elemental

Stats of the Season (so far...)

category files Posted: 21/Sep/2005AD @ 23:10
category files Categories: Cult

I'm really enjoying the current Formula One season - and not just because my team is winning! One of the best aspects of this year is that there is actually a competition between constructors. Last year, which was pretty much mono-colour, lead me to start compiling results from Formula1.com to examine what shape the championship would've been in if Ferrari hadn't been competing; I've continued the practice this year (but using all teams). In this post I will report the state of the season as at the completion of the Belgian Grand Prix.

The statistics that I'll be reporting are:

  1. Points tallies over the season (Driver and Constructor)
  2. Simple and true reliability (Driver and Constructor)
  3. Poles, fastest laps, podiums and wins (Driver and Constructor)
  4. Relative finishing position (Driver)
  5. Overall rank (Driver)

Points Tallies

The points tally for the drivers championship is not that surprising. It shows that Alonso has maintained a strong lead over the field from the second race of the season. McLaren's improving reliability has meant that Kimi has been catching Alonso, but not fast enough. Interestingly Trulli's Michael's challenge for second has dramatically fallen away, falling to score a single point since Hungary.

The Constructors point tally shows the real competition. Renault has never lost the lead  but check out how close McLaren has got to them over the last our races. If Pizzonia hadn't run up the back of Montoya, McLaren would've taken the lead by four points with three races to go. There is an-almost-as tight race between Ferrari and Toyota. The woes of Williams can be seen in them hitting the doldrums between Canada and Hungary; since then they've started scoring again. In the bottom of the graph you can seen strong performance by BAR over the second half of the season.

Reliability

This is one of the most heart warming statistics of the season. Who is the most reliable driver in the 2005 championship? None other than Tiago Monteiro of Jordan! I think it's so cool that a minnow driver could be the most reliable in the field. Of course, you could comment that he may not be racing very hard - pacing his engine, not being too daring in passing, but he does have the most points of any of the minnow drivers.

On a technical note, simple reliability is the number of races completed divided by the number of races entered; true reliability is the simple reliability multiplied by the ratio of races entered to total races. This means that the reliability of reserve drivers like Pizzonia, de la Rosa and Wurz who have finished every race they've entered can be compared with drivers who've entered every race. The horizontal line indicates the average reliability of the field. Further, Michelin runners are counted as having retired from the US GP.

The team reliability chart again shows that Jordan is the most reliable team closely followed by Toyota. (yeah, for us corolla drivers!) Interestingly considering McLaren's problems early in the season, they have a slightly higher reliability than Renault. BAR's early season problems are quite apparent.

Other Results

Remembering last year, this next graph is great improvement - there is a wide spread of wins, podiums, poles and fastest laps.

Interestingly, the team chart shows that McLaren has performed better overall than Renault with more poles, wins and fastest laps. Only in the number of podiums do they fall short --- and that's what's made all the difference...

Average Relative Finishing Position

This chart reports the difference between the average finishing place and average grid position. Notably Sato and Trulli are the the only drivers who are regularly finishing behind their starting position. Curiously, Kimi seems to be winning from the front as his relative finishing position isn't very large whereas Alonso seems to be making up more places. Scary, is comparing Heidfeld and Webber - look at the difference there!

Overall Driver Rank

Overall Driver Rank is a measurement I developed that combines true reliability, average grid place, average fastest lap rank and average finishing place into a single number. All the numbers besides true reliability are substracted from 20 and then divided by 20 to produce a percentile, where a person who won every race would have a average finishing place of 100%.

Unsurprisingly Alonso and Kimi are very close, with Trulli ahead of Montoya and Michael. I developed this result because I wondered whether Kimi may have overtaken Alonso by now - not yet - but if he continues winning races, grabbing poles and being the fastest on the circuit he may clinch the lead.

Summary

I hope you've found this overview of the statistics of the 2005 Formula One World Championship interesting. The results show a competitive season with achievements spread over a wide number of drivers, and with Tiago Montiero, #15 in the championship standings, the most reliable driver in the field.

  1. Phone

    ¤ 22 September, 10:42

    just a note: you say at the top that trulli hasn’t scored since hungary. He actually scored at Monza and turkey. M. Schumacher hasn’t scored since hungary

  2. Richard Neale

    ¤ 22 September, 11:58

    I am humbled. I am in the presence of greatness. You have clearly qualified for the much sought-after ‘golden anorak’.

    Seriously, though, I’m surprised that Webber didn’t have a lower rank in the ‘average relative finishing position’—he had so many great qualifying results at the start of the season that just didn’t produce race results.

    It would be interesting to ‘weight’ some of the driver numbers in such a way as to reduce the influence of the car’s capability—factors that indicate quality of car (like top speed on the straights, etc.) are very telling.

    Another factor I’ve been keeping an eye on throughout this engine-rationed season has been the number of laps run in practice. The Williams drivers (and yes, I am biased) have been doing amazingly small numbers of laps in practice. I think this points to some fundamental engine shortcomings in 2005. I’m not saying the chassis great—clearly it isn’t. But just as Ferrari’s performance can’t be solely attributed to tyres, there’s more to Williams’ results this year than a poor chassis.

  3. Pete

    ¤ 22 September, 15:54

    Ah, Phone quite correct – I’m getting my red and white mixed up with my red and gold. Trulli is barely holding on to fifth.

    Thanks for the anorak Richard.

    I’m a bit nervous about the averaged numbers – it would be more accurate to calculate things like relative finishing position on a per race basis and then average it over the season – but that would require a lot more data processing.

    Weighting the driver results by the car’s capability would be an interesting problem.

    I’d like to incorporate more data into my spreadsheet such as total pit time (currently I only track number of stops), and information from practice. But again that’s more work. It’d also be interesting to get testing data but I’m not sure whether that’s publicly available.

    It seems to me that the 2006 version of my F1 spreadsheet may be database driven.

    On Williams, I think Sir Frank (on RPM last Sunday) said that part of the problem this year was to do with the aero package. Didn’t they install a new wind tunnel – maybe they had an error in their calibration.
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