Who has had better cars - Hamilton or Vettel?

[dren]

There are lots of factors. If you can figure out the true car performance pecking order each year, then you can compare the position each driver achieved at each race versus the maximum they should have been able to achieve. Like this year, the Mercedes should win every race. How many races has Hamilton finished 1st? You would have to throw out all DNFs that were not driver error.

I remember reading a website where the author did just that. He compared car performance and driver performance. There were a few years he speculated that the best car did not win the championship. One of those years he speculated was the ever dominating 2004 Ferrari at the hands of Schumacher. He stated the BAR was actually the better car that year.

[Just_a_fan]

I'd say that, if I had to rank the five drivers mentioned above purely based on the cars they enjoyed throughout their careers:

1. Schumacher

2. Prost

3. Hamilton

4. Vettel

5. Senna

There isn't much between them at all. Prost has a lower average % than either Hamilton or Vettel mainly because of the dreadful car in his rookie season. Prost has had more cars which scored the most WCC points than anyone bar Schumacher, who has an average of nearly 83% in his first career.

Senna, I would actually say, has had the weakest cars out of the five. Both Vettel and Senna won 4 consecutive WCC, but Vettel's 2009 car was stronger relative to the competition than any of Senna's non-WCC winning cars, as the RB5 scored 89% of the Brawn's total points tally.

Wow, you're doing this assessment and don't know that Senna won 3 titles not 4. Senna won back to back titles but didn't win all three titles consecutively.

[Just_a_fan]

What is interesting is that only 3 drivers have won more than 2 titles in a row: Fangio, Schumacher and Vettel. Fangio won for different teams 4 years in a row. The other two won for the dominant team at the time. Schumacher benefitted from a team focussed purely on him. He also benefitted from Bridgestone making bespoke tyres for Ferrari for each race. When the tyre rules were changed the Ferrari suddenly lost its dominance.

Vettel had a series of cars that were as good as any on the grid. This is not surprising really as you need a good car in order to win the title no matter which driver it is.

[Moose]

No way the 2007 Ferrari was better than the Mclaren that year. Mclaren had both titles in the bag of it wasnt for poor managent or "favouritism"

Having seen how both Massa and Raikkonen have performed subsequently to being in that Ferrari, you could trivially argue that Ferrari had a far superior car. McLaren only came close to the titles that year due to having two phenomenal drivers.

The internal war between both drivers prevented them to win the WC by a clear margin. By no means was the Ferrari a better than the Mclaren. And in both years Massa was on his peak, even if he has been always a very irregular driver, as Kimi is. Ferrari only had an advantage with high temperatures as it happened in 2006. We can say the same in 2008, but in this case the Mclaren line up was clearly weaker. And this year there wasnt a real "best driver" it was the less irregular of the two contenders who won the WC, or the luckiest one.

You're certainly right that the internal war at McLaren helped them lose the WDC in '07, but I still find it hard to buy at this point that Massa or Raikkonen were anything more than a mediocre driver in an extraordinarily good car. They both had pretty similar performances against each other in 2007/08, and they both had fairly similar performances against Alonso. To me, that makes it clear not that they "peaked" in 07/08, but instead, that the car made them look a lot better than they really were, and that Alonso (for sure) was always on a higher level than them, and by transitivity, Hamilton too.

What evidence do you have that either Massa or Kimi were better drivers in 07 than they were a few years later when each of them got beaten solidly by Alonso?

[Phil]

I'd say that, if I had to rank the five drivers mentioned above purely based on the cars they enjoyed throughout their careers:

1. Schumacher

2. Prost

3. Hamilton

4. Vettel

5. Senna

There isn't much between them at all. Prost has a lower average % than either Hamilton or Vettel mainly because of the dreadful car in his rookie season. Prost has had more cars which scored the most WCC points than anyone bar Schumacher, who has an average of nearly 83% in his first career.

Senna, I would actually say, has had the weakest cars out of the five. Both Vettel and Senna won 4 consecutive WCC, but Vettel's 2009 car was stronger relative to the competition than any of Senna's non-WCC winning cars, as the RB5 scored 89% of the Brawn's total points tally.

I don't really want to nit-pick, as I think you've done a really good job at presenting the data ... but the general problem with numbers and statistics is that you can always spin them the way you want to in order to achieve a slightly different picture. These numbers tell one story, other numbers a different one... which ones you want to believe really comes down to ones personal view point and bias.

For instance:
The first array of data you presented that included the WCC points fails to point out that two strong drivers will naturally 'better' the stats for that team. Looking at the numbers; Rosberg and Hamilton statistically is a much stronger pairing than Vettel and Webber. So the Mercedes dominance has produced a much higher WCC points total than any of the RedBull cars between 2010 and 2013 when one of the two drivers drove below expectations.

