- 30 Nov 14, 02:42#428080
After the agony of defeat, success will be sweet!
Thanks to Ferrari man for posting this link in the general forum.
I thought I'd isolate both Kimi and Alonso for us to discuss in 2014
and I've isolated Vettel for us to look into 2015!
I thought I'd isolate both Kimi and Alonso for us to discuss in 2014
and I've isolated Vettel for us to look into 2015!
2014 model-based driver rankings
2014 was a year completely dominated by the Mercedes team, with the barest sniff of the title for Ricciardo. But who would have won the title if all cars had been equal? Were the Mercedes drivers the year’s best performers, or would other drivers have looked even better behind the wheel of a Mercedes? That’s a question you could debate for hours. Alternatively, we can pose the question to a mathematical model, such as the one I previously used to estimate all-time driver rankings.
In a nutshell, my model ignores races for each driver where they had non-driver failures (e.g., mechanical DNFs), then uses points per race in each of the remaining races as a performance metric for each season. While this is not a perfect metric (e.g., it doesn’t assign blame for crashes), it does capture one of the most important aspects of driver performance, and it can be easily applied across the board to all historical races without any subjective interpretation. Note that the model uses a scoring system based on the 10-6-4-3-2-1 system and includes fractional points for all lower race positions, allowing it to differentiate between drivers who finish 13th and 19th, for example.
Performance is assumed to be a function of both the driver’s performance and their team’s performance. Using the race results from 1950-2014, the model estimates the performance of each driver and each team so as to statistically best fit the race result data. This is possible because drivers are connected to one another by many different teammates, allowing their relative performances to be estimated.
2014 driver rankings
Using my model, I ranked the driver performances of 2014. Rankings are quantified by the adjusted points per race (ppr) up to a maximum of 10 ppr, as described previously. Each driver is discussed below. Note that the 2014 Marussia team and their drivers Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton were unranked, because to date Chilton and Bianchi have only driven alongside each other, so they cannot be compared to others. All other drivers are connected via common teammates. For the sake of completeness, I note that if we make the crude assumption that Marussia and Caterham were equal in performance in 2014, then the model ranks Chilton 17th and Bianchi 9th.
12. Sebastian Vettel, 6.16 ppr
Vettel had to come crashing back to Earth some time, just as Fangio did in 1958 following his own four consecutive championships. In Fangio’s case, a confluence of events hurt his competitiveness. Alcohol-based fuels were banned, which hurt Maserati. The rise of better handling mid-engined cars was suddenly making obsolete the front-engined cars in which Fangio had dominated. To make matters worse, Fangio was kidnapped in Cuba and his decision to attempt Indianapolis instead of Monaco completely backfired. In the end, Fangio made only two race starts, finishing 4th each time, which was tremendously disappointing for a driver who won 24 of his 51 race starts and only 6 times finished off the podium.
Vettel faced his own series of challenges in 2014, including a new breed of car that he struggled to come to terms with, a devastatingly quick teammate, a lack of early season mileage, and problems drawing performance from the Pirelli tyres without destroying them. Beating his teammate in only 3 races was a bitter disappointment. While Fangio retired in 1958 at the age of 47, Vettel is still just 27 and will move to Ferrari to answer his critics. But there he risks another hiding to nothing. If he beats Raikkonen, people will likely point to 2014 and say Raikkonen’s past his best. If Raikkonen beats Vettel, people will likely infer that Alonso >> Raikkonen > Vettel.
After the agony of defeat, success will be sweet!
