The element of luck - does bad luck exist in racing?

[Mr Alcatraz]

That was luck

Who's luck, your luck, my luck or just good old fashioned luck?

[raymondu999]

You agreeing with me... I guess it's your good luck then

Nah. We do agree. Sometimes.

[beelsebob]

The people claiming there's no luck in F1 are making a flawed assumption – that it's possible to build a perfect F1 car that will win at every race in all circumstances.

Trivial example of why there is luck in F1. You can design you car to be able to take a 1kg object impacting it's suspension at 200mph. Alternatively, you can design the car to not be able to do that, but be significantly lighter. These choices are mutually exclusive. Whether your car gets hit by a 1kg object or not... luck.

Clearly you design a car to try to win in as many sets of circumstances as possible, but that doesn't change the fact that whether those circumstances come up, whether the circumstances that cause you to come 10th come up, or whether the circumstances that cause your car to fail come up is pure, blind, luck.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

The people claiming there's no luck in F1 are making a flawed assumption

Agree.
The thing about having the ability to change something doesn't mean you can always change it. Human's nor machines are unerring, nothing is perfect.
And every so often statistical fluctuation will find the imperfection, exposing whomever to the course of bad/good luck.

Sometimes, there is nothing you can do.

Look at poker. A Machine will go all-in with AA pre-flop and have a 84% chance of winning heads up. 16 times out of a 100 it will lose. But, sometimes you can run bad and lose 40-50 times out of a hundred with AA.
The stats will back you to regather this anomaly, but if you only play 1000 hands a year it will take you 20 years to recoup your deficit.

It does not mean you are a bad player. Just unlucky.

In terms of F1, there are even more factors. People are talking about Schumacher having the worst run of bad luck, and to an extent I see why.
But let's look at say, Massa. In 2008, he was World champion for about 20 seconds. But, there was a string of events beyond human control.
On the last corner of the last lap, Hamilton overtook Glock.
How many variables were outside of human control during this race? Tyres, weather, temperature, human decision making.
I wonder what Hamilton aficionados reckon.

Fast forward 2009 and who Massa follows Barrichello who's spring decides it's had enough. The timing is so perfect, the location so dangerous, the trajectory right in line with the driver...that you have to wonder.

He lost a WDC, and nearly his life in the space of around 8 months. This is plain bad luck.

[Mr Alcatraz]

You could extrapolate it even further and if you looked hard enough you could probably find a situation during the season where through no fault or fortune of their own; Lewis and Felipe could have gained or lost points.

[Just_a_fan]

The concept of "luck" is merely the anthropomorphism of probability. "Lady Luck" is the usual term.

Good luck is just a time when the probabilities go in your favour, bad luck is when they go against you.

The probability of being hit by a meteorite, for example, is pretty low. If it were to happen, people might say "he was very unlucky to be hit". The reality is that the probability existed that he might be hit and this time he was hit.

In engineering terms, luck is probably better known as risk. Sure, there is a chance (probability) that a driver might be hit by a loose heave spring. If it happens, the consequences will be major. However, the risk is still small because the probability is also small (indeed, it's very small). That's a low risk scenario and so, if it happens, it's seen by some as "bad luck"

Perhaps another way of looking at luck is that it is the reciprocal of the risk. Being affected in a high risk situation isn't seen as being unlucky; being affected in a low risk situation is seen as unlucky though e.g. Massa and the heave spring.

Some have said that Hamilton has been unlucky with some pit stops affecting his race. It's not really luck it's just that McLaren have engineered a reasonable probability of failure in to their pit stop systems. No luck involved.

[marcush.]

I ´d think we need to really put those bizarre strokes of lightning -as happened to Surtees or Massa out of the equation even though:

we see wheel teethers growing in number and ability to take loads and Helmet manufacturers having reacted with special protective visors.

We have to decifer between minimising the consequences of things going wrong -passive security and actively loking into the possibilities and probabilities of things going wrong.

[xpensive]

Another perspective, when Ronnie Peterson retired from four of the first five races of 1973 with gearbox trouble,
that's not bad luck at all, it's sheer abuse. In particular when Emerson won three of those driving the same Lotus.

[marcush.]

Another perspective, when Ronnie Peterson retired from four of the first five races of 1973 with gearbox trouble,
that's not bad luck at all, it's sheer abuse. In particular when Emerson won three of those driving the same Lotus.

back then -gearbox was THE DNF reason of all ... you could get it terribly wrong with these -and it´s a thing of the pastr with paddle shift -the car is doing the tricky bit and won´t allow you to overrev ,rodstrecher -mossed shifts etc..

[scarlet]

Of course there's luck. You could be on pole by 2 seconds and leading into the first corner for someone else to miss their braking and take you out.

You can minimise the chance of bad luck hitting you though - what people refer to as 'making your own luck'. Something Red Bull did brilliantly last year with Seb.

[Belatti]

Some food for thought

"And I always found that the harder I worked, the better my luck was, because I was prepared for that."

"Any fool can have bad luck; the art consists in knowing how to exploit it."

"Care and diligence bring luck."

[Just_a_fan]

Of course there's luck. You could be on pole by 2 seconds and leading into the first corner for someone else to miss their braking and take you out.

You can minimise the chance of bad luck hitting you though - what people refer to as 'making your own luck'. Something Red Bull did brilliantly last year with Seb.

That's not luck. It's human error. Sure, it's not under your control but so what? There's a probability that this will happen at each race. That it doesn't happen all the time just shows that it's a small probability. No luck involved.

[Shrieker]

Bad Luck is when a bird flies into your helmet at 300kmh. No-one could predict that and no-one can prevent it. That is bad luck. I don't see too many drivers with bad luck.

This happened to Noriyuki Haga in 2009 at Monza. Ok, the bird didn't go through his visor but hit his arm, causing him to dnf iirc. He might've gathered enough points there to win the title come season's end. On another note, I do think that it's prevantable, if you fully enclose the circuit with fences. That'd be overkill though.

[Mr Alcatraz]

I do think that it's prevantable, if you fully enclose the circuit with fences. That'd be overkill though.

Well it would have at least kept that nut job, excommunicated priest from running on to the track at Silverstone. I hope he is in a cage because he will make another appearance at the Olympics

[marcush.]

Some food for thought

"And I always found that the harder I worked, the better my luck was, because I was prepared for that."

"Any fool can have bad luck; the art consists in knowing how to exploit it."

"Care and diligence bring luck."

Ialways worry about my work and think about what could go wrong and what I could have not weighed up or accounted for properly or even have missed completely.
My idea is:what can be imagined to go wrong will go some day.So if you prepare for it you will start preventive action starting in the concept already.