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[onelapdown]

I have often been disappointed by the inability of some raw F1 statistics to give the whole story. For example, how can you compare a driver who won all the time in a reliable car with one who won less in a fragile car?

With the Ashes on and all those wonderfully precise and meaningful statistics coming out of my radio, I'm a little envious of the ability of cricket stats to paint a fuller picture of a player's career stats, so in this thread I thought I'd sketch out some indicators that I think give the full impression.

Firstly, we need totals of retirements caused by mechanical failures and driver error. So here's two definitions:

Mechanical retirement: a race where the driver failed to finish or was classified outside of the top eight due to a mechanical failure

Driver error: a race where the driver failed to finish or was classified outside of the top eight due to any other reason

Now a more accurate assessment of a driver's win percentage can be calculated by dividing his wins by the number of races where he did not suffer a mechanical retirement (Fangio 58.54%, Jim Clark 50.00%, Michael Schumacher 41.18%). The same can apply to podiums (JMF 87.50%, MS 69.68% JC 64.00%).

You can also now calculate an error percentage by dividing errors by race starts (Fangio 0.00%, Clark 2.77%, Schumacher 10.48%)

The raw calculation of points per race is now terribly misleading. Drivers in the 1950s got 8 points for a win, whereas now it's 10, and of course 7th and 8th didn't used to count. The simplest thing to do is simply to recalculated what a driver would have scored under today's points system, then dividing it by races not affected by mechanicals (Fangio 8.93, Schumacher 6.80, Clark 6.68)

There are issues about shared drives in the 1950s and 1960s, and a few other things besides, but what does everyone think?

[Gaz]

Intresting.

How does Senna Compare to Fandigo or Schui?

[headless]

Could work, but there are bound to be big problems that come up.

[onelapdown]

Here are some stats for current drivers:

Top 5 win percentage (wins/(starts - mech rets))
Schumacher 41.18
Hamilton 22.22
Alonso 19.09
Raikkonen 14.91
Massa 10.89

Top 5 podium percentage (podiums/(starts - mech rets)
Schumacher 69.68
Raikkonen 51.75
Hamilton 51.11
Alonso 47.27
Barrichello 30.99

Top 5 points per race (points calculated as per current system)
Schumacher 6.80
Alonso 5.13
Raikkonen 5.05
Hamilton 5.04
Barrichello 3.32

Top 5 pole percentage
Hamilton 28.89
Schumacher 27.20
Alonso 13.53
Massa 12.93
Vettel 11.11

Bottom 5 error percentage (least accident-prone)
(Alquersuari 0.00)
Alonso 5.34
Hamilton 6.67
Heidfeld 6.88
Raikkonen 8.78
Glock 9.38

Top 5 error percentage (most accident-prone)
Piquet 32.14
Buemi 30.00
Sutil 26.67
Vettel 25.00
Bourdais 18.52

Top 5 mechanical problems (most unlucky)
Barrichello 23.10
Raikkonen 22.97
Trulli 22.97
Button 21.47
Webber 21.37

Plenty of food for thought there...

(I'll see if I can do the same for Senna et al, but it's pretty time consuming!)

[Gaz]

Hamilton Alonso and Kimi are up there with Schui then

[Amanda]

I prefer your system to the usual ones. Unfortunately we still can't account for seasons when a driver simply had a poor car but I guess we'll never be able to do that.

[headless]

(I'll see if I can do the same for Senna et al, but it's pretty time consuming!)

I bet, fair play to you, well done and thanks.

I like how Barricehllo, has a good podium one, and a good(/bad depending on how you look at it) unlucky rate.

[Gilles 27]

Kimi is ridiculously unlucky when it comes to mechanical failures. I also rate Kimi as one the all time fastest drivers to drive in F1, certainly the fastest out of the current lot.

[headless]

Kimi is ridiculously unlucky when it comes to mechanical failures. I also rate Kimi as one the all time fastest drivers to drive in F1, certainly the fastest out of the current lot.

Yeah roar speed if he applies himself defo.

[Gaz]

I prefer your system to the usual ones. Unfortunately we still can't account for seasons when a driver simply had a poor car but I guess we'll never be able to do that.

well luck of the draw in F1 i guess.

i mean Button could be a driver who could achive the greatness of Schui if put in the same car for the same number of years.

But i wouldn't change it, i'd hate for F1 to become a spec series.

[Gilles 27]

well luck of the draw in F1 i guess.

i mean Button could be a driver who could achive the greatness of Schui if put in the same car for the same number of years.

But i wouldn't change it, i'd hate for F1 to become a spec series.

It's a different matter when you waltz into a good team and start winning but Schumacher's greatness came not so much from his on track ability but his work at Ferrari that turned them from midfielders to the dominant team of the last decade.

[Rivelution]

lol at Piquet's stat

[cap-dude]

Kimi's mechanical problem stat, really just defines his years with McLaren.

Of course, since he left McLaren, mclaren have had about 1 mechanical retirement
And of course, Lewis' many high percentages, thanks to his unique career.

Interesting though to see Glock mentioned in top 5, for consistent finishes. Glock also has been known, to be extremely fast with heavy loads of fuel on board. I think everyone really noticed it in Hungary where his heavy load strategy brought him up to 6th. So really, i'll be watching Glock very closely next year, since with no re-fuelling and everyone driving heavy cars. He should be one to watch out for.

[onelapdown]

I've done the stats for all the multiple World Champions. There's a few surprising results in there...

Top 5 Win percentage:
Fangio 60.00
Ascari 50.00
Clark 50.00
Stewart 41.54
Schumacher 41.18

Top 5 Podium percentage:
Fangio 87.50
Schumacher 69.68
Stewart 66.15
Prost 65.43
Ascari 65.38

Top 5 points per race:
Fangio 8.93
Stewart 6.94
Ascari 6.92
Schumacher 6.80
Clark 6.68

Top 5 Pole percentage:
Fangio 56.86
Clark 45.83
Ascari 43.75
Senna 40.12
Schumacher 27.42

Bottom 5 Error percentage:
Fangio 0.00
Clark 2.78
Stewart 4.04
Fittipaldi 4.17
Alonso 5.34

Top 5 Mechanical failure percentage:
Brabham 42.86
G Hill 34.66
Lauda 34.50
Stewart 34.34
Clark 30.56

I seem to have found a flaw in my system, the flaw being that I could never go to Brazil and expect to get out alive... Anyway, those are the figures!

[Gilles 27]

Those statistics amaze me to say the least. I can't believe Alonso is in the bottom 5 for errors. It strikes me as odd that any of the modern drivers would have a better error record than the guys in the 50s and 60s who were leaving a much greater margin because of the tracks and how dangerous accidents were.

Also people moan about Schumacher having the best car, well at least he was part of the reason his car was so good, Fangio jumped teams every time a better car came around.