#f1 data analysis

[the-pitwall]

Quarter Season Race Pace Comparisons

So for each of the races this year I have been documenting the gaps between teammates for both qualifying and race pace and as we have just passed race 6 which is just over the quarter point of the 23 race calendar I thought I would do a little rundown on the race pace comparisons.

Please note that the gaps in the charts are due to one or both drivers not setting a time/finishing the session.

If the line is in the positive half of the chart (the top half) it means that the driver who is currently higher placed in the championship standings was faster in that session; these group 1 drivers are: Hamilton, Verstappen, Norris, Vettel, Alonso, Leclerc, Gasly, Raikkonen, Schumacher, Russell. Essentially the flatter the line shows consistency and the closer to zero it is shows more evenly matched teammates.

There are a few interesting things, the only time that Mercedes have had both cars finish is at Spain and Portugal, when they were both on the podium, McLaren have had both cars finish every race this season so far and in terms of race pace there is a massive disparity between the two Haas drivers.

The following is a representation of the average gap in seconds between each of the teammate pairings

Once again, the smaller the bar is (in either direction) represents more equal teammates.

From the first 6 races, on average Verstappen is 40s ahead of Perez in the race, and Schumacher is close to being 40 seconds faster than his teammate as well

If you are interested in the numbers; here they are

A negative number indicates that the 'group 2' driver as being quicker in that session and N/A indicates that one or both of the cars didn't finish the race.

[the-pitwall]

Friday Free Practice Data

Most of the teams are about 0.8 seconds slower than their 2019 times, however what is interesting is the fact that the lower midfield teams have lost the least amount of time, which shows how much closer the grid is this year.

In FP1 16 drivers were within 2 seconds of each other and the same in FP2, however in FP2 the top 11 drivers were within a second of each other, whilst in 2019 in each session it was only the top 4 or 5 within a second of each other.

[the-pitwall]

Quarter Season Qualifying Pace Comparisons

So for each of the races this year I have been documenting the gaps between teammates for both qualifying and race pace and as we have just passed race 6 which is just over the quarter point of the 23 race calendar I thought I would do a little rundown on the pace comparisons.

Please note that the gaps in the charts are due to one or both drivers not setting a time/finishing the session

If the line is in the positive half of the chart (the top half) it means that the driver who is currently higher placed in the championship standings was faster in that session; these group 1 drivers are: Hamilton, Verstappen, Norris, Vettel, Alonso, Leclerc, Gasly, Raikkonen, Schumacher, Russell. Essentially the flatter the line shows consistency and the closer to zero it is shows more evenly matched teammates

The following is a representation of the average gap in seconds between each of the teammate pairings

Once again, the smaller the bar is (in either direction) represents more equal teammates.

If you are interested in the numbers; here they are

A negative number indicates that the 'group 2' driver as being quicker in that session

[the-pitwall]

Tumblr Qualifying Predictions vs AWS Qualifying Positions

I posted a google form on Friday asking people to submit their qualifying predictions and I would compare them against the actual results as well as the two AWS graphics that appear during FP2 and FP3 (thank you to those of you who sent me the graphics - I really appreciate it)

Here are the 3 predictions, the average of the google forms as well as the two AWS graphics

I also asked people to predict the timing gap and I think we were pretty spot on

On average the predictions on my google form were 2.5 positions off, AWS 1 was 2.6 and AWS 2 was 2.3, however we predicted the most drivers correctly - getting 4 in the right spot and 6 only one position off whilst the others were each 3 right and 4 one position off.

So can we predict the qualifying grid better than an AI, maybe? In some contexts, but I don't think we will be able to steal Amazon's job in this case.

This was really interesting to see and I'd love to do this again for future races if people are interested - I feel like it'd be easier to predict for a track like Barcelona as typically the drivers end up lining up as their teams and you'll have a lot of teammates next to each other

Thank you for everyone who got involved and submitted your predictions - I really appreciate it.

[the-pitwall]

It’s hard to know whether they were running in a different set up mode but things look good for Williams this weekend.

Their practice times last year were:

1:16.780 (+2.054s off P1)

1:17.779 (+3.053s off P1)

Whilst in FP1 they were

1:17.739 (+1.175s off P1)

1:17.866 (+1.302s off P1)

So far they are looking as the team that has lost the least amount of time around Imola from 2020 to 2021; one car being slower by just under a second and the other by only 0.087s, obviously it’s only FP1 and as we get more data things will become clearer

But note that the 1:16:780 from last year would have been good enough for P4 this year, that is how much it’s looking to affect the timings

[the-pitwall]

Qualifying Predictions Results

In the left column we have the actual qualifying results and then in the second column the average of the answers from my qualifying predictions form along with the number off positions off they are from the actual result, along with the same for the AWS qualifying graphics from FP2 and FP3.

The average number of positions off for both of the AWS graphics was 2.5 and from the questionnaire it was 1.3, with 7 drivers guessed spot on

Just for a bit of fun these were mine and my dad's own qualifying predictions; I was quite proud that I guessed the top 5 correctly

just for continuity his average position off was a 1.9 and mine a 1.1

[the-pitwall]

Last year pole was a 1:15.584 and they’ve been about 1.2 seconds slower here on average throughout the sessions

[the-pitwall]

Free Practice Analysis

Obviously we are limited as last year we only had one FP session but this is how the data is looking so far, with the time difference from 2020 to 2021 at a medium downforce track; Williams are the only team that have gained speed - they did say that this track would suit them, it also appears that Aston Martin aren’t at as much of a disadvantage as they claim to be.

As the season goes on this data will become more robust and hopefully by the summer break we will have a good understanding of how each of the cars will perform at different tracks.

Note: the anomalies (presented in green and red) are calculated using standard deviation, each of them is over 1.5 times the respective SD for that dataset away from the mean. Also rather than comparing drivers its just car 1 and car 2 (with 1 being the higher placed car in that session) this is to try to refrain from comparing drivers and allows me to be as unbiased as possible