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[Roth]

Great analysis. It confirms what's evident - that McLaren really lost Hamilton this one.

Now, if you could work out how many points Vettel gained from the Safety Car coming out...

[mnmracer]

Great analysis. It confirms what's evident - that McLaren really lost Hamilton this one.

Now, if you could work out how many points Vettel gained from the Safety Car coming out...

Considering your post history, it doesn't surprise me you're only interested in ways to dismiss Vettel, not in stats for all the drivers.

[Roth]

Easy there, Tiger.

Maybe I should have said, as a flip statistic, how many points were gained through luck for each driver.

They go hand in hand. One person's misfortune is another's gain.

I'm not knocking Vettel. He just got lucky often, so would be a prime candidate to offer up.

[Ferrari man 009]

I still dont buy mechanical faliures being "misfortune" - some teams build parts for performance only and some teams go for reliability. Ferrari were slow but reliable, Red Bull were fast but unreliable as were McLaren, Lotus not as quick but reliable. All are a compromise, it is very hard to build fast AND reliable parts. The only exception to the rule of the top 5 teams was Mercedes, except for China and Monaco, they were slow and unreliable

Ferrari and Lotus had more reliable cars, but not as quick as RB and McLaren, but as Murray Walker would say "To finish first, first you must finish"

Changing the championship based on driver misfortune would be like awarding Williams 100 constructors points because they had "misfortune" because Maldonado kept crashing!

[racechick]

the article was written from a driver's misfortune point of view,not a teams. If you keep crashing its your own fault. If your team mess up then it's not your fault.

[Hammer278]

I still dont buy mechanical faliures being "misfortune" - some teams build parts for performance only and some teams go for reliability. Ferrari were slow but reliable, Red Bull were fast but unreliable as were McLaren, Lotus not as quick but reliable. All are a compromise, it is very hard to build fast AND reliable parts. The only exception to the rule of the top 5 teams was Mercedes, except for China and Monaco, they were slow and unreliable

Ferrari and Lotus had more reliable cars, but not as quick as RB and McLaren, but as Murray Walker would say "To finish first, first you must finish"

Changing the championship based on driver misfortune would be like awarding Williams 100 constructors points because they had "misfortune" because Maldonado kept crashing!

Common sense would tell you that these statistics are based on drivers' performance while taking into account a what if scenario where the team 'never fu*ks up'. If a driver crashes by himself/own mistake, we don't add points since he did not perform.

[bud]

Every team designs and constructs parts with finishing races in mind, they don't purposefully design things to break! Everyone has had mechanical failures through the years you can't say some don't design parts not to fail while others do.

[Ferrari man 009]

[quote="bud"Everyone has had mechanical failures through the years you can't say some don't design parts not to fail while others do.[/quote]

Except Ferrari, who had 0. All 3 DNF's were because of collisions. They also recieved NO grid penalties for faulty engines/ gearboxes (other than Austin which wasnt due to a faliure).

[Hammer278]

[quote="bud"Everyone has had mechanical failures through the years you can't say some don't design parts not to fail while others do.

Except Ferrari, who had 0. All 3 DNF's were because of collisions. They also recieved NO grid penalties for faulty engines/ gearboxes (other than Austin which wasnt due to a faliure).

They were probably thinking of the WDC from the outset, and to have the best chance of bringing home a WDC is to have a car that finishes as many races as possible. Other teams were more focused on grabbing a few wins and keeping themselves in the limelight as potential pretenders to the WDC.

[mnmracer]

Calculating the impact throughout the whole field is impossible, so we'll keep it to the front runners.
Were these all the safety cars?

Australia
Safety car came out in lap 37.
Saving his tires to jump Hamilton in the pits, Vettel had been closing in on Hamilton rapidly before Lewis' pit stop. He was 1.1 second behind Hamilton before McLaren pitted and he was setting purple times when the safety car came out. The safety car cut short the time Vettel had to jump Lewis, but in the end the safety car didn't affect the outcome.

Valencia
The slow driving behind the safety car proved fatal for the two Renault alternators of Vettel and Grosjean.
Hamilton without the safety car would probably still have lost places to Räikkönen and Alonso, but the SC closing the gap to Maldonado by 6 more seconds could have been the difference between a finish and a malDoNadoF.
The big winner of the safety car today is Alonso, who without it would never have caught Vettel and Grosjean.

Belgium
First lap safety car didn't affect anyone in a way the T1 crash didn't.

Singapore
No one in the front was really affected by the safety car, although Mark Webber -back in 5th before his pitstop- was unlucky with the timing of the SC.

Abu Dhabi
After going from 23rd to 11th before the first safety car, Vettel was dropped back to 20th after the SC allowed for the near-crash with Ricciardo. Considering Vettel before that was faster than anyone bar Hamilton, on the harder tire. It's hard to predict where he could have ended up if things would have panned out, but considering with 47 laps to go before the first SC, being half a second faster than Button and Alonso and only 16 behind those two, third (second after Hamilton) was realistic. After the SC, he had lost 7 laps to get back to the position (time and place) he was before, and had his tire strategy ruined.
The rest of the front runners were not much affected by the first safety car, as neither made use of the field bunching up.

The second safety car gave Vettel the opportunity to take third from Button, which would have been unlikely with how the race developed after the first safety car.

So Vettel had one SC work against him, and the second in favor of him.
Alonso almost profited from the second SC, but didn't.
None of the others in the front really gained or lost much by the SC.

