Pole Position

[PlatinumZealot]

Pole position is one of those hallowed achievements in Formula 1.

What does it really mean?

[raymondu999]

I don't personally consider pole to be an achievement - I consider qualifying fastest to be an achievement. (See Spain 2012, Monaco 2012 for what I mean)

[Cam]

What does Pole really mean? Any of the following:

• you qualified fastest.
• you cheated and didn't get caught.
• someone else qualified faster, but were penalised, so you got a gift.
• its an indication of car speed.
• its not an indication of car speed as race pace is different to qualy pace.
• you had a good set of tyres left over in Q3.
• your timed run was perfect (no red flags or slower cars etc).
• for tracks where overtaking is hard, pole is great.
• is an opportunity to f'up the start while everyone is watching you.
• gives you some bragging rights, but not as much as it used to be.
• to say you 'love pole' asks more questions than answers

[f1316]

It always interests me, when looking at drivers' statistics, that some will clearly have stats that reflect a greater propensity for qualifying/gaining pole, whereas others have race wins way in excess of their pole positions, showing that they must have won a great deal of their races without being on pole. Likewise, those who have a more poles than wins must have slipped back from their grid slot in a good number of races. Observe:

More poles:

Senna: poles - 65 wins - 41
Vettel: poles - 33 wins - 22
Häkkinen: poles - 26 wins - 20
Trulli: poles - 4 wins - 1

You could add Hamilton to this, but his stats are actually pretty close - 22/19

More race wins:

Schumacher: poles - 68 wins - 91
Prost: poles - 33 wins - 51
Alonso: poles -22 wins - 30

I think statistically these are very interesting as they show either one of, or more likely, a combination of the following things:

- The drivers with more poles are able to push their sometimes inferior machinery to its very peak of performance for one lap but cannot sustain that level for an entire race distance against, sometimes, faster cars
- The drivers with more wins set-up their car/stategy with a mind to the race rather than quali; this is perhaps not as relevant as it once was, but was very true of Prost on numerous occasions and, in the days where race fuel was used in qualifying, Schumacher would very often be carrying more fuel than opponents
- The drviers with more race wins may be those more able to race a car consistently near its performance limit for a race distance; Schumacher was said to be the first "super-fit" driver, for example.

Also interesting to note is that drivers like Schumacher and Prost have more fastest laps than they do pole positions, which also indicates a preference to these conditions (when fastest laps were more indicative of actually race speed rather fresher tyres, as is the case now).

Nevertheless, the bottom line is that no points are given for pole or fastest laps, so they are really only statistics indicative of performance and have no tangible merit. However, the lofty position that these statistics occupy in the world of F1 may actually have been carried over from the fact that a point was awarded for each in the original points system for F1.

[hollus]

Is this what you were looking for?

Origin:
The term has its origins in horse racing, in which the fastest qualifying horse would be placed on the inside part of the course, next to the pole.

[turbof1]

It always interests me, when looking at drivers' statistics, that some will clearly have stats that reflect a greater propensity for qualifying/gaining pole, whereas others have race wins way in excess of their pole positions, showing that they must have won a great deal of their races without being on pole. Likewise, those who have a more poles than wins must have slipped back from their grid slot in a good number of races. Observe:

More poles:

Senna: poles - 65 wins - 41
Vettel: poles - 33 wins - 22
Häkkinen: poles - 26 wins - 20
Trulli: poles - 4 wins - 1

You could add Hamilton to this, but his stats are actually pretty close - 22/19

More race wins:

Schumacher: poles - 68 wins - 91
Prost: poles - 33 wins - 51
Alonso: poles -22 wins - 30

I think statistically these are very interesting as they show either one of, or more likely, a combination of the following things:

- The drivers with more poles are able to push their sometimes inferior machinery to its very peak of performance for one lap but cannot sustain that level for an entire race distance against, sometimes, faster cars
- The drivers with more wins set-up their car/stategy with a mind to the race rather than quali; this is perhaps not as relevant as it once was, but was very true of Prost on numerous occasions and, in the days where race fuel was used in qualifying, Schumacher would very often be carrying more fuel than opponents
- The drviers with more race wins may be those more able to race a car consistently near its performance limit for a race distance; Schumacher was said to be the first "super-fit" driver, for example.

Also interesting to note is that drivers like Schumacher and Prost have more fastest laps than they do pole positions, which also indicates a preference to these conditions (when fastest laps were more indicative of actually race speed rather fresher tyres, as is the case now).

Nevertheless, the bottom line is that no points are given for pole or fastest laps, so they are really only statistics indicative of performance and have no tangible merit. However, the lofty position that these statistics occupy in the world of F1 may actually have been carried over from the fact that a point was awarded for each in the original points system for F1.

IMO, I think getting more poles then wins and vice versa is more a matter of reliability of the car.

[timbo]

IMO, I think getting more poles then wins and vice versa is more a matter of reliability of the car.

It's hard to explain Prost's results that way.

[zyphro]

I don't personally consider pole to be an achievement - I consider qualifying fastest to be an achievement. (See Spain 2012, Monaco 2012 for what I mean)

^That.

Pole position is accounted based on the starting grid of a GP on a Sunday.

[turbof1]

IMO, I think getting more poles then wins and vice versa is more a matter of reliability of the car.

It's hard to explain Prost's results that way.

Might be not been very clear in my choice of wording. It would by far not explain all the results, just it has been a factor in so many cases generally speaking.

[timbo]

IMO, I think getting more poles then wins and vice versa is more a matter of reliability of the car.

It's hard to explain Prost's results that way.

Might be not been very clear in my choice of wording. It would by far not explain all the results, just it has been a factor in so many cases generally speaking.

Probably, but therefore there must be less variation among pole-sitters than among race-winners, it must be interesting thing to check.

[turbof1]

If some one could give me the data, I could run a statistic test on that.

[timbo]

If some one could give me the data, I could run a statistic test on that.

Well, f1-facts and similar sites have all the results available, but you have to somehow grab and process them.

[turbof1]

The data there is too much summarised unfortunaly... . Wow I completely underesitmated this; I would need to have the data from every race and if the pole sitter had technical problems that race.

[timbo]

The data there is too much summarised unfortunaly... . Wow I completely underesitmated this; I would need to have the data from every race and if the pole sitter had technical problems that race.

Well, firstly it would be interesting to see whether there were more race winners than pole-sitters. If there's no significant difference might not be worth looking at.

[turbof1]

The data there is too much summarised unfortunaly... . Wow I completely underesitmated this; I would need to have the data from every race and if the pole sitter had technical problems that race.

Well, firstly it would be interesting to see whether there were more race winners than pole-sitters. If there's no significant difference might not be worth looking at.

Huh? Every race has a pole sitter and unless the race was cancelled, every race had a winner. There will be no significant difference between those 2 numbers; that does not mean it is not worth looking into it.