I believe that the best battles in a GP weekend are within the teams. They are the only other driver with the same equipment, same team behind them and whatever resources can be brought to bear in doing the job.
A top team should be able to put two good cars that are close to equal at any GP. The only variables are limited to the driver, the strategy employed and the small group of mechanics and the race engineer who is responsible for making the calls.
So for the three teams I looked at for this were Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull.
The reasons for choosing McLaren and Red Bull are obvious. Each has two very good drivers and both teams are at the sharp end of the drivers and constructors championships.
Mercedes, that’s also simple. Michael Schumacher vs. Nico Rosberg.
It’s no real stats analysis, but a little simplistic fun that threw up some interesting results that actually back up some of what I’ve claimed in the past (mostly).
Here is the average race finish position of the six drivers I’ve been looking at
- Schumacher 8.36
- Rosberg 5.64
- Vettel 3.79
- Weber 3.79
- Hamilton 3.36
- Button 3.43
So what do we learn?
- Rosberg is outperforming Schumacher by a significant margin, on average almost 3 places.
- Vettel and Weber have the same average finish position. The reason Weber leads in the championship is he’s picked up points at every race he’s finished. Vettel has one finish out the points. This is how you win championships, consistency.
- Hamilton and Button, again very close. Both have two DNF’s (aginst Red Bulls 1 each) and more finishes outside the points (Button 3, Hamilton 2).
Doing the same for qualifying and it starts to get interesting.
- Schumacher 9.64
- Rosberg 7.0
- Vettel 2.21
- Weber 2.21
- Hamilton 5.21
- Button 7.43
- Again Rosberg is clearly out qualifying Schumacher and by almost the same average he’s beating him by in the races.
- Vettel and Weber have the same qualifying position on average. Again impressive.
- The McLaren duo on the other hand there is a clear difference. Button is being beat a significant amount on the grid.
This is the important number, the difference between the average qualifying performance and average race position.
- Schumacher 1.29
- Rosberg 1.36
- Vettel -1.57
- Weber -1.57
- Hamilton 1.86
- Button 4.0
The higher this number the better the driver performs in the race. Again it’s simplistic, but lets go with it.
Button improves by an average of 4 positions between his start and finish places in each race. Assuming everyone finishes (unrealistic I know) he passes four cars in each race.
Hamilton has a slightly better average starting position, but does not pass as many cars during the race (just under 2 per race). But that average finishing position means more points in the standings.
The really interesting number is the -1.57 of the two Red Bull drivers. We know the margin between them is razor thin. The numbers all along support that, however this negative number that they are struggling (not in an HRT or Virgin way) executing in the race. That errors or strategy mistakes are costing them points. Their average finish is a position and a half worse than their average grid position.
They go backwards. The team can’t translate it’s qualifying performance into the race.
We know the Red Bull cars are fast, the drivers fast, but errors by the drivers and the team are costing points. This has been my hunch all along, and the stats (as simplistic as they are) seem to support my thoughts.
As for the two Mercedes drivers, Rosberg is doing slightly better in the races than Michael. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s there. But the Red Bull thing, that’s interesting and shows that if they were just even between race and qualifying, they’d be walking away with the championship this year.
I thought this was an interesting exercise with some surprising results.