F1 Performance: is it the car, is it the driver?

[djos]

I think you need to re watch the last half of the 2009 season again, Button was utterly mediocre and the RedBull drivers wiped the floor with him despite a heavily compromised and late coming DDD.

If it weren't for the DDD and Merc engine, Button would still be just another F1 Journeyman!

[Kingshark]

I think you need to re watch the last half of the 2009 season again, Button was utterly mediocre and the RedBull drivers wiped the floor with him despite a heavily compromised and late coming DDD.

Did the Red Bull drivers wipe the floor with JB, or was it the car?

I remember counting the weekends where Brawn were faster than Red Bull, and vice versa. You end up with Red Bull actually having a slight advantage overall.

Brawn was faster than RBR in: Australia, Malaysia, Bahrain, Spain, Monaco, Turkey, Valencia, and Monza.
RBR was faster than Brawn in: China, Silverstone, Nurburgring, Hungary, Belgium, Singapore, Japan, Brazil, and Abu Dhabi.

So much for the "dominant" BGP-001 eh?

[djos]

It was dominant for the 1st 7 races, for the last 10 races JB didn't win a single one, Lewis won one in a Macca, Webber & Seb one 2 each for Redbull, Rubens one 1 and Kimi won 1.

The first 7 races before everyone else got their DDD's working are the sole reason JB is a world champion.

Look I'm a huge Webber fan but he's not a WDC because he couldn't keep it together for the entire 2010 and he had a really strong team mate in Seb. JB only had the solid but never great, frequently too emotional Rubens to beat.

[Jolle]

Reading (most) of this post, about 15% driver, 30% driver, who is the best driver in a bad car....

I think there is a beter system.

Every car (x) with tires (t) has a perfect laptime (Lmax).
Every driver has the capability to get a car near this perfect laptime (d) in -seconds.

So rating and comparing the drivers and cars, you get (Lmax-d)

For HAM, (d) is very low, even with a very difficult car he can still come pretty close to perfection, so can ALO.
RAI, VET and BUT need a car that is very "them" to come close to (Lmax), therefore score a higher (d).

For me this year, I'm very surprised about HAM, the last few years with McLaren he's been on and over the edge (on and off track) and his driving style was fast but destructive (for car, tires and opponents). But this year so focused, waiting, fast, balanced... like the mind of Prost and the speed of Senna. It looks like if he has no mechanical failure or a teammate crossing him, he wins.

[Stradivarius]

For me this year, I'm very surprised about HAM, the last few years with McLaren he's been on and over the edge (on and off track) and his driving style was fast but destructive (for car, tires and opponents). But this year so focused, waiting, fast, balanced... like the mind of Prost and the speed of Senna. It looks like if he has no mechanical failure or a teammate crossing him, he wins.

That's probably a result of the car being so dominant. When your car is by far the quickest, it is indeed primarily mechanical failures and the team mate who can deny you the win.

[hollus]

There is a very nice analysis in teh forum at F1fanatic giving strong support to the fact that it is always the car:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/groups/f1/fo ... age-speed/

He looked at all quali session this year after removing Mercedes, and ordered them by average lap speed. A highlight:

My conclusions:

1) Williams is the 2nd fastest team on the faster circuits (even 1st in Austria) with RedBull taking over on the slower circuits. Canada seems to be the crossover point at 210km/hr (where the fastest RedBull and Williams times were almost identical) with Williams faster on anything above that except during wet sessions. RedBull are faster on anything below that, and the three upcoming races fall into RedBull territory.
2) Discounting Hungary & Germany where Hamilton didn’t run the full sessions, there is an interesting split between the Mercedes pair. On the 8 fastest circuits, Rosberg leads 6-2, whereas on the 6 slowest circuits, Hamilton leads 5-1 (and let’s not discuss where the “1” came from). Brazil & USA are in the middle of the ‘crossover’ zone, but Abu Dhabi is Hamilton territory in speed terms.

[marcush.]

