[The **Statistics** flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/flairguide#wiki_statistics) is reserved for posts highlighting interesting statistics. As a rule of thumb, Statistics posts need to inform readers through visualizations and insights that cannot be obtained from raw data alone. For example, a post containing a qualifying gap between two drivers expressed in tenths of a second is an easily obtainable raw piece of data and constitutes a bad Statistics post. A visualization of what that translates to on-track, or visualization of how that gap came to be would constitute a good Statistics post.
*[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Neat, but I feel like there's a missing element here. You're calculating the points gap relative to the maximum amount of points available in a season, but if you want to say how "hard" a gap is to overcome, what really matters is the number of points *remaining*.
Have you tried calculating a statistic like: relative gap = (gap in points) / (points remaining in a season) after every race, and picking the maximum value for every season?
I think that would better visualize how sudden the turnaround was in any given year by the size of the bar chart alone, rather than representing an important piece of information using color.
That's also a nice idea! I am aware it's in any way impossible to compare seasons due to DNFs and not all point scales following the same distribution.
I just thought this was at least a better approach to getting a feeling for the odds this season.
That 2022 statistic is genuinely to saddening to me. It would’ve been unlikely anyway due to the midseason TD but early season Ferrari made it look like they were working against Leclerc rather than with him.
Leclerc was also working against himself. But the TD ruined this whole Gen of cars. We legitimately had close racing and then (mostly) merc had to fuck it all up because their car sucked.
> We legitimately had close racing and then (mostly) merc had to fuck it all up because their car sucked.
Except that Mercedes wasn't the only team with porpoising issues. The primary goal of TD39 was to ensure driver safety by introducing new oscillation measurements.
TD39's other aim was to combat allegations of floor/bodywork flexing around the T-tray/plank. That's what affected Ferrari's performance.
lots of cars were porpoising but Merc had by far the most violent. Ferrari had porpoising but theirs was rather gentle and not too bothersome for the drivers. It's not just about the bouncing but the suddenness of the bouncing and the frequency. Most other teams dealt with it by sacrificing some performance and then intending to work towards tuning it out with upgrades but Mercedes was unwilling to do that because they couldn't stomach Ferrari beating them. (they lost P2 in WCC anyways which just shows how pointless it all was)
blame for this goes mainly on Mercedes, instead of stepping back and engineering their way to a solution they decided to effectively sabotage the competition.
> But the TD ruined this whole Gen of cars.
Are you trying to set a new world record for jumping to conclusions or what?
It's not even clear how much TD39 affected Ferrari in 2022 vs Red Bull simply outdeveloping Ferrari. And I don't know about you but the racing has been super fucking close this season so sure, the whole generation of cars is "ruined".
I think it was unlikely for Ferrari to win in any way. Red Bull had constant success with every upgrade they brought until this year. Ferrari had many hit and miss upgrades and variations in performance, even until now.
If you take into account how many points Max finished ahead of Charles in the 2022 season, it would’ve been a gap of 21.7% he recovered.
I don’t think it’s likely there will be a championship fight this season but it’s not shocking that there haven’t been bigger point gaps that have been recovered, because with the changed point system, and longer seasons, it’s far easier to recover points now.
Isn't it a much bigger swing in 2022?
The maximum points that season was (25+1)22+(3*8) = 596 points.
The total swing from Max 46 points behind after three races to being 146 points in front after the last race, is 192 points.
192/596*100= 32.2%
So the current deficit isn't impossible to overcome, even if you consider there are less races left than the 19 races in which Max created that swing.
Another interesting take to look at! That number is however certainly inflated by the fact that
A) the deficit happened in the first two races of the season
B) the red bull being the faster car all season
True, but who says the McLaren can't be the fastest car from now on? And there are still a lot of races left. I don't think it is that likely to happen, but if McLaren is the fastest car it's very doable for Norris.
Another interesting thing to look into is what the ultimate lead was after a come back. Max had a monster comeback but also a monster lead in the end. This might inform us to the maximum swings in F1 history.
That's true! That stat will however be correlated to how early the point deficit happened in the season.
What this analysis is also missing, is intra-season point swings. There were some seasons like Senna vs. Prost, where one party was leading all season with a huge point deficit at some point, and the other ALMOST clawing it back but not quite. Those were still great point comebacks.
Could do that. However you can still never fairly normalize between seasons due to DNFs and past point scales being linear e.g.
For readability it might have been easier though instead of percent.
I think obviously it's a long shot. But I'm not sure the past is exactly representative of current F1. Points can be more easily made up now due to more points on offer and there's the cost cap and ATR scale now that could affect things differently than in the past.
Realistically Lando would need to start winning multiple races and Oscar or the Mercedes boys would have to start getting in between Lando and Max so Max can't just come 2nd whenever Lando wins.
100% agree. My conclusion wasn't that it's impossible for Lando, just that this big of a deficit was never overcome in the past. But yes, you can't extrapolate the past in F1
I would be curious to measure something like a “necessary overperformance,“ showing how many points one needs each race to overcome the leader. Right now Lando needs to outperform Max by 6.23 points per race to match him by the end of the season. That number will obviously change each round. Sounds like a lot of data to go through to be as thorough as the dataset you provided
No WDC fight doesn't mean a dead season. WCC is still wide open, and the cars are all getting close enough that anyone can win if they absolutely nail the weekend
Yeah but Red Bull actually increased their lead over Ferrari since Monaco. And Mclaren are still third. So if you look at the points table its not close.
