2009 In Review – Driver Classification

This post is the second in a series of posts designed to review the 2009 F1 Season by analysing the data from the races.  The first was on Fuel Usage Data for the engines and can be found here.  Originally I had planned to review all the driver data in one post, however I realised quite quickly that if I wanted to include all of the data then the post would be too long!

Therefore I have decided to split the posts into byte sized chunks of analyses for ease of reading – which I hope the lovely and learned readers of this blog agree is the right thing to do

The first category I want to look at is Driver Classification – where the driver finished in a Grand Prix.  Rather than just look at average points scored, I thought it would be better to look at the average finishing position as it shows consistency in a better way.  I will also include average points scored graphs for comparison at the end.

Average Finishing Positions

So let us start by looking at the average finishing positions.  I have split the field into two for ease of viewing.  Here are the graphs:

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Dear all readers of this blog,

Thank you so much for you readership and support in 2009 – your comments and ideas are what keeps this blog fresh and what keeps me making these posts.  I have really enjoyed working on this blog all year and it is a real pleasure to see what people are saying about it.  I am looking forward to new ideas and new partnerships in 2010 (more later) which should keep this blog entertaining and relevant.

I sincerely hope you have a wonderful Christmas Holiday period and that you get to enjoy the time spent with your friends and family.  I shall continue to work on my 2009 review posts in between Eating, Drinking and being Merry, so keep an eye out for that as I am sure you will like what you see.

Finally, I thought I’d link to one of my favourite Christmas songs – yeah I know it’s cheesy Xmas pop but you gotta love Slade.  The sillyness of the song matches my attitude and how I feel  about Christmas.

So have fun, and see you soon when I post again.

Cheers,

Gavin

2009 In Review – Fuel Usage Data

Quite a while ago I analysed the fuel consumption in the races over the season so far to see whether the fuel consumption figures quoted by the F1 Yearbook were correct.  At the time, I found that the F1 Yearbook figures were overestimating the stint lengths by about one lap on average.

So, now it’s time to revisit these figures.  This post forms the first of a series of posts reviewing the 2009 season with the other posts on teams and drivers – hopefully I will find the time to write them all before the 2010 season begins

As a bit of background on the calculations, please click this link.  If you trust my numbers however, read on!

To eliminate erroneous data, all stints shorter than expected by more than three laps were removed because when I looked at the data, this seemed to be where most of the stops happened.  Anything more than three laps short was deemed to be a strategic stop or a repair stop and was removed from the data.  In addition, any race that was wet or had a safety car before the first pit stop was not considered as wet races lower fuel consumption and safety cars usually force drivers to pit early.

However, even with a clean dataset, when we align the predicted stints with the actual ones from the races, there seems to be a difference, as shown by the graph below:

This graph shows the average figure calculated from all the data collected vs. the F1 yearbook data.

Thursday Thoughts – What F1 Needs For Christmas

It’s my turn to choose the topic for this week’s ‘Thursday Thoughts’ question – a blog series started by Sidepodcast and I chose to ask “What do you want to get F1 for Christmas and why?”

The reason I asked this is because I think Christmas is a time of giving and sharing – and with such a rollercoaster year in the sport, I think there are a few people in F1 that could do with some Christmas cheer

Thursday Thoughts – An F1 Christmas

So, it’s my turn to choose the topic for this week’s ‘Thursday Thoughts’ question – a blog series started by Sidepodcast.

I thought long and hard about this week’s question and I have decided to go with a rather seasonal topic. You see, it’s Christmas, and this is the time of year which is all about giving and receiving. So my question for your Thursday Thoughts is:

What do you want to get F1 for Christmas and why?

Now, I’m gonna leave this as open as possible here – you can give your ‘gift’ to anyone in F1 – it could be:

• A driver
• A team member
• Any other F1 personality
• A team
• A location
• A blogger or a website/service
• Heck, even the whole sport if you want!

So have a think, get writing and let me know what you think – you can post a comment here, link to your blog or maybe even comment on Sidepodcast if you ask Christine nicely

I will write a post tomorrow night too – look out for that and I can’t wait to hear from you all

Update: And here it is – enjoy

http://f1numbers.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/thursday-thoughts-what-f1-needs-for-christmas/

Thursday Thoughts – F1 Content Innovations

This week it was the turn of PatW from Too Much Racing to ask this week’s question for ‘Thursday Thoughts’ – a blog series started by Sidepodcast.

The question is:

“What innovations would you like to see in F1 ?”

Hmm, how long have you got?

Thursday Thoughts – Engine Parity

This week it was the turn of Maverick of Pitlane Fanatic to ask this week’s question for ‘Thursday Thoughts’ – a blog series started by Sidepodcast.

The question is:

“Is Engine Parity necessary for 2010?”

Here’s a nice little F1 Engine to drool over…

Thursday Thoughts – Who should be the next boss of FOTA?

This question is the subject of this week’s ‘Thursday Thoughts’ on Sidepodcast.

To be honest, it’s an interesting choice of subject in a week dominated by headlines of Brawn being bought out by Mercedes, Jenson being a turncoat and defecting to McLaren, and Kimi storming off in a huff from F1 because he can’t get what he wants…

No, it won’t be him!

Anyway…

Who Should Be Awarded Title of 2009 F1 Team Principal of the Year?

The question was asked on Sidepodcast as part of their new ‘Thursday Thoughts’ series.

Well, to answer the question posed by Mr. C, it’s got to be Ross Brawn, hasn’t it?

Ross Brawn looking happy at winning yet another award in 2009

Why have I picked Ross Brawn?  

What next?

So what next for this blog now that we have entered the off season? Never fear, because while I have been basing a lot of my blog posts on stuff that happens over the race weekend, this does not mean I won’t have anything to write about now the season has ended.

On the contrary, in fact – I have been saving up loads of ideas for posts that simply could not have been done during the season! The most obvious I guess would be roundups of the 2009 season – which I plan to look at from the numbers perspective, of course…

Then I plan to branch out a bit into some special projects that were just too massive to attempt while the season was on – the regular posts just took up too much time to do this. And besides, I wanted to have some stuff to do during the off-season when I could really sink my teeth into it…

Other than that, if you guys have any ideas on specific stuff you would like me to look at, then please give me a shout in the comments and I’ll see what I can do – I always try and write these posts with my readers in mind, of course

So you’ll have plenty of reasons to visit ‘Making Up The Numbers’ during the off-season – and I hope that when you do, you will be pleasantly surprised by what you see here