J-B driving a nediocre second half season in 2009 ....myomy ..you did certainly watch a different season than me that year.
Jenson did all that was necessary to bag that championship with a car that lost its performance advantage rapidly.He masterfully kept his head level and bagged that title.
What else would you ask from a competent driver? The full monty would have been the target for next year ..and look how he
performed at Mclaren vs the very best -at least the very best we all thought at that time.Lewis found a match at least in terms of overall results achieved there is no denying of that .J-B might not score in terms of spectacular driving above all human limits but he is driving very well within the limits which nets results.simple as that-the others abuse their machinery and pay the price.
Lewis can drive within the limits this year simply cos the Merc is a dominant package and only shhort bursts of near max performance are needed to create the necessary gap to win the race.Friction and failure is more or less a function of being too close to the teammate this year not driving above sensible limits.

[SectorOne]

It was dominant for the 1st 7 races, for the last 10 races JB didn't win a single one, Lewis won one in a Macca, Webber & Seb one 2 each for Redbull, Rubens one 1 and Kimi won 1.

You are missing three race wins.

Vettel won 3
Hamilton won 2
Barrichello won 2
Webber won 2
Raikkonen won 1

[Stradivarius]

Is it the car, is it the driver? I think most agree that it is both. How much is it the car, and how much is it the driver? I have tried to find an objective answer to this question by simply analysing the results.

In my opinion, the best measure of success in formula 1, as in all other sports, is results. I have therefore looked at all the points scored under the current points system. The cars change every year and the amount of points a car scores during one season is used as a measure of how strong the car is. The strength of one car can then be compared to the strength of another car by comparing the points. This comparison does not take into account that the best drivers tend to drive the best cars, which is normally the case. For the drivers we are limited to looking at driver pairs who drive the same car, i.e. the team mates, as they are the only drivers who have the same car. I assume that the team mates are getting equal treatment by their team, which is false in some cases, like Ferrari. Further, I am only looking at the teams that actually has scored points. This means that only the top 9 teams are considered each year. The 2014 season is not complete yet, so the results until the Russian grand prix have simply been scaled with a factor of 19/16. The 2012 season is left unchanged despite it featuring 20 races, one more race than the rest of the seasons.

The results are taken from f1.com, where everyone can find the raw data, but I will explain here how I have used them, through some examples. Both for the teams and the drivers I have 45 data points, 9 from each season. In 2010, Red Bull scored 498 points, so 498 is the first entry for the team data. Vettel scored 14 points more than Webber, so for the driver data, 14 is the first entry. The second entry for the teams is 454 points (McLaren's score from 2010) and for the drivers it is 26 (since Hamilton scored 26 points more than Button in 2010). The first 9 entries are from 2010 and then the 10th to 18th are from 2011, then 2012 and so on. The values of the team data range from 2.375 (Marussia's 2 points this year scaled to account for the 3 races missing so far) to 671 points (Mercedes' 565 points scaled to account for the 3 races missing). The driver difference ranges from 2 points (Hamilton beat Button by only 2 points in 2012) to 198 points (Vettel beat Webber by 198 points in 2013). I tried to find a way to scale the differences to account for the fact that no driver in the Marussia team could ever beat his team mate by 198 points, but I couldn't think of any good method of doing so.

The average score of a team is 215 points. The standard deviation is 191 points. Since each team has two cars, these numbers are divided by two in order to enable direct comparison to drivers. This gives an average of 113 points and a standard deviation of 95 points.

The average points difference between two drivers in the same team is 48. The standard deviation is 49. This indicates that the car performance is about twice as important as the driver performance. The assumption that the drivers are equally good makes this an overestimate of the car's importance, while the assumption that all drivers are treated equal as their team mate makes it an underestimate. Assuming that these two false assumptions cancel each other out, I would say it is generally about 2/3 the car and about 1/3 the driver, which makes perfect sense to me. Despite what manye people here write, there is a big difference between some drivers, allthough the top drivers are probably very equal.