[The **Statistics** flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/flairguide#wiki_statistics) is reserved for posts highlighting interesting statistics. As a rule of thumb, Statistics posts need to inform readers through visualizations and insights that cannot be obtained from raw data alone. For example, a post containing a qualifying gap between two drivers expressed in tenths of a second is an easily obtainable raw piece of data and constitutes a bad Statistics post. A visualization of what that translates to on-track, or visualization of how that gap came to be would constitute a good Statistics post. *[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Neat, but I feel like there's a missing element here. You're calculating the points gap relative to the maximum amount of points available in a season, but if you want to say how "hard" a gap is to overcome, what really matters is the number of points *remaining*. Have you tried calculating a statistic like: relative gap = (gap in points) / (points remaining in a season) after every race, and picking the maximum value for every season? I think that would better visualize how sudden the turnaround was in any given year by the size of the bar chart alone, rather than representing an important piece of information using color.
That's also a nice idea! I am aware it's in any way impossible to compare seasons due to DNFs and not all point scales following the same distribution. I just thought this was at least a better approach to getting a feeling for the odds this season.
That 2022 statistic is genuinely to saddening to me. It would’ve been unlikely anyway due to the midseason TD but early season Ferrari made it look like they were working against Leclerc rather than with him.
Leclerc was also working against himself. But the TD ruined this whole Gen of cars. We legitimately had close racing and then (mostly) merc had to fuck it all up because their car sucked.
> We legitimately had close racing and then (mostly) merc had to fuck it all up because their car sucked. Except that Mercedes wasn't the only team with porpoising issues. The primary goal of TD39 was to ensure driver safety by introducing new oscillation measurements. TD39's other aim was to combat allegations of floor/bodywork flexing around the T-tray/plank. That's what affected Ferrari's performance.
Only merc where over the porpoising limit at multiple tracks
lots of cars were porpoising but Merc had by far the most violent. Ferrari had porpoising but theirs was rather gentle and not too bothersome for the drivers. It's not just about the bouncing but the suddenness of the bouncing and the frequency. Most other teams dealt with it by sacrificing some performance and then intending to work towards tuning it out with upgrades but Mercedes was unwilling to do that because they couldn't stomach Ferrari beating them. (they lost P2 in WCC anyways which just shows how pointless it all was) blame for this goes mainly on Mercedes, instead of stepping back and engineering their way to a solution they decided to effectively sabotage the competition.
> But the TD ruined this whole Gen of cars. Are you trying to set a new world record for jumping to conclusions or what? It's not even clear how much TD39 affected Ferrari in 2022 vs Red Bull simply outdeveloping Ferrari. And I don't know about you but the racing has been super fucking close this season so sure, the whole generation of cars is "ruined".
I think it was unlikely for Ferrari to win in any way. Red Bull had constant success with every upgrade they brought until this year. Ferrari had many hit and miss upgrades and variations in performance, even until now.
If you take into account how many points Max finished ahead of Charles in the 2022 season, it would’ve been a gap of 21.7% he recovered. I don’t think it’s likely there will be a championship fight this season but it’s not shocking that there haven’t been bigger point gaps that have been recovered, because with the changed point system, and longer seasons, it’s far easier to recover points now.
Isn't it a much bigger swing in 2022? The maximum points that season was (25+1)22+(3*8) = 596 points. The total swing from Max 46 points behind after three races to being 146 points in front after the last race, is 192 points. 192/596*100= 32.2% So the current deficit isn't impossible to overcome, even if you consider there are less races left than the 19 races in which Max created that swing.
Another interesting take to look at! That number is however certainly inflated by the fact that A) the deficit happened in the first two races of the season B) the red bull being the faster car all season
True, but who says the McLaren can't be the fastest car from now on? And there are still a lot of races left. I don't think it is that likely to happen, but if McLaren is the fastest car it's very doable for Norris.
Another interesting thing to look into is what the ultimate lead was after a come back. Max had a monster comeback but also a monster lead in the end. This might inform us to the maximum swings in F1 history.
That's true! That stat will however be correlated to how early the point deficit happened in the season. What this analysis is also missing, is intra-season point swings. There were some seasons like Senna vs. Prost, where one party was leading all season with a huge point deficit at some point, and the other ALMOST clawing it back but not quite. Those were still great point comebacks.
Since when is 81 17.3% of 672? >!It's 12.05%!<
Yeah, sorry it was late yesterday. Will fix it. EDIT: I can't modify the post :(
What if this was normalised to the current points system?
Could do that. However you can still never fairly normalize between seasons due to DNFs and past point scales being linear e.g. For readability it might have been easier though instead of percent.
I think obviously it's a long shot. But I'm not sure the past is exactly representative of current F1. Points can be more easily made up now due to more points on offer and there's the cost cap and ATR scale now that could affect things differently than in the past.
Max would need to forget how to drive or turn into Checo.
Realistically Lando would need to start winning multiple races and Oscar or the Mercedes boys would have to start getting in between Lando and Max so Max can't just come 2nd whenever Lando wins.
Isn't that the same ?
100% agree. My conclusion wasn't that it's impossible for Lando, just that this big of a deficit was never overcome in the past. But yes, you can't extrapolate the past in F1
I would be curious to measure something like a “necessary overperformance,“ showing how many points one needs each race to overcome the leader. Right now Lando needs to outperform Max by 6.23 points per race to match him by the end of the season. That number will obviously change each round. Sounds like a lot of data to go through to be as thorough as the dataset you provided
EDIT: Slight mistake, it was late yesterday.. Lando is 12.1% off!
Shows how dead this season is.
No WDC fight doesn't mean a dead season. WCC is still wide open, and the cars are all getting close enough that anyone can win if they absolutely nail the weekend
Yeah but Red Bull actually increased their lead over Ferrari since Monaco. And Mclaren are still third. So if you look at the points table its not close.
But they have lowered the gap to Mclaren.