The 2nd data where you take the percentages of the driver of the winning constructors team total is better. But here too; the question is who had the better cars: If i.e. Hamilton outdrove the 2008 McLaren to win his championship like some argued Alonso did with his Ferrari 4 years in a row (from 2010 to 2013), we attributing more on the car than on the driver. Perhaps Massa/Kimi in 2008 had a much better car, but lacked the race craft?

In the end, it's extremely difficult to gauge the potential of different cars. Some might be better on some tracks while worse on others - and in years like arguably 2010 to 2013, the RedBull was a league of its own, irregardless if that league was by a difference of 0.5seconds or like the Mercedes last year of nearly 1 to 1.5 seconds...

If I had the time, I would attempt to stick to the times in qualifying (that shows the cars maximum potential/speed). It's a narrow data set for sure, but also the least dependent on circumstance, dnf, race-collisions, safety cars etc. Qualifying shows what a car can do on a singular lap - by all means, for what we know the maximum potential of the car. Perhaps compare the cars among each other and disregard race performance all together. Then work with time and not be limited to any arbitrary WDC/WCC point allocation that might taint or change the picture...

Also, just to add; Hamilton has had a longer F1 career than Vettel. Shouldn't that count towards something? A longer career in Hamiltons case means he has had more seasons (in a potentially dominant car). We should at least not forget to point that out when looking at a singular derived value highlighting the result of a complicated dataset showing whose car has been more dominant...

[Just_a_fan]

If I had the time, I would attempt to stick to the times in qualifying (that shows the cars maximum potential/speed). It's a narrow data set for sure, but also the least dependent on circumstance, dnf, race-collisions, safety cars etc. Qualifying shows what a car can do on a singular lap - by all means, for what we know the maximum potential of the car. Perhaps compare the cars among each other and disregard race performance all together. Then work with time and not be limited to any arbitrary WDC/WCC point allocation that might taint or change the picture...

Not sure that's true. Some cars have been quick over a lap only to perform poorly in the race and vice versa. As there are no points for qualifying and the title comes from race results, race results are what matters in this discussion. One should caveat that by saying that a car that could win every race (great race pace) but is impossible to qualify (dire over a single lap) out of Q1 isn't going to be helpful. Alonso suffered from this a bit where his Ferrari was difficult to qualify but seemed to come good in the races.

[dans79]

Is that the same Hamilton factor where you get to add all the points he could have scored with DNFs? What factor do you use to multiply by? What are you multiplying?

It's pretty well accepted that a strong teammate hinders your ability to score WDC points because he will beat you if you make any mistakes or have any issues.

[FoxHound]

Is that the same Hamilton factor where you get to add all the points he could have scored with DNFs? What factor do you use to multiply by? What are you multiplying?

It's pretty well accepted that a strong teammate hinders your ability to score WDC points because he will beat you if you make any mistakes or have any issues.

How would you show this mathematically?
I understand the point you raise, but if it can be demonstrated in formula, it can then be applied to all drivers.

Beware, you'll spend a lot of time chasing ghosts.

[ringo]

I would say you have to look on the competiton to determine who had the better car.
The redbull was the better car IMO. If it reaches a point where you know the car is going to be on pole then it's a dominant car.
Hamilton's first dominant car was in 2014. His previous years were good cars but they were never dominant. Even 2008 and 2007. You could not say if it would be a ferrari or mclaren that would be on pole or run a way with a race.

So to me, we cannot use % or points to look on something that should be based on best car on the day, which is the sunday of each race. You either have the best car for that race or you don't.
Hamilton has had this kind of car for 20 races in 2014 and more than likely 19 races in 2015. That's 39 races having the best/better car.

For Vettel a similar thing can be done looking on his results. He clearly has had the best car for 4 years, and arguably half of another year in 2009. So if someone has the data at hand, they can look on each race the driver has competed in and determine based on relative dominance to the other cars in that particular race based on pace and then give that race to that car.
Using that method you will see who has had better cars on each sunday of their careers. Cars and just better over a season. That's too broad. It must be discrete race by race a yes or a no.

[dans79]

How would you show this mathematically?
I understand the point you raise, but if it can be demonstrated in formula, it can then be applied to all drivers.

Beware, you'll spend a lot of time chasing ghosts.

It would be a royal pain to calculate but i would do it like this:

For every race The teammate finishes ahead, id put him directly behind and recalculate points. So, If Nico finished 1st and Lewis 3rd , it would become Lewis 2nd & Nico 3rd. +3 points to Lewis.

