Who has had better cars - Hamilton or Vettel?

[Phil]

I like the idea, but as I said in my last post (which has gone ignored)... you are looking at a very extensive data-set. A data-set which also includes circumstance. For instance, car A starts from pit lane but goes on to win the race. If scenario A, there was a safety car, you can pretty much scrap the whole race session as the safety car will have a major impact on the various strategies teams gambled on and in this case, a slower car could easily beat faster car through circumstance. However, if there weren't any events out of the ordinary, it is a huge display of dominance. Although I'm ready to stress that in any race, you are going to find a lot of *circumstance* within a race that lasts 70 laps and little over 1.5 hours. Think car benefits its position by a DNF ahead, a crash, driver-error, or a slow(er) pitstop, held up by backmarkers at a crucial moment or simply traffic by cars on different strategies.

What this nicely shows is that everyone drives a different race. The pole starter usually has half the cake due to clean air etc, cars behind them have the problem that passing might be difficult. So even a quicker car could fail to get passed a slower one if the track disallows it; see Monaco, Catalunya, heck even Brazil 2014... How do you quantify that kind of circumstance?

It's easy as night and day and tell that the Mercedes is the most dominant car on the grid since 2014. It's also easy as night and day to do the same with the RedBull in most races between 2009 and 2013. But how do you get the numbers to show that without going into depth of every single race and finding a common-denominator or formula that tells exactly that? I'd say it's next to impossible.

......which is why I'm back to qualifying data, even if it's only half the truth (IMO, it's way more than half - the Mercedes never missed a front-row in the past 2 years and neither did RedBull in the years 2009.5 to 2013), but you get this data without all the unpredictability of races and *circumstance*.

Also; just to add a minor point; 2014 is a Mercedes dominant year hands-down. So is 2011 a RedBull one. I'd also argue 2013, thanks to the second half. 2010 perhaps is a toss-up, though given the amount of victories Webb and Seb shared, I'd say that one too - easily. So we're left with 2009, which is perhaps a toss-up with Brawn and RedBull (I'll go with RedBull) and 2012, which was probably a toss-up between Ferrari, McLaren and RedBull. So we can probably discard most seasons of pure and utter dominance (2009,2010,2011,2013,2014) and concentrate on 2007, 2008 (Ferrari/McLaren) and 2012 (McLaren, Ferrari, RedBull)...

The question is; What do you want to find? A simple yes or no answer to a very complex question or do you want a complex answer in highlighting some arbitrary figure that shows by how much car A was more dominant than car B? I'd say that's pretty impossible, and less impossible limiting yourself to QF data.

[FoxHound]

My take here :-" . But there are ghosts within that inevitably will reside in any comparative mathematical concoction.

1. Take all team point totals over the season.

2. Then divide all the points so that they reflect 100%.(this gives you who scored most points %wise right down to the least)

3. Add a performance multiplier to reflect qualifying. So if a team bags pole and second position then finish 1st and second, their score will be subject to a higher multiplier. (for example if Winning and finishing 2nd, 43 points would be multiplied by 1.20 and 1.19. I'm working on a 20 car grid basis here. The singular opposite is a guy staring in last and winning the race, would have 25 points, multiplied by 1.01. But as it's always the car stupid!, we need to get an aggregate score from both cars over the race. Hence my dual multiple ethos.
*Numbered multipliers are for illustrative purposes, to my mind it reflects well the importance of qualy and the general speed of the car generally.

4.As above, but in opposite, reflecting retirements from the race that did not involve driver error or misfortune.
Not really enough time to float a quotient for this, but these numbers are all up for debate anyhow. So go forth and put forward ideas for it.

5. Reduce or increase the formula's incrementally to reflect circuits which require less of the car(Oh man, this can of worms). Or for drivers who perform in adverse weather whereby alot of the car's advantages become nullified.

Even then, once these numbers get crunched by a resourceful and intrepid F1Technicalista, half the forum will be up in arms and the other half in raptures.
So it is my humble opinion that unless the math get honed, refined, checked, adjusted, evolved, and be able to be reapplied to any era of the sport....we just let this thread die.

Sorry Kingshark...

[Phil]

Ok, so if everyone insists on using race results; How about the most simple calculation? Not muddled by points or anything, just simple statistics:

2009 (17 races):
RedBull: 6 wins = 35.3%
Brawn: 8 wins = 42.1%

2010 (19 races):
Redbull: 9 wins = 47.4%
McLaren: 5 wins = 26.3%
Ferrari: 5 wins = 26.3%

2011 (19 races):
RedBull: 12 wins = 63.2%
McLaren: 6 wins = 31.6%
Ferrari: 1 win = 5.3%

2012 (20 races):
RedBull: 7 wins = 35%
McLaren: 7 wins = 35%
Ferrari: 3 wins = 15%

2013 (19 races):
RedBull: 13 wins = 68.4%
Mercedes: 3 wins = 15.8%
Ferrari: 2 wins = 10.5%

2014 (19 races):
Mercedes: 16 wins = 84.2%
RedBull: 3 wins = 15.8%

Now, that only includes wins, which is a beautiful thing, because there can only ever be one winner per race... Doesn't get much simpler than this metric, really. For comparing cars against cars though, I still remain firm that qualifying data is the least altered by circumstance and unpredictability dataset you can get...

