Category Driver Rankings
2017 junior driver rankings
As we wait for the 2018 season to fire up, and as Williams resolve the Kubica-Sirotkin-Wehrlein trilemma, it seems a good time to update the annual junior driver rankings. As in previous years, I’m using a simple scoring system that can be easily computed by hand. It takes into account the different tiers of junior […]
2017 f1metrics end of season report
The 2017 Formula 1 season will be long remembered and debated. Could Vettel have stayed in championship contention with better reliability or fewer driver errors in the critical stages, or was the Mercedes advantage too much for Vettel or any driver to bridge? Is this a step on the road to recovery for Ferrari, or […]
Do drivers influence mechanical reliability?
Car reliability has always played a central role in Formula 1 — an inevitable consequence of teams not wanting to leave any potential performance unexploited. Mechanical DNFs at inopportune times have decided numerous championships. Who can forget Mansell’s puncture at Adelaide 1986 or Hamilton’s shock engine failure at Malaysia 2016? Many of the sport’s most […]
2016 model-based driver rankings
A key question at the end of every Formula 1 season is: who was the best performing driver? There’s never a straightforward answer to this question, and usually only two or three teams could realistically win the drivers’ title, regardless of the quality of their drivers. This year, it was probably just one team, such was the […]
2016 Junior Driver Rankings
As Formula 1 teams are making their final selections for 2017, it is a good time to consider the quality of the incoming junior crop, and identify who is likely to make headlines in coming years. Junior career metrics Over the past three years on this blog, I have presented and tweaked some metrics for assessing junior careers. […]
Experts versus models: How do we rank drivers?
Who was a greater Formula 1 driver: Nigel Mansell or Elio de Angelis? Expert panels have uniformly selected Mansell. Raw statistics of success — wins, championships, and the like — also clearly favor Mansell. Yet, every mathematical model of driver rankings developed to date resoundingly answers de Angelis. Examining the data table below helps to […]
2015 model-based driver rankings
Last year, I presented model-based rankings for all the 2014 season drivers. These rankings are derived from a mathematical model, described here, that statistically estimates the strength of driver and team performances in each year, as well as overall career performances for drivers. It achieves this by finding the best fit to all race result […]
Who are the top 2015 juniors?
With silly season underway, it is a good time to consider which junior drivers are most deserving of a Formula 1 seat next year. Any incoming juniors will obviously be competing not only with the current grid but also recent drivers Vergne, Magnussen, Gutierrez, van der Garde, and Sutil. And of course, it’s doubtful drivers […]
A reconstructed history of Formula 1
I grew up reading many Formula 1 fact books and encyclopedias. Despite their different sources, ages, and authors (all English language, I should mention), they told approximately the same story of Formula 1 history, with the same heroes and villains. Drivers with two or more titles were usually considered the “true greats”, joined by a select […]
2014 junior driver update
I started this blog just over a year ago with an analysis of junior drivers. It seemed fitting to climb my way up to Formula 1 analyses by beginning in the junior categories. Junior success doesn’t always translate exactly into Formula 1 greatness — just ask Jan Magnussen for one side of the story and Damon Hill […]
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