Clicky

Jump to content

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Grabthaw the Hammerslayer

The League Table Of Drivers Through Team Mates

Recommended Posts

I was musing the other day and remember seeing a post here once where someone had made a comparison of two drivers who had never been team mates but who had shared a team mate in common.

e.g. Driver A was teamed with driver B. Driver A scored higher than driver B in their team. Previously Driver B was team-mate with Driver C and scored higher than him. Ergo Driver A must be better than Driver C...

I know it's a bit rough (and there are many other variables which affect this) but thought it might be interesting to draw up a comparative league table for the current field based upon performance against team mate, because (in my fevered brain), in theory the winningest drivers should come to the top and it should be possible to make a comparison.

So wadda you think?

Eric, as the maths-master is it do-able?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This would be interesting to see, as long as someone out there has that kind of nothing-better-to-do time on their hands!

A lot of the results might be a bit misleading though. Being team-mates to a Schumacher or Hill at the end of their career is very different to being their team-mate at the start or peak of their careers. Hill beat Villeneuve, Villeneuve beat Frentzen, Frentzen beat Hill. Who is best?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm racking my brains but cant think of any other situations where that's happened!

Perhaps we can start thinking of drivers who have 'shared' a team-mate though. I've got loads in my noggin.

Ralf & Kimi both beat Montoya. Massa beat Kimi. But who's better?

Ralf & Fisichella both beat Button. Actually those 2 paired each other in 1997 but I can't remember who came out top.

Irvine & Barrichello both beat Herbert. Again those 2 paired in 1993-1995 & I can't remember who was best!

Hakkinen & Webber beat Coulthard. Kinda sticking to the Brits here. And noticing they're always on the losing end.

I'm already going off on a wild tangent here.

Mansell beat Patrese. Patrese beat Boutsen. Prost beat Mansell. Ergo Prost is better than Boutsen! There's my bombshell of the day

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Villeneuve, of course.

Agreed, always :) Oh and Hill only just beat Villeneuve, it was a very close run thing, but Villeneuve dominated against Frentzen. That's all I'm saying!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Agreed, always smile.png Oh and Hill only just beat Villeneuve, it was a very close run thing, but Villeneuve dominated against Frentzen. That's all I'm saying!

True it was close points-wise, but the gap should've been bigger, Hill had a few bad-luck moments in '96 (eg monaco).

How many drivers have beaten every team-mate they've had, every season? I cant think of any, even Schuey. Even Alonso.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Vettel has beaten all of his teammates.

In 2007, he finished ahead of Nick Heidfeld in his one BMW-Sauber race.

That same year, he outscored Liuzzi 5-3 (Vettel's sixth point was with BMW-Sauber) despite only running 7 races to Liuzzi's 17. He also outscored Speed 5-0 despite only running 7 races to Speed's 10.

Obviously, from 2008 on, he was in a full season ride and beat his teammates in all of those years, too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The real hold-up in doing this, of course, is the "ties." If Driver A and Driver C both beat Driver B, and have nothing else in common, who is better? I thought about looking at the margin of victory over that teammate, but even that is flawed. Why? Let's say Driver A beat Driver B in 2008. Driver A won one race, and Driver B finished second. They retired from all other races.

Driver A: 10

Driver B: 8

Driver A beat Driver B by 25.000% of Driver B's points.

The same exact results happen with Driver C and Driver B, but in 2012.

Driver C: 25

Driver B: 18

Driver C beat Driver B by 38.889% of Driver B's points.

So, because the points system changed not only in size but in weight of various positions, that would be a useless tie-breaker. You'd have to scale old points up or new points down to the other system, which would be too time consuming even for me (though I'm sure if you go digging, someone somewhere has done this).

You could, of course, use something more traditional by comparing Driver A and Driver C through WDCs (or WDC percentage), wins (or win percentage), etc. That would be less in-line with the project proposed, though, which is based on teammates rather than comparing non-teammates.

Alternatively, you could compare teammates by something other than points. Maybe a straight up comparison of who finished where in races in which neither retired for a non-driver-related reason. Or as if they are tied and go by wins, then seconds, then thirds, then fourths, etc. until a winner is found. But that seems to change the criteria; F1 is scored by points, so comparing drivers is most logically done with points, as the goal is to score the most of those over a season and not to have just one fluke of a good result at the expense of all consistency. At the same time, though, the goal is not to finish P12 in nineteen races that your teammate finished P13 in, and then finish P12 in a race where your teammate took P1. That would really not be beating your teammate, yet under a system of just unweighted tallies, it's a 19-1 victory...

