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[zpetrov]

Just to put things in perspective.

Over the last 5 races, Felippe Massa has outperformed:

- Fernando Alonso
- Kimi Raikkonen
- The entire Mercedes team
- If the season started in Belgium, he'd be 2nd in the standings, 11 points clear of his teammate

Over the last 5 races, Lewis Hamilton:

- Is 19 (!) points behind Jenson Button
- Has only slightly more than one third (1/3) of Seb Vettel's points
- Would be behind Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Button, and Raikkonen

Over the last 5 races, Jenson Button:

- Would be 3rd in the standings, only 1 point off 2nd place Massa
- Would be almost 20 points clear of Hamilton
- Has beaten Mercedes and Sauber on his own

Over the last 5 races, McLaren F1 has been beaten in terms of points scored by:

- Seb Vettel by himself
- Red Bull by 30 points (that's 30% more points than McLaren)

Over the last 5 races Mercedes has been beaten by:

- Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Button, Hamilton, Raikkonen all by themselves...
- Sauber
- Force India

Here is where it gets ugly:

Over the last 5 races Rosberg has been beaten by every single driver in the Top 13 except Grosjean. So almost 2/3 of the points-scoring drivers in the past 5 races have more points than Rosberg

Over the last 5 races Grosjean has been beaten by every single driver in the Top 14

Over the last 5 races Williams has been beaten by every single points-scoring team. Also, every driver who has scored any points at all this season has beaten Williams by himself over the past 5 races... (yes that includes each of the two Toro Rosso drivers individually)

So Williams, Mercedes, and to a far lesser extent Mclaren- hang your heads in shame

Felippe Massa and Red Bull/Vettel- massive kudos.

[LRW]

statistics - you can make them say what you want.

If you looked at only the races in which Hamilton won, he'd be leading the WDC....

[myownalias]

statistics - you can make them say what you want.

If you looked at only the races in which Hamilton won, he'd be leading the WDC....

Yes, that is true, but in this context, the OP intended to highlight how the pendulum has swung drastically from the first half of the season.

[vlad]

Great statistics job!

[LRW]

statistics - you can make them say what you want.

If you looked at only the races in which Hamilton won, he'd be leading the WDC....

Yes, that is true, but in this context, the OP intended to highlight how the pendulum has swung drastically from the first half of the season.

Ok, that's a fair enough point.

[Ferrari man 009]

Over the last 5 races, Felippe Massa has outperformed:
- Fernando Alonso
- Kimi Raikkonen
- The entire Mercedes team
- If the season started in Belgium, he'd be 2nd in the standings, 11 points clear of his teammate

Disagree he has "outperformed" Alonso, since Alonso got wiped out in Belgium and had an unfortunate collision with Raikkonen in Japan, both incidents wiping out a few leaders and contributing to Massa's results, although he was better than Alonso in Korea.

[andrew]

He's scored more points than Alonso so therefore he has outperformed him.

[mnmracer]

I'd say looking stronger in qualifying and then not running into other drivers in the race constitutes as outperforming.

[Ferrari man 009]

I'd say looking stronger in qualifying and then not running into other drivers in the race constitutes as outperforming.

Except the only time Massa outqualified Alonso this season was at Monza when Alonso's suspension broke, in that race Alonso went from 10th to 3rd while Massa went from 3rd to 4th

[vlad]

And Massa wasn't letting Alonso pass him in Monza, no, he wasn't, I say again...

[zpetrov]

Over the last 5 races, Felippe Massa has outperformed:
- Fernando Alonso
- Kimi Raikkonen
- The entire Mercedes team
- If the season started in Belgium, he'd be 2nd in the standings, 11 points clear of his teammate

Disagree he has "outperformed" Alonso, since Alonso got wiped out in Belgium and had an unfortunate collision with Raikkonen in Japan, both incidents wiping out a few leaders and contributing to Massa's results, although he was better than Alonso in Korea.

Maybe I didn't phrase this correctly. I should have specified that I am talking only about points scored. A more holistic measure of performance might change the conclusions, but in terms of points scored, the conclusions are pretty robust.

Also, I prefer using points scored because it's nice, clear-cut, and concrete.

As for statistics. I think people sometimes misunderstand statistics because statistics are oftentimes abused in the media. Real statistics is precisely the opposite of cherry-picking data. The whole point is to establish the parameters/boundaries of your studies and apply them for everyone. I picked the last 5 races since that's exactly a quarter of the season. And I looked at the last 5 races for everyone- I didn't look at different time/race frames for different drivers in an effort to make some look bad and others good. It was the last quarter of the season for everyone.

For example, one poster mentioned "Hamilton leads the championship if you look at all the races Hamilton has won". But that's exactly what statistics is not. You don't do stuff like that. That's cherry picking. You apply the same bounds to everyone and you look at the results.

Perhaps my 5-race window is cherry picking in the sense that the last quarter of the season is no more meaningful than the last third of the season or anything else. Perhaps I should have started by looking at the results since the last test, but that would have only given us 3 races, which is a rather narrow sample size. Or I could have only looked at the last non-European races, but that's just as arbitrary and again- smaller sample size.

So take it for what its worth.

[vaptin]

Thanks for posting, I think it is a fair, informative and useful use of statistics, as you say, you took the last 5 races for everyone, and this wasn't just an arbitrary measure, it accounts for the "development" race.

[What's Burning?]

Over the last five races, Lewis Hamilton hads had two outings with debilitating mechanical performance, a transmission failure while he was comfortably controlling the race at the front, one accident where he was taken out by Grosjean and one win. One out of five aint bad.

[zpetrov]

Over the last five races, Lewis Hamilton hads had two outings with debilitating mechanical performance, a transmission failure while he was comfortably controlling the race at the front, one accident where he was taken out by Grosjean and one win. One out of five aint bad.

Okay but the point here really isn't to discuss why this or that happened. It's to take a look at the extent to which the trends in the championship have changed. And they have. Greatly. That's what I wanted to show.

Whether that's due to mechanical failures, good development, poor driving, smart strategy, etc. really is a matter for a separate discussion.

[What's Burning?]

Forgive me. I understand the point, however statistics alone only give you the numbers. You may not be a baseball fan but the saying goes... They all look like line drives in the box scores.

There is not much to discuss if all you wanted to do was post the statistics.