Random stats after first third of the championship

[Andres125sx]

Random because they´re only those I´ve noticed

WDC and WCC after 6/19 races:

1 MERCEDES 242
2 FERRARI 158
3 WILLIAMS 81
4 RED BULL 52
5 SAUBER 21
6 FORCE INDIA 17
7 LOTUS 16
8 TORO ROSSO 15
9 MCLAREN 4
10 MARUSSIA 0

1 LEWIS HAMILTON 126
2 NICO ROSBERG 116
3 SEBASTIAN VETTEL 98
4 KIMI RÄIKKÖNEN FIN 60
5 VALTTERI BOTTAS 42
6 FELIPE MASSA 39
7 DANIEL RICCIARDO 35
8 DANIIL KVYAT 17
9 FELIPE NASR 16
10 ROMAIN GROSJEAN 16
11 SERGIO PEREZ 11
12 CARLOS SAINZ 9
13 NICO HULKENBERG 6
14 MAX VERSTAPPEN 6
15 MARCUS ERICSSON 5
16 JENSON BUTTON 4
17 FERNANDO ALONSO 0
18 ROBERTO MERHI 0
19 WILL STEVENS 0
20 PASTOR MALDONADO 0

Mercedes only needed first third of the championship to score more points than Ferrari (2nd) and Williams (3th) togheter (242 vs 148+81=239).... or more points that all the rest together except Ferrari (242 vs 206)

Actually all first four teams score more points than the two teams behind them togheter . Then the rest of the grid strugle to score the few points remaining

Only four drivers without points yet, both manor drivers (not a surprise obviously) and Maldonado and Alonso (this hurts for any Alonso suporter like myself )

Lotus drivers are those with the biggest team mates difference, Grosjean 10th with 16 points and Maldonado 20th with no points. Then Sauber with Nasr 9th with 16 points and Ericsson 15th with 5 points, then STR and FI drivers with only two positions difference, all the rest are togheter on the WDC

No wet race yet!

3.67 retirements average, what IMO is really low, specially if you consider how many problems McLaren have suffered, since they increase the average. Reliability much better than expected. It´s funny after all those concerns about reliability when turbo engines were introduced. Obviously better than those 7 years old V8s because they had been upgraded only for better reliability in those 7 years, no perfomance upgrades at all. But overall very good reliability for these new PUs. I´d enjoy some more mechanical failures, they provide some unexpected factor wich would be nice for this predictable championship

[Andres125sx]

Maybe it´s time for Maldonado to reconsider his number (13)

Nasr and Sainz probably are the two drivers who have impresed me most

STR started the season very strong, but now they´re only 8th, only above Manor and McLaren. What happened?

Not sure if Sauber is a surprise, or it´s Nasr who put the team that high (5th)

[domh245]

Sauber were very lucky in the Australian GP in terms of reliability - Nasr finished ahead of RIC, RAI, SAI, and both Force Indias. Raikkonen's wheel had come off not long before the end, the Renaults were either exploding or being very difficult to drive, the Force Indias were very new and not on the pace, allowing the Saubers (which had been quite pacey in testing) to simply run to the finish and get a decent points haul. Between them, they got 14 points that race - 2/3s of their points so far this season. Indeed, it is lucky that GVdG didn't prevent them running that weekend!

[Andres125sx]

Sauber were very lucky in the Australian GP in terms of reliability - Nasr finished ahead of RIC, RAI, SAI, and both Force Indias. Raikkonen's wheel had come off not long before the end, the Renaults were either exploding or being very difficult to drive, the Force Indias were very new and not on the pace, allowing the Saubers (which had been quite pacey in testing) to simply run to the finish and get a decent points haul. Between them, they got 14 points that race - 2/3s of their points so far this season. Indeed, it is lucky that GVdG didn't prevent them running that weekend!

Sorry but I don´t buy those theories about "no they didn´t do it well, the rest did it horrible". This is F1, none do it horrible, if they fail it´s because it is not easy to be competitive and reliable, so those who do not fail and achieve both goals deserve some credit

[Andres125sx]

One more

7 Mercedes powered cars did first third of the championship with only 1 PU (ICE, TC, ES, CE, mgu-k and mgu-h)

Both Mercedes, both Williams, both Lotus and Perez´s FI. To be more precise, Hamilton used a second CE unit.

Pretty asthonishing if you think they have 4 PU for the season so in theory each one should be good for 4-5 GPs...

Someone said Mercedes is using his PUs tuned down since they don´t need to push them hard thanks to their huge advantage, so they can be in the safe side, but since there are 5 more cars doing same strategy and they´re not dominant cars this theory fails

Any theory?

Maybe Mercedes has a schedule to use their tokens in the final part of the championship just in case some team (Ferrari) match their perfomance, so they have a margin to use each PU for few races and upgrade it after.

For example, if they repeat same durability with second allocation they´ll do 12 races with 2 PUs, so there would be only 7 races remaining for 2 PUs. This way they´d have some margin to do some aggresive upgrade and if it doesn´t provide the planned results, they still can do another upgrade only after 1-2 races and finish the championship with that last unit (third version, fourth allocation) without penalties and without using the PU wich doesn´t work for more than 1-2 races.

[Moose]

One more

7 Mercedes powered cars did first third of the championship with only 1 PU (ICE, TC, ES, CE, mgu-k and mgu-h)

Both Mercedes, both Williams, both Lotus and Perez´s FI. To be more precise, Hamilton used a second CE unit.

Pretty asthonishing if you think they have 4 PU for the season so in theory each one should be good for 4-5 GPs...

Someone said Mercedes is using his PUs tuned down since they don´t need to push them hard thanks to their huge advantage, so they can be in the safe side, but since there are 5 more cars doing same strategy and they´re not dominant cars this theory fails

Any theory?

Maybe Mercedes has a schedule to use their tokens in the final part of the championship just in case some team (Ferrari) match their perfomance, so they have a margin to use each PU for few races and upgrade it after.

For example, if they repeat same durability with second allocation they´ll do 12 races with 2 PUs, so there would be only 7 races remaining for 2 PUs. This way they´d have some margin to do some aggresive upgrade and if it doesn´t provide the planned results, they still can do another upgrade only after 1-2 races and finish the championship with that last unit (third version, fourth allocation) without penalties and without using the PU wich doesn´t work for more than 1-2 races.

It's simple. The start of the season has several of the relatively engine easy circuits. Monaco is effectively only half a race in terms of engine load.

Applying weightings to each circuit for engine use (where 1.0 means average):
Australia: 0.8
Malaysia: 1.0
China: 1.1
Bahrain: 1.3
Spain: 1.0
Monaco: 0.5
Canada: 1.5
Austria: 1.4
UK: 1.2
Hungary: 0.7
Belgium: 1.1
Italy: 1.5
Singapore: 0.6
Japan: 1.3
Russia: 0.8
USA: 1.0
Mexico: 1.2
Brazil: 0.9 (used to be much higher, but the turbo means it's a relatively easy one)
Abu Dhabi: 1.1

Those sum to 20, so you'd want to cause each engine to average 5 points of wear if you want to divide your parts evenly. In reality, you've got to account for the possibility of one engine being faulty, and popping early, so you want to go for more like 6 points of wear.

The first 7 races add up to 5.7 points of wear.
The next 5 add up to 5.9 points of wear, suggesting that the next engine change will come ready for Belgium or Italy.
The next 5 add up to 5.2 points and leave only 3 races to be done on the final engine, which suggests that the final engine change will come either at USA or Mexico.