So, it would take some thinking through to establish the system you want.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The day vettel has the upper hand on a kimi, a Lewis, a Fernando or even a jenson in the same car will never come IMO. That is why I sincerely hope kimi goes to rb next year.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This would be interesting to see, as long as someone out there has that kind of nothing-better-to-do time on their hands!

A lot of the results might be a bit misleading though. Being team-mates to a Schumacher or Hill at the end of their career is very different to being their team-mate at the start or peak of their careers. Hill beat Villeneuve, Villeneuve beat Frentzen, Frentzen beat Hill. Who is best?

Hmm, I think keep it simple - in your scenario, if there is no clear winner, therefore call it a draw (as neither driver is better than the other in that respect). What we are interested is in who is clearly better - you would move onto others. A more winningest driver would come out on top (e.g. like Schui, Vettel) as they on balance would win more than they would draw...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The day vettel has the upper hand on a kimi, a Lewis, a Fernando or even a jenson in the same car will never come IMO. That is why I sincerely hope kimi goes to rb next year.

We'll see Jean Pierre, we'll see. I have faith in my boy to do well against any of them :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We'll see Jean Pierre, we'll see. I have faith in my boy to do well against any of them :)

I hope someone trumps him,even if its to the title,he needs it his attitude sucks as his head is so big, sometimes I even wonder how he gets his helmet on. Lol

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I hope someone trumps him,even if its to the title,he needs it his attitude sucks as his head is so big, sometimes I even wonder how he gets his helmet on. Lol

That's part of the game. You have to be like that to pursue a ride in F1. If you don't have arrogance, you'd never allow yourself to spend a lifetime doing this. You'd say, "this is silly, I'll get a real job." You need to be arrogant to make it in the top levels of motor racing. Though a lot of drivers pretend it is "for the fans," racing is pure, selfish competition. Nothing else about it. You have to think you're the absolute best.

And so far, Vettel's done a good job of backing it up...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hmm, I think keep it simple - in your scenario, if there is no clear winner, therefore call it a draw (as neither driver is better than the other in that respect). What we are interested is in who is clearly better - you would move onto others. A more winningest driver would come out on top (e.g. like Schui, Vettel) as they on balance would win more than they would draw...

Alright, so here's one:

Vettel beat Webber. Vettel beat Liuzzi. Vettel beat Heidfeld in their one race, though that's not a good sample. Heidfeld beat Webber.

So, it goes Vettel over Heidfeld over Webber. But where do you put Liuzzi? Liuzzi actually finished ahead of Vettel in 5 of their 7 races; you can make the case pretty easily that Vettel beat Liuzzi by much less than he beat Webber. So, Liuzzi is above Webber. But where is he in relation to Heidfeld? He never actually beat Webber head-to-head, so does that mean Heidfeld goes above? Or, because he pretty much beat Vettel in everything but points scored, is he tied so closely to Vettel that no one can come between them? Perhaps we say, well, Vettel wasn't teammates with either for too long, so let's just say Heidfeld and Liuzzi are equals? Or do we put Liuzzi behind Webber, even though he was closer to Vettel, because Liuzzi's performance against his other teammates wasn't as good as Webber's had been?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What I've always wondered was the hakkinen coulthard pairing. In 96 and 97 coulthard did better than Mika but from 98-2000 he beat coulthard, whats the go there, was the 98 reg change better suited to Mika or did Mika finally roll his sleeves up and have a swing back? This one has puzzled me, sure Mika won 2 titles but could have it gone to coulthard if Mika didn't stamp his foot down in Melbourne 98?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Definitely can't put it down to Melbourne '98, yes DC moved over but he then spent the rest of the year mostly getting outqualified and outraced by Mika. Then in 2001 he was suddenly putting Mika firmly in the shade, weird

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Or do we put Liuzzi behind Webber, even though he was closer to Vettel, because Liuzzi's performance against his other teammates wasn't as good as Webber's had been?

Hmmmm, OK will give this one some thought.

There's two things going on here - one is the comparative performance against a team-mate - that's easy because its a win/lose/draw scenario. The issue comes with how we aggregate those to make sense and to deal with the wild cards...

It may be that the comparative points score in a season or overall career points score comes into play in some fashion....

We really need someone with statistics (and no Steph, I don't mean you :) ) experience to advise....

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I got an A in GCSE statistics at school, so I feel qualified to say that all of these types of systems suck :P

No, I wanted to say I find them interesting and maybe even fun, but not particularly helpful. That's because you can't seem to avoid making them subjective by the weight you give to some criteria to over another. So all you have done is swap your own subjective judgