The best Formula One driver of all time according to SCIENCE

[MaxGlayn]

Saw this article and thought you guys might find this interesting:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... inner.html

A new study claims to have worked out who is the all-time greatest driver
It is based on driver skill and counters for the effect of the car's team
Some of F1's greats fail to make the top 20, replaced by relative unknowns
According to the researchers, it shows how things might have been very different if some of these drivers had different teams

What do you think?

[SectorOne]

What i think?

"science".

[Just_a_fan]

Load of tosh. Stirling Moss in 35th place? The man could, and did, drive anything and everything. He beat everyone at some point or other and only lost out on a world title because he stood up for Hawthorn who then got the title by one point because of it.

And Christian Fittipaldi? Really? Sure he was quick enough but he was nothing special. He got a fourth place once - in a race where only 5 drivers crossed the line! He had a couple of other points finishes but, again, this was the days of high attrition where if you just kept going you often got a point or two.

[PlatinumZealot]

Rubbish list

Heidfeld better than Moss?

[DiogoBrand]

Can't argue with science guys

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Because the discipline of racing is increasing and teams are becoming more and more thorough in how they approach a race weekend, maximizing opportunities and minimizing mistakes, coupled with the way the cars are now being conceived and developed, does that take away the impact from a driver's ability to win? It seems that is what is happening with this rubbish ranking some crazy idiot has come up with.

What this stupid logic does now is, if ever it exists, the future generation of drivers would never come anywhere inside the top 10, no matter how good they are going to be, because the teams' maturity to run race weekend that minimizes the chances of a bad car or a bad race.

I can make peace with the fact that, each driver of his generation, who is great in that generation, is simply a great. I don't have this craving for the nonsense of finding out WHO IS THE BEST DRIVER OF ALL TIME?

Science....? Since when did BS started becoming science?

[PlatinumZealot]

Can't argue with science guys

Ha... and does their "science" account for in race conditions? I bet not.
The only scientific way to compare drivers is to put them in the same set of cars on different tracks. A matrix of cars and tracks. Then the best will shine through - whether through set up skills or driving talent.

[markc]

Science and Daily Mail. Lol! No wonder the results are tosh!! Garbage in garbage out. Daily Mail. 'Nuff said!!

[DiogoBrand]

Can't argue with science guys

Ha... and does their "science" account for in race conditions? I bet not.
The only scientific way to compare drivers is to put them in the same set of cars on different tracks. A matrix of cars and tracks. Then the best will shine through - whether through set up skills or driving talent.

I was being sarcastic, in fact I finid it ridiculous to say "science has decided the best driver of all time". There is simply no comparison between differente eras.
Basically, as time goes by, the influence of the driver decreases and the influence and the car and team increases, so they can't say "the driver has 15% influence". Also, this change in influence can work both ways. So in the 1950's good drivers would compensate not having the best car and still could win, and today, if you don't have a good car it's impossible to win, but also if you have a good car and win no one will consider you a good driver.
I mean, Sebastian Vettel could race in the 1950's and absolutely dominate, but racing today it's really difficult for him to be praised as an all time great since he simply can't do anything without a good car, and thats for all drivers in the modern era. Also, Vettel could be a terrible driver that's been brought to 4 world titles by an impressive car, which many would argue it's true.
So if we can't even judge drivers from the current era, there's no possible way to rank them against drivers from 60 years ago, and vice-versa.

[DiogoBrand]

Another point, I bet not one person can even state what makes a good driver: Is it raw pace for one lap with no consistency? Is it a driver with not so much pace but that wins by being consistent? Is it being slower but winning through strategy?
For instance, Senna was probably way better than Prost on a qualifying lap, but many times Prost won through consistency, strategy, or by Senna's mistakes. So which one's the better driver? The fastest through one lap or the more consistent through a race? And that's one of infinite examples we could find in motorsport. There are good drivers and not-so-good ones, but saying one's better than the other is a really complicate matter, in fact so complicated and pointless I think it should be ignored.

[Chuckjr]

Reality check for the day...

Say you knew little to nothing about f1 drivers. So You look up f1 and by chance find this article which scientifically tells you who the best drivers were, and then you form an opinion based on its scientific evidence. No one can refute you because you have science backing you up. Sound familiar?

If blind science comes to this conclusion about race drivers based on its own principals, what else is blind science this patently wrong about regarding the world as we have scientifically dissected it?

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[SectorOne]

Reality check for the day...

Say you knew little to nothing about f1 drivers. So You look up f1 and by chance find this article which scientifically tells you who the best drivers were, and then you form an opinion based on its scientific evidence. No one can refute you because you have science backing you up. Sound familiar?

What scientific evidence. Any man smart enough to understand the concept of scientific evidence would realize this link has none of it.

[Just_a_fan]

So You look up f1 and by chance find this article which scientifically tells you who the best drivers were, and then you form an opinion based on its scientific evidence. No one can refute you because you have science backing you up. Sound familiar?

Science has method and that method includes peer review and the idea of repeatability. The article doesn't give any information about the actual process used, although it does say the paper is presented in a journal. It would be interesting to see the assumptions behind their method and whether those assumptions stand up to scrutiny.

When science is done correctly, it is always open to refutation - that's the way it works. If someone can prove that a scientific "fact" is actually false then the fact is dropped and science starts again trying to understand the subject in question. That's why it is not religion - religion is based on dogma and refutation of that dogma is absolutely not allowed.

[Chuckjr]

I'd be curious your response to this...

[FoxHound]

So You look up f1 and by chance find this article which scientifically tells you who the best drivers were, and then you form an opinion based on its scientific evidence. No one can refute you because you have science backing you up. Sound familiar?

Science has method and that method includes peer review and the idea of repeatability. The article doesn't give any information about the actual process used, although it does say the paper is presented in a journal. It would be interesting to see the assumptions behind their method and whether those assumptions stand up to scrutiny.

When science is done correctly, it is always open to refutation - that's the way it works. If someone can prove that a scientific "fact" is actually false then the fact is dropped and science starts again trying to understand the subject in question. That's why it is not religion - religion is based on dogma and refutation of that dogma is absolutely not allowed.

But there is a precedent of Scientific dogma, where Scientific zealotry and elitism is displayed to put down new ideas contrary to "scientific norm", a parallel to Religious zealotry. Witness the repugnant Krauss eviscerate Stuart Hameroff on his consciousness theory- a theory which later gained traction and credibility leading to Nobel Prize candidacy(along with Sir Roger Penrose).


What infuriates me and is something you touched upon, is that this article regarding the "best driver of all time" has no information as to how they got to the conclusions.
What parameters where set, how why when etc etc.

And in the end, this can be overturned to another set of parameters with a completely different set of results....aka my god is better than yours....