Who has had better cars - Hamilton or Vettel?

[PlatinumZealot]

This should not even be a thread.

Vettel has had 5 dominant cars. Hamilton would bite your balls off If you offered him those RedBull seats and a number 2 teammate.

[flynfrog]

This should not even be a thread.

Vettel has had 5 dominant cars. Hamilton would bite your balls off If you offered him those RedBull seats and a number 2 teammate.

If you guys would stop making baseless claims it could actually be a good driver thread. You can't claim one driver or another had a dominate car if you haven't even defined what a dominate car is. Where does dominance start is it 75% of all available points a season. Why not try ignoring the whos car it was and define your criteria first.

[flynfrog]

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.

you aren't comparing drivers you are comparing cars. WCC points don't care who scores them. Maybe i'm not following what you are saying.

[Kingshark]

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.

Last time I checked, the drivers are a part of the team, so yes, Vettel and Senna have won WCC before, just like Messi has won the Champions League before.

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

Did I? You are derailing the thread with this silly argument.

[flynfrog]

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.

I dont think your really need to add any factors of variables. The purpose of a race car is to score as many points as possible. It doesn't need a large gap to do it just needs to do it more than the other car. WCC points scored is probably as good as we are going to get for a metric here. Now how do you define dominance.

[Kingshark]

I dont think your really need to add any factors of variables. The purpose of a race car is to score as many points as possible. It doesn't need a large gap to do it just needs to do it more than the other car. WCC points scored is probably as good as we are going to get for a metric here. Now how do you define dominance.

I beg to differ on this. In some seasons reliability is just better than others.

For instance, McLaren scored 118 more points in 2011 than they did in 2008. However, Lewis was still able to win the WDC in 2008, while no one even came close to Vettel in 2011. This is because the Ferrari F2008 was a much more inconsistent car than the Red Bull RB7 was. The RB7 was fast no matter what, while the F2008 was only fast when the conditions suited it. Likewise, the RB7 was more reliable than the F2008.

This is why the MP4/23 was overall a better car than the MP4/26, because despite the latter scoring significantly more points, it was significantly easier to win the WDC in the former.

To give you another example, the Williams FW14B scored 456 points in 1992, which is less than the 2011 McLaren. Now most people would agree that relative to the competition, the MP4/26 is not even half the car that the FW14B was.

Hence, I'd say that the % of points scored relative to the WDC winning team might actually be a better method than the absolute # of points scored.

[Vasconia]

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?

Come on, we know that Kimi is not the most regular driver on the world, but call him mediocre?? Massa has been very fast when he has had the day, its the same with other drivers like Coulthard, Montoya,etc. During a good day they could beat any driver but on the bad days they were pretty mediocre.

And yes, I am quite sure that back in the 2007/2008 seasons, 7/8 years ago, Kimi was a faster driver. I consider that he has not been the same after the comeback, he has lost speed with is quite logic when you are a veteran driver, during the Lotus years he showed that he was still fast on Sundays but it was clear that he had lost pure speed. We have a perfect example with Schumacher, was he the same driver in 2006 and 2010? of course, not.

I am quite sure that Alonso and Hamilton are clearly better drivers but they lost a lot of points in their internal war and Hamilton did some stupid mistakes which prevented him from winnning the WC.

[Phil]

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.

Sadly, you could pick holes into any metric. That's a given. What I do like about qualifying as a means to determine the maximum potential of a given car is because it's essentially a single session of say 10 minutes (Q3) where each top-team shows their hand and tries to extract the fullest [given their strategy/ability/setup]. Within that session, you often have two attempts of a single lap, of perhaps 1 to 2 minutes each. A lot can go wrong, but a lot can also go right. Now, compare this to including race results, using the point-scoring system (25,18,15...) which is very arbitrary to begin with where over the course of at least 1h and 30 minutes, anything and everything can either go according to plan... or not. There are numerous examples where this doesn't: A safety car ruins it, a slow pit stop turns the order upside down, a slower car on a 1-stop strategy ends up ahead of you and 'brakes' your strategy... Look no further than Monaco 2015. It could, no should have been one of the most dominant victories in the history of Monaco, yet it ended up a 3rd place 15 point result through pure stupidity.