The only caveat is it must be a penalty free race for the driver in question. For the example above, if Lewis finished 3rd because he got a stop go penalty, then the switch doesn't happen.

[Kingshark]

I'd say that, if I had to rank the five drivers mentioned above purely based on the cars they enjoyed throughout their careers:

1. Schumacher

2. Prost

3. Hamilton

4. Vettel

5. Senna

There isn't much between them at all. Prost has a lower average % than either Hamilton or Vettel mainly because of the dreadful car in his rookie season. Prost has had more cars which scored the most WCC points than anyone bar Schumacher, who has an average of nearly 83% in his first career.

Senna, I would actually say, has had the weakest cars out of the five. Both Vettel and Senna won 4 consecutive WCC, but Vettel's 2009 car was stronger relative to the competition than any of Senna's non-WCC winning cars, as the RB5 scored 89% of the Brawn's total points tally.

Wow, you're doing this assessment and don't know that Senna won 3 titles not 4. Senna won back to back titles but didn't win all three titles consecutively.

Wow, you're doing all this criticism, and you don't even know what WCC stands for?

[mrluke]

The % of winning WCC points is quite good because it doesn't care whether your dominant car won every race by a minute or 20 seconds, it was the best car over the season and that's all that matters.

Really I guess there should be some sort of comparison to how far ahead of 2nd place the team was but that doesn't really work if the team didnt win the WCC.

There are an awful lot of subjective variables and I don't see how you could ever really account for them properly so I think that any more detailed analysis is going to reflect the authors bias.

[Moose]

The thing that I find odd is people averaging out the percentage. It makes absolutely zero sense to me. If you have a car that's capable of completing a lap 10s faster than anyone else for one year, and then a car that's reliably 0.5 seconds a lap slower than another for 5 years in a row, that doesn't mean that you could/should have won the championship 3 times - that means that it's only reasonable to expect you to have won it once.

That's exactly the situation we have here too. It's unreasonable to say "Hamilton has had better cars" because he's had two absolutely dominant ones, and then multiple years where another car has been a little faster. It's also unreasonable to say "Vettel has had worse cars" because he's had one year in a very bad car, and then several in a car that's slightly better than the rest of the field.

[Just_a_fan]

I'd say that, if I had to rank the five drivers mentioned above purely based on the cars they enjoyed throughout their careers:

1. Schumacher

2. Prost

3. Hamilton

4. Vettel

5. Senna

There isn't much between them at all. Prost has a lower average % than either Hamilton or Vettel mainly because of the dreadful car in his rookie season. Prost has had more cars which scored the most WCC points than anyone bar Schumacher, who has an average of nearly 83% in his first career.

Senna, I would actually say, has had the weakest cars out of the five. Both Vettel and Senna won 4 consecutive WCC, but Vettel's 2009 car was stronger relative to the competition than any of Senna's non-WCC winning cars, as the RB5 scored 89% of the Brawn's total points tally.

Wow, you're doing this assessment and don't know that Senna won 3 titles not 4. Senna won back to back titles but didn't win all three titles consecutively.

Wow, you're doing all this criticism, and you don't even know what WCC stands for?

Sorry, mea culpa but as neither Senna nor Vettel won the WCC, the teams did, not sure what your MO is on this either way.

At least I didn't use down votes...

[ringo]

The thing that I find odd is people averaging out the percentage. It makes absolutely zero sense to me. If you have a car that's capable of completing a lap 10s faster than anyone else for one year, and then a car that's reliably 0.5 seconds a lap slower than another for 5 years in a row, that doesn't mean that you could/should have won the championship 3 times - that means that it's only reasonable to expect you to have won it once.

That's exactly the situation we have here too. It's unreasonable to say "Hamilton has had better cars" because he's had two absolutely dominant ones, and then multiple years where another car has been a little faster. It's also unreasonable to say "Vettel has had worse cars" because he's had one year in a very bad car, and then several in a car that's slightly better than the rest of the field.

Exactly my point. It should be this:

Lewis: 20 races of 100 with a car that was the best.
Vettel 50 of 200 with a car that was the best.

You simply have to look on it race by race in discrete yes or no answers. Nothing more. The best car on the day is the best. Independent of its reliability or the accidents that occur. We are not looking at who made the best of his car. We are simply looking at who has the best weapon in each and every fight that they have been in.

So i repeat... if the mp23 was best car to have 10 times out of 17 in 2008 or whatever year it is then you note those 10.
Move to the next year and rinse and repeat. Look at the total races entered then make your comparison. simple.