The data is nice though. Shows how dominant Mercedes was in 2014 and how dominant RedBull was in 2010, 2011 and 2013. 2009 is Brawn all out, even if it was close, but the beginning of the season was too strong not to consider. 2012 is also a toss up between McLaren and RedBull, which is tricky, because with all the DNFs McLaren had, Hamilton *should have* won it. What the numbers don't tell you though, is that in that year, Vettel had 5 wins vs 2 of Webber - Hamilton 4 vs 3. In other words, the McLaren was strong as a team, but individually, their drivers took more points off each other. In the end, Vettel still won by a massive points advantage...... (281 vs 190) - outch!

[Manoah2u]

oh gawd not again these discussions. really people?

who had better cars - Senna or Prost
who had better cars - Schumacher or Hill
who had better cars - Fangio or Moss
who had better cars - Piquet or Mansell

there is no end to it. it's a moot point.
just enjoy the show and the race, and respect both the vehicle technology and driver capacity.
it's not just the car, it's the total package.

and 2015 cars simply can't be compared to 2013 cars. it's essentially a different formula.

i'm sure this'll provoke a downvote, but come on people. supposed technical analysis of who gained the most from their car thus who was the worse driver? it's indirect fanboy talk imho.

there is no way there can be any substancial realistic debate about such a subject because there simply isn't the neccesary data publicly available. It can only be a phantasm-theory based upon some given facts.

[Kingshark]

and 2015 cars simply can't be compared to 2013 cars. it's essentially a different formula.

That's not the point. I'm not comparing the 2015 cars to the 2013 cars. I am comparing a 2015 car to its fellow benchmarks (the other 2015 cars), and likewise comparing a 2013 car to its fellow benchmarks (the other 2013 cars). From that, I am concluding on which team had, on balance, the bigger advantage.

i'm sure this'll provoke a downvote, but come on people. supposed technical analysis of who gained the most from their car thus who was the worse driver? it's indirect fanboy talk imho.

I have never once argued about drivers being "worse" than one another, or being less able to make use of their cars. I have only compared cars. Don't confuse the purpose of the thread with its contents.

[SiLo]

I'd just boil it down to how close the team in 2nd in the championship were that year as to who likely had the better car. Most other metrics are great, but the distance to second shows generally how fast the car itself was across a year.

[Vasconia]

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.

I think he was not that fast and he had a lot of problems to adapt to the new F1. Monaco is still a track where drivers can show their talent in a more "pure" way if you understand me. And some mistakes made by Schumi during this 3 years.... that was the Schumi I remember, though I must admit that even in 2006 Michael was not the best version of himself.

I dont understand my negative vote, I would not give a negative vote to other member of this forum only because he has another opinion.

[flynfrog]

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.

I think he was not that fast and he had a lot of problems to adapt to the new F1. Monaco is still a track where drivers can show their talent in a more "pure" way if you understand me. And some mistakes made by Schumi during this 3 years.... that was the Schumi I remember, though I must admit that even in 2006 Michael was not the best version of himself.

I dont understand my negative vote, I would not give a negative vote to other member of this forum only because he has another opinion.

what if that member was completely off topic and trying to turn a thread a thread about cars into a driver argument? Again this thread has nothing to do with drivers. If you cant stay on topic you will have to sit at the kids table.

[ringo]

You guys are too smart for your own good...

Simply add up the races each car was the best on the day and compare it to number of races finished for each driver.
Simple!!! No fancy shmancy statistics and multipliers. No subjective factors.

[PlatinumZealot]

Going By recent events Ricciardo and kvyat would have did better in those bulls

[FoxHound]

You guys are too smart for your own good...

Simply add up the races each car was the best on the day.

Quantify it.

I'll put a case in point.

W04 Mercedes bangs in a pole lap, but RB9 is better on its tyres and therefore quicker for longer periods of the race where the W04 suffers tyre deg.
Headline times will be similar but the drop off the W04 suffers will make it the slower car by some margin.

This will spoil the statistics some.

[mrluke]

I'd just boil it down to how close the team in 2nd in the championship were that year as to who likely had the better car. Most other metrics are great, but the distance to second shows generally how fast the car itself was across a year.

What about if the team you are looking at finished sixth that year, how do you take that into account?

[Moose]

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

No, but the understanding of which car was the fastest in 2007/08, and what's a good model for determining the "better car" certainly is a topic that's covered by this thread. Understanding whether Massa and Kimi are Mediocre, and the 2007/08 Ferrari were excellent; or whether Massa and Kimi peaked at the same time in 2007/08, and the McLaren was instead better will inform us about whether our model of a "better" car is good or not.

[flynfrog]

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

No, but the understanding of which car was the fastest in 2007/08, and what's a good model for determining the "better car" certainly is a topic that's covered by this thread. Understanding whether Massa and Kimi are Mediocre, and the 2007/08 Ferrari were excellent; or whether Massa and Kimi peaked at the same time in 2007/08, and the McLaren was instead better will inform us about whether our model of a "better" car is good or not.

You don't have a model you are trying to pass anecdotal evidence as data. What value in your equations is mediocre vs excellent are we taking a single sigma jump here? What's your criteria you are using. When talking about cars drivers don't really matter especially if you are taking points spread across two cars.

[ringo]

You guys are too smart for your own good...

Simply add up the races each car was the best on the day.

Quantify it.

I'll put a case in point.

W04 Mercedes bangs in a pole lap, but RB9 is better on its tyres and therefore quicker for longer periods of the race where the W04 suffers tyre deg.
Headline times will be similar but the drop off the W04 suffers will make it the slower car by some margin.

This will spoil the statistics some.

Yes but it's still a fact that the W04 wasn't the better car on the day isn't it?