peewon wrote: ↑07 Jun 2023, 17:49
organic wrote: ↑07 Jun 2023, 13:35
peewon wrote: ↑07 Jun 2023, 13:08
% of laps lead is a very contextual stat and definitely not the first one Id use to determine how dominant a car is. The average gap to the nearest rival at full beans is more indicative of that.
Average gap in quali or race? If it's the race then that won't take into account the fact that RB are extending a SC/pitstop gap and then cruising every weekend. The true pace is not seen unless they are pushed and that isn't happening given nobody else has the car to do that in race trim.
And the average gap in qualifying isn't indicative of true performance in the current regs tbh
Ultimately it has to be race pace. I would say Jeddah is a good indicator because the Bulls were pushing each other. You can also get snapshots of performance in early parts of the races. The "cruising" issue applies to all dominant teams. We know Mercedes was turning their engines down massively in the early part of hybrid era.
This is all getting lost in the weeds and trying to find a measure/statistic that fits an opinion.
Dominance in sport = % (or number) or wins over a season and/or championship win. Gap to rivals in race or Q is useful, but the de facto measure of dominance is only calculated over a season. For a team sport, the 'season' metric is confirmed by a championship. For instance, which basketball team was the most dominant in the 1990s? Clearly it was the Bulls, who won 6/10 championships. It wasn't the team who won by the most points, or the team that scored the most in the first quarter, etc.
For F1, 'everyone' knows that constructor/car dominance is judged by race wins over a season. Anything else is either cherry picked, or, at best, a corroborating metric. % of laps lead is a corroborating metric.
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