 1 car counts gives a huge boost to a team with two top drivers where as with both cars scoring, it enables the second placed team to pick up more points when there is only 1 driver in the first placed team dominating.

Overall I think the stats are pretty consistent regardless of the scoring system and WCC calculation methodology.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Actually the biggest difference is that in other seasons if a team had a dominant car at the start of the season at least the other teams had a chance of catching up with testing weeks and engine improvements now if a team starts with a dominant car the other teams have Bob Hope of catching up, and that is what makes it boring..

That's a load of rubbish. Red Bull started off the pace in two of their championship years as well as the Brawn championship year where they were on top at the end. McLaren finished two of Red Bull's championship years with the best car. Too little, too late but this was due to in-season development without in-season on-track testing. I don't know why you skew facts and rewrite history to feed your desire for the bleakest possible outlook at everything. The truth is much brighter than your grim alternate reality.

 

[teabagyokel]

What this shows is that the old scoring method of 1 car counts gives a huge boost to a team with two top drivers

Bring it back, then, I say!

 

[cider_and_toast]

Some more interesting numbers.

I thought I'd look at how much as a percentage of the total points scored for each of the top and bottom ten were scored by a single driver. (i.e. the best placed driver)

There are a few anomalies when doing this. Firstly, the total points scored by a driver before any races were dropped was used to calculate the constructors total, hence I have used Prost's figures for 88. For the championships pre 78 where only one car was used, I have given the figure as a percentage of the total points scored by both drivers added together. The figures for 82 and 99 are from the lead driver of the winning constructor and not the world champion and the figures for those races are slightly different due to the nature of the season (huge injuries to Pironi and Schui respectively).

Here are the figures for the top 10 run-away seasons: (all figures are rounded up or down to the nearest whole number)

88 - Prost - 52%
84 - Lauda - 50&
96 - Hill - 55%
02 - Schumi - 65%
04 - Schumi - 56%
71 - Stewart - 70%
07 - Kimi - 53%
93 - Prost - 59%
89 - Prost - 57%
80 - Jones - 59%
87 - Piquet - 55%

As you can see from the above, only Schumacher in 02 and Stewart in 71 managed to account for over 60 percent of the teams points.

For the bottom 10 i.e. the closest finishes:

06 - Alonso - 65%
99 - Irvine - 58% * not world champion
05 - Alonso - 69%
64 - Surtees - 63%
82 - Pironi - 52% * not world champion
85 - Prost - 84%
03 - Schumi - 59%
10 - Vettel - 51%
90 - Senna - 64%
91 - Senna - 69%

In this half of the table 2 out of 10 were not world champions and 6 out of 10 scored over 60 percent of their teams points. Only Schumi in 03 and Vettel in 2010 shared the points more evenly and still came away with a title.

What this shows is that two strong drivers is something that shouldn't always be feared by a constructor. In fact, it would seem you are more likely to have a close finish with one lead driver than you are to have a run-away success. Of course, having two good drives is not the only factor but it would seem to do more good than harm.

 

[siffert_fan]

keke

Retirement rates:
1984, 59% retired
1988 49.8% retired
1996, 46.6% retired
2004, 25.5% retired
2013, 12.4% retired.

 

[KekeTheKing]

I have no idea what teams you've included, and without some sort of context those percentages are meaningless. We've been talking about the dominant constructor of the year on this thread and the WCC has never retired half the time, nor will they achieve 0 retirements.

In 1984 McLaren retired 10 times from 32 GP. Mercedes has 5 from 32 so far in 2014.

The all-conquering MP4/4 retired thrice and the F2004 just twice. That's about as good as it's going to get.