Code: Select all

Team    Driver
670.9	 20.2
406.1	 66.5
256.5	 87.9
223.3	111.6
169.8	 53.4
146.1	 34.4
 34.4	 15.4
  9.5	  9.5
  2.4	  2.4
596	  198
360	   18
354	  130
315	   51
122	   24
 77	   19
 57	   45
 33	   19
  5	    3
460	  102
400	  156
378	    2
303	  111
142	   44
126	    6
109	   17
 76	   14
 26	    6
650	  134
497	   43
375	  139
165	   13
 73	    3
 69	   15
 44	   16
 41	   11
  5	    3
498	   14
454	   26
396	  108
214	   70
163	  109
 69	   25
 68	   26
 44	   26
 13	    3

[Andres125sx]

The problem with that maths, as with the whole thread, is driver role varies with the seasson.

They always have to beat their teammate, but when trying to compare different teams there's a critical factor nobody mentioned yet. Team perfomance differences. For example, 2008 seasson Ferrari and McLaren performance was similar, so in that seasson driver role was higher. This season is completely diferent tough, as Mercedes is far away from any other team so any driver (pair) would win with that car.

Some seasons it's 50/50 while others may be 90/10

[FoxHound]

The problem with that maths is that it ignores the "it's always the car mantra".

Not to be obtuse, Vettel was marvelous in the final 9 races of 2013, and has been ordinary the last 15.
What is the differentiator? The car.

To the point of making a driver look fantastic and then ordinary. So when a car has the power to do that, how can you even remotely begin to start using maths to work out how good a driver is? In my humble opinion, you just can't.

Cars change from season to season, the one constant we have is the driver. Therefore the only way we can decipher how good he is, of course, is against his team mate.

And even then, some foibles can spoil the results, like politics, luck or reliability.

[SiLo]

It's almost always the car. And in very few cases the driver. No science needed, it's been plain obvious for a long time now.

When was the last time someone won the championship in an inferior car?

[Miguel]

It's almost always the car. And in very few cases the driver. No science needed, it's been plain obvious for a long time now.

When was the last time someone won the championship in an inferior car?

We've had a few close calls lately! 2012 would have been such an underdog win. So, how inferior do you want to go? 2nd fastest? 3rd fastest? Hamilton won in 2008, but the Ferrari that year was hopeless (i.e. worse than McLaren) in the rain. Back in 2003 I felt the Williams drivers threw away the championship. McLaren may have been the fastest car in 2000. Schumacher in 1995 was in probably the 2nd best car. Senna in 1991 is the same as Alonso in 2005. Prost in 1986 definitely counts, as does Rosberg in the dramatic 1982 title. Anything else is probably nitpicking.

But never mind, it's almost always the car, as it should be on a team sport.

[Just_a_fan]

Jenson did all that was necessary to bag that championship with a car that lost its performance advantage rapidly.He masterfully kept his head level and bagged that title.

Was this the time he was keeping his head and asking the pit wall team "how has this car got so bad?" because everyone else had suddenly caught up with Brawn.

[Just_a_fan]

It's almost always the car. And in very few cases the driver.

An example being Senna and Prost at Monaco. No one is going to seriously claim that Prost was slow but Senna somehow managed to qualify the same car 1.4s quicker than Prost. Even Prost was shocked.

The fact that Senna crashed out from the lead in the race shows that the driver was making the difference. But this is a rare example.

Usually, where the team mates are separated by a meaningful amount, it's because one is just better than the other e.g. Schumacher and Barrichello. Occasionally one or other has a good/bad race and the results are reversed. But Schumacher was that much quicker than his team mate that we all forget that the car was usually the class of the field and no one else had a chance anyway.

See how the change in tyre rules allowed Alonso to suddenly take the title away from Schumacher after the latter had dominated for several years. Alonso hadn't suddenly got better than Schumacher - the rules favoured his car's approach over Schumacher's car's approach to tyre use.

We are not looking at "A > B" but rather "(A + x + y + z) > (B + r + s + t)" where the driver is A or B and lots of other factors are also involved.