Who has had better cars - Hamilton or Vettel?

[PlatinumZealot]

Agree to that. This will forever be a driver thread until these two drivers go out together on a test and tune day with all the cars that they both have driven, taking turns feeling the different nuances between them and sharing notes and comments.

[flynfrog]

My reasoning for continuing to push this thread back to the cars is that its only way this thread will stay open. Once it devolves into a driver fan boy fest it's getting locked.

It started as a driver thread and hasn't changed from post no.1 to now. The subtext of the thread title and opening post is obvious and why I suggested early on that the thread title should be changed to reflect your assertion that it's a car thread. But...

Thread tittle is who had better cars. Not sure where it says who was the better driver.... What would you suggest the tittle be changed to.

[flynfrog]

Agree to that. This will forever be a driver thread until these two drivers go out together on a test and tune day with all the cars that they both have driven, taking turns feeling the different nuances between them and sharing notes and comments.

That would prove what exactly? It has nothing to do with a dominate car. Has no reflection of reliability or race results.


A better car scores more points than the other cars end of story nothing else matters at the end of the day. If a car can help a certain driver get the most out of it it simply means its a good car.

[Moose]

Agree to that. This will forever be a driver thread until these two drivers go out together on a test and tune day with all the cars that they both have driven, taking turns feeling the different nuances between them and sharing notes and comments.

That would prove what exactly? It has nothing to do with a dominate car. Has no reflection of reliability or race results.


A better car scores more points than the other cars end of story nothing else matters at the end of the day.

No, a better car scores more points than the other cars when given equal drivers and equal conditions.

If a car can help a certain driver get the most out of it it simply means its a good car.

For sure - but that doesn't mean that a car that scores well is necessarily a good car. It could also mean that the car is mediocre, with a good driver in it, while another car is good with a mediocre driver in it.

Ultimately you're still trying to work from the same axiom - that drivers are all equal, and therefore you can directly compare cars based on points. That's clearly not true, otherwise the drivers would be arranged 2 by 2 in the drivers championship, rather than certain drivers consistently coming out on top of others, despite having the same car.

I would agree that your approach would be a valid one, if we had a statistically significant number of drivers sit in the various cars and try to score points with them. Unfortunately, 2 is not statistically significant.

[flynfrog]

Agree to that. This will forever be a driver thread until these two drivers go out together on a test and tune day with all the cars that they both have driven, taking turns feeling the different nuances between them and sharing notes and comments.

That would prove what exactly? It has nothing to do with a dominate car. Has no reflection of reliability or race results.


A better car scores more points than the other cars end of story nothing else matters at the end of the day.

No, a better car scores more points than the other cars when given equal drivers and equal conditions.

If a car can help a certain driver get the most out of it it simply means its a good car.

For sure - but that doesn't mean that a car that scores well is necessarily a good car. It could also mean that the car is mediocre, with a good driver in it, while another car is good with a mediocre driver in it.

Ultimately you're still trying to work from the same axiom - that drivers are all equal, and therefore you can directly compare cars based on points. That's clearly not true, otherwise the drivers would be arranged 2 by 2 in the drivers championship, rather than certain drivers consistently coming out on top of others, despite having the same car.

I would agree that your approach would be a valid one, if we had a statistically significant number of drivers sit in the various cars and try to score points with them. Unfortunately, 2 is not statistically significant.

Last I checked the points weren't award based on if the drivers or cars are equal. Sure a driver can flatter a car and a car can flatter a driver. But if the drivers are not equal as you propose what are the odds two drivers on the same team flatter a car. Id wager you can take any of the non pay drivers put the in the WCC car and they would have a shot at the WDC.

But I am drifting into I think and I feel. If we are going to continue in the tread let's talk data. I agree we have a limited data set and we are making assumptions but lets put seb and ham in the same WCC car what do you think the odds are they wouldn't finish 1-2 in the wdc would be?

[Moose]

Last I checked the points weren't award based on if the drivers or cars are equal. Sure a driver can flatter a car and a car can flatter a driver. But if the drivers are not equal as you propose what are the odds two drivers on the same team flatter a car. Id wager you can take any of the non pay drivers put the in the WCC car and they would have a shot at the WDC.

Except again - Alonso has comprehensively proven that this is not true about the situation in 2007.

Alonso comprehensively beat both Kimi and Massa in the same car. I find it a pretty easy leap from there to suggest that the driver pairing in the 2007 McLaren was flattering the car, while the driver pairing in the 2007 Ferrari was not.

None of that really matters though, because the key point here is not whether a particular car was flattered or not, but instead whether you can say a driver can make a substantial difference. We have clear evidence that a driver can, and regularly does, make around a 0.2-0.3 second a lap difference compared to another highly rated, non-pay driver. We can see that in the current Ferrari team, the current Mercedes team and last year's Ferrari team. Based on that, it's reasonable to assert that in years where the cars were sufficiently close that 0.2-0.3 seconds a lap could make the difference between pole and a win, or 3rd and 3rd, we can't make any determination about the quality of a car based on the points it scored. This is because a better or worse driver clearly could have skewed the results in either direction.

Based on that, I think it's reasonable to say that we can make a clear determination about the best car at the beginning of 2009 (the Brawn), the best car in 2010 (the RedBull), the best car in 2011 (the RedBull), the best car at the end of 2013 (the RedBull), and the best car in 2014 (the Mercedes).

However, also based on that it's reasonable to say that we can not make a clear determination about the best car in 2007, 2008, the end of 2009, 2012, and the beginning of 2013.

My personal opinion is that the best car was in those years, the Ferrari, the Ferrari, the RedBull, the McLaren and the Mercedes respectively.

But I am drifting into I think and I feel. If we are going to continue in the tread let's talk data. I agree we have a limited data set and we are making assumptions but lets put seb and ham in the same WCC car what do you think the odds are they wouldn't finish 1-2 in the wdc would be?

I think that 1) that's a poor driver pairing to choose, because we have very little idea of their relative speed, and 2) that would depend entirely on how close that WCC car was to the second place car.

If we choose Alonso and Kimi though, (both WDCs in their own right), I think it's very clear though that it's entirely possible that Alonso could win the championship, and have several other drivers between him and Kimi if the field were reasonably close (both 2013 and 2014 demonstrated that the performance delta is easily large enough for that to be the case).