Brazil
The biggest winner of the first safety car period in Brazil was initially Lewis Hamilton, who was 53.29 seconds behind Hülkenberg at the time. Both he and Hülkenberg became the biggest losers of the safety car, as putting the two close together is what made the eventual crash possible. This makes Jenson Button -who inheritted the lead- and Fernando Alonso -who had no chance of his much needed podium without this crash- the biggest winners.
Further back, the safety car didn't much affect anyone; Vettel was already on Alonso's tail before the SC. Massa caught up some time, but with his race pace he would have been on Alonso's tail anyway.

The second safety car didn't make much of a difference for the remaining laps.

Summary
- No notable effect in Australia
- Good luck for Alonso in Valencia (+10), Webber (+6) and Button (+4), bad luck for Vettel (-25), Grosjean (-18) and Hamilton (-15). Others behind moved up because of it.
- No notable effect in Belgium.
- Bad luck for Webber in Singapore (-6).
- Luck evened out for Vettel in Abu Dhabi.
- Luck for Button (+7) and Alonso (+8) in Brazil, and Vettel (+2) and Webber (+2), bad luck for Hamilton (-15).

In conclusion
- Lewis Hamilton lost a net 30 points due to the safety cars in 2012.
- Sebastian Vettel lost a net 23 points due to the safety cars in 2012.
- Mark Webber gained a net 42 points due to the safety cars in 2012.
- Jenson Button gained a net 11 points due to the safety cars in 2012.
- Fernando Alonso gained a net 18 points due to the safety cars in 2012.

[mnmracer]

I still dont buy mechanical faliures being "misfortune"

You're obviously just trolling because you don't like the outcome, but I'll explain as others too have made this point (in a more reasonable way).

It's a shame that it seems for you, every word, every conversation, has to be a fight for "driver x is best". Thus, you see this article as an attempt to say Hamilton was best this year, or Vettel was best. If you'd calm down and take a step back, you see it's all about context.

When we have people saying, or thinking, things like "if Alonso was driving that Red Bull in 2010/2012" or "if Räikkönen was driving that McLaren/Red Bull in 2012" they would have walked the championship, implicating that Vettel and Hamilton underperformed. This is just to put things into context. Hamilton did not finish this year back in 4th because he underperformed, it's because his McLaren let him down. If Alonso had been driving the RB6 and had all the car problems that came with it, he too would have taken to the last race before winning the title.

[Roth]

Thanks for taking the time out to do that.

Like the misfortune stats, it's really where you set the parameters that determines what they say. It should be 'all other things being equal' or something like that...

For these ones I think there's too much conjecture on possible outcomes and causes rather than things that actually happened - the Renault's alternator, for example - that's mechanical failure possibly bought on by the SC. So, as is.

Also, Melbourne, Vettel may have passed Hamilton, but may not have. That's conjecture. The SC let him definitely pass him without having to actually go around him. So 3 points.

I would say the SC helped Vettel enormously in Abu Dhabi. Twofold - one, it bunched the field up twice, which is huge - all that time you don't have to make up - and secondly it gave him two free pit stops, and allowed him to fix the wing that was broken from his own-doing. So instead of sneaking a top ten he was on the podium. That must be worth a net gain of, what, 14 points, or thereabouts.

In the end I know it doesn't matter though, Vettel's the champ, case closed. He's just a jammy bugger.

[mnmracer]

Like the misfortune stats, it's really where you set the parameters that determines what they say. It should be 'all other things being equal' or something like that...

For one, all other things being equal, without the safety car, Vettel would not have collected the DRS sign in Abu Dhabi.

Also, Melbourne, Vettel may have passed Hamilton, but may not have. That's conjecture. The SC let him definitely pass him without having to actually go around him. So 3 points.

Also, Melbourne, Hamilton may have stayed ahead of Vettel, but may not have. Just as much conjecture.
That's why I look at the actual data.
If data shows that Vettel made up 3 seconds in 3 laps, of which data shows 1,5 second was in the last 2/3 of a lap alone, and data shows that he would have been just 0.2s behind at sector 3, then all the hard evidence available suggests that he would have overtaken. Anything else, is just gut feeling while dismissing data.

I would say the SC helped Vettel enormously in Abu Dhabi. Twofold - one, it bunched the field up twice, which is huge - all that time you don't have to make up - and secondly it gave him two free pit stops, and allowed him to fix the wing that was broken from his own-doing. So instead of sneaking a top ten he was on the podium. That must be worth a net gain of, what, 14 points, or thereabouts.

Again, you're ignoring the data. Data shows that while your perception was 'bunching up the field', in actuallity, by the time he was back in 11th, he was just as far behind the leader as before, and had lost 7 laps doing so. You're ignoring the data by saying 'sneaking into the top 10' when he was already in 12th before the safety car and catching up to p3 by half a second per lap, on the slower tires.

He's just a jammy bugger.

Only because you choose to look at everything he does within that context
You can have your opinion, but at least recognize that you are basing that opinion on gut feelings.
You can have your opinion, but recognize it is ignorant of (readily available) hard data.

[spankyham]

Mechanical failures are not predominantly luck/fortune issues IMO. Some teams, through hard work, will do better jobs than others in creating and testing parts. Some teams will design parts with lesser degrees of tolerance to gain slight performance advantages. Therefore, it is nonsense to put mechanical failures completely down to misfortune.

Safety cars - I thought the obvious race where the SC played the biggest role in the result and gifted the most points to a front runner was AD.

[Ferrari man 009]

Mechanical failures are not predominantly luck/fortune issues IMO. Some teams, through hard work, will do better jobs than others in creating and testing parts. Some teams will design parts with lesser degrees of tolerance to gain slight performance advantages. Therefore, it is nonsense to put mechanical failures completely down to misfortune.

exactly, you could equally say Alonso had "misfortune" as his car was awful and not worthy of winning a race!