This topic is precisely about discussing who had the better car / or which cars have been better than one another. IMO, the only available metric that shows this with the least amount of external factors is qualifying. I am absolutely aware that there are some cars that perform relatively better during the race than qualifying, but the problem with that is that under race conditions, it is rarely a full-out race to the checkered flag, there's a lot of managing and conserving going on. In other words; cars not being driven at their potential. The best way to win is always in the slowest manner, because there is no logic in running the risk of over driving your components and risking technical issues. It's also best to hide what potential you have (as long as you can) to keep the competition guessing on how much spare you have in hand.

Races have a lot to do with circumstance. I know there are many people that like pointing out that Button beat Lewis in 2011. Yes he did, in points at least. But if you go back and analyze race by race, it is easily shown that Hamilton was with few exception always the quicker one on track, but errors, crashes, DNFs, silly mistakes in both qualifying and the race hampered his overall race result. By using that data, you may end up with something that is statistically accurate and as factual as one can get, but only with half of the truth in answering the topics question.

So the question becomes: Is this thread here to determine who had the better results/race-days (e.g. points) or is it to determine which car was generally quickest relative to the competition?

If it was me (and sadly, I just don't have the time right now to gather the data myself), I'd look at qualifying since 2010 (prior 2010 is tricky because the qualifying format was different) and throw out any session that was hampered by technical issues so that we end up with only the sessions where both had an equal shot at delivering the best possible qualifying lap and give points accordingly.

Ringo IMO hit bulls-eye with his post above: (Quoted for convenience)

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.

(...)

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.

(...)

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.

So very very true.

[Just_a_fan]

Why not try ignoring the whos car it was and define your criteria first.

With respect, the thread title is little more than "Is Vettel or Hamilton better?".

If the aim is to establish how to determine the effect of a car (its level of dominance of you like) then perhaps the thread should be titled " how to quantify the dominance of a car in a season". That removes the driver focus.

I've been thinking about this and it's difficult because there are so many unknown variables e.g. team decisions, on track incidents that weren't the driver's fault etc. My view is that reliability is part of the car dominance equation - a fast but fragile car won't dominate a season.

[Emmcee]

Why not try ignoring the whos car it was and define your criteria first.

With respect, the thread title is little more than "Is Vettel or Hamilton better?".

If the aim is to establish how to determine the effect of a car (its level of dominance of you like) then perhaps the thread should be titled " how to quantify the dominance of a car in a season". That removes the driver focus.

I've been thinking about this and it's difficult because there are so many unknown variables e.g. team decisions, on track incidents that weren't the driver's fault etc. My view is that reliability is part of the car dominance equation - a fast but fragile car won't dominate a season.

That's what I said, to many variables in track condition and temperatures,other rival cars in comparisson to rival cars of other seasons and such. See when Redbull were dominating, there was the possibility of two other teams with the ability to win races also, with Mercedes, it's basically them and no one else.

[flynfrog]

Why not try ignoring the whos car it was and define your criteria first.

With respect, the thread title is little more than "Is Vettel or Hamilton better?".

So given the choice of locking the topic or trying to make the discussion productive what would you rather see? I would love nothing more than to see this community get to the point where this becomes self policing.

If the aim is to establish how to determine the effect of a car (its level of dominance of you like) then perhaps the thread should be titled " how to quantify the dominance of a car in a season". That removes the driver focus.

I've been thinking about this and it's difficult because there are so many unknown variables e.g. team decisions, on track incidents that weren't the driver's fault etc. My view is that reliability is part of the car dominance equation - a fast but fragile car won't dominate a season.

You could make the assumption that team decisions, bad luck driver, ect effect all cars equally. Using the WCC as your base metric kinda takes this into account as you get two cars worth of data points with different drivers ect. The team is the same but F1 cars don't live in a vacuum much like drivers don't. Maybe a car is really easy to work on and this eliminates some mistakes from the team. Maybe its easy to drive and helps eliminate driver error.

So you can really throw out most of your variables they don't matter. I agree reliability is part of it as well. A dominate car doesn't have to be a fast car it just has to finish ahead of its rivals. That's why I don't think q3 matters. In the turbo era a screaming qualy engine meant nothing once the race started.

I agree that know what car will be on poles is a sign of a dominate car but I don't feel it is a good definition.

So lets take one step back again. How would you show dominance mathematically. Is it a hard number or percentage of WCC points scored over rivals?

[Moose]

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?

