I've got an idea to help us come to a conclusion:
S'pose we get the race completion time by every driver and divide it by the nymber of laps that they completed in the race. Then we could average them out and do some comparisons between teammates to add handicaps to drivers in the crappier cars.
For example: Hamilton finished Monaco in 2:00:42.742
I had to work this out in thousandths of a second so after many hours of trying to work out how you do this.
1 second = 1000
1 minute = 60 x 1000 = 60,000
1 hour = 60 x 60 x 1000 = 3, 600, 000
Therefore Hamilton's time was 2(3, 600, 000)+ 42,742 = 7, 242, 742 thousandths of a second.
Average laptimes:
7, 242, 742/1, 000 = 7,242.742 seconds (like 'duh there was a much easier way to do this by... argh - who cares?
)
/76 laps = 95.299236842105263157894736842105 seconds on average per lap.
/60 = 1.5883206140350877192982456140351 minutes per lap. But this would include him hitting the baracades and puncturing his tyre, as well as pit stops. So it probably not all that accurate.
Kubica got 1.5889785087719298245614035087719 per lap.
And the rest... well I can't be bothered working it out, and I need to find the total time for Coulthard's first 6 laps, because he had a crash on lap 7. But, of course, his tyres would be cold and his car would heavier as it would have a higher average fuel load, since he crashed near the start of the race.
This method also wouldn't factor in the driver familiarity with the circuit, their car different car models, and experience, and whatever.
So, on average, Kubica was only 0.3 seconds slower per lap than Hamilton in a less powerful car, and also we would have to account for the fact that there was a reason why he was coming first and slipped to second, although I can't remember what it was. So I will give him a 0.1 second handicap for that reason. For car performance, I would give him a 0.5 second handicap at the least. But for this handicap I would have to compare the practice session quickest times, etc.
Therefore, in my opinion, if Kubica was in the same car as Hamilton, or Hamilton was in the same car as Kubica, Kubica would gain 0.2 seconds on Hamilton per lap... At the very least. Is everyone happy with this conclusion? I should I factor in Hamiltons mistake? If I did then I would only give him a 2 thousandths of a second handicap, because his mistake happened so close to the pit lane....
- By hass25