Come on, we know that Kimi is not the most regular driver on the world, but call him mediocre?? Massa has been very fast when he has had the day,

Has he? The only times I remember Massa appearing to be "very fast" were in 2007/08. Same really with Kimi.

its the same with other drivers like Coulthard, Montoya,etc. During a good day they could beat any driver but on the bad days they were pretty mediocre.

I'd stopped watching in the days of Montoya, but I would argue that Coulthard most certainly was a mediocre driver. There's a reason that Hakinnen consistently beat him season after season. Note, as a Scot, I was a huge Coulthard fan, but that doesn't change the fact that he was pretty much the Barrichello of Scotland.

And yes, I am quite sure that back in the 2007/2008 seasons, 7/8 years ago, Kimi was a faster driver. I consider that he has not been the same after the comeback, he has lost speed with is quite logic when you are a veteran driver, during the Lotus years he showed that he was still fast on Sundays but it was clear that he had lost pure speed.

Okay, I see a lot of assertions here, but not really any reasoning backing it up. What makes you believe that those two drivers were magically great in 2007 and 08, and then both hit a trough at the same time when they happened to sit in a car next to Alonso?

We have a perfect example with Schumacher, was he the same driver in 2006 and 2010? of course, not.

Do we? Actually, the amount that Hamilton is beating Rosberg by (not very much) suggests that Schumacher was still remarkably on form even into his 40s (which is much older than both Massa and Kimi).

[Emmcee]

See the thing with Schumacher is the sport had changed significantly and the bans on testing and what not did not help him, IMO, he was no different, just the other adapted to the change in regulations. By 2012 though, he basically closed the gap difference and was there with them, I think 2013 he would have done even better again. Some may disagree with this but I think it's a fair assumption and his pole at Monaco which is known as a drivers circuit prooved he still was the same old Schumi IMO.

[flynfrog]

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?

Come on, we know that Kimi is not the most regular driver on the world, but call him mediocre?? Massa has been very fast when he has had the day,

Has he? The only times I remember Massa appearing to be "very fast" were in 2007/08. Same really with Kimi.

its the same with other drivers like Coulthard, Montoya,etc. During a good day they could beat any driver but on the bad days they were pretty mediocre.

I'd stopped watching in the days of Montoya, but I would argue that Coulthard most certainly was a mediocre driver. There's a reason that Hakinnen consistently beat him season after season. Note, as a Scot, I was a huge Coulthard fan, but that doesn't change the fact that he was pretty much the Barrichello of Scotland.

And yes, I am quite sure that back in the 2007/2008 seasons, 7/8 years ago, Kimi was a faster driver. I consider that he has not been the same after the comeback, he has lost speed with is quite logic when you are a veteran driver, during the Lotus years he showed that he was still fast on Sundays but it was clear that he had lost pure speed.

Okay, I see a lot of assertions here, but not really any reasoning backing it up. What makes you believe that those two drivers were magically great in 2007 and 08, and then both hit a trough at the same time when they happened to sit in a car next to Alonso?

We have a perfect example with Schumacher, was he the same driver in 2006 and 2010? of course, not.

Do we? Actually, the amount that Hamilton is beating Rosberg by (not very much) suggests that Schumacher was still remarkably on form even into his 40s (which is much older than both Massa and Kimi).

This thread has nothing to do with drivers....

[Just_a_fan]

So lets take one step back again. How would you show dominance mathematically. Is it a hard number or percentage of WCC points scored over rivals?

Thinking about this whilst sat in traffic today. I'm leaning towards a dominance index:
Dominance index, D = performance + reliability
Where, performance is determined from the best outcome at each race irrespective of driver. So for example if driver A takes pole and dnf but driver B gets a mid grid position and goes on to win the car scored maximum performance (pole + win). A scoring system for each allows us to determine the performance at that race as a percentage of the maximum, which is pole and then win.
Reliability would be just a simple negative factor added to the performance over the season. The factor would be based on the season's performance. For example, if a Merc breaks this season, it will have a much greater impact on its dominance than a Manor breaking down would on its season, if that makes sense.

That's my initial idea, just need to flesh it out. The idea is to take the best performance of the team's cars so it doesn't matter which driver takes pole or the win, the car gets the same points. Likewise the reliability factor. I'd be tempted to include for team errors but that is much more subjective and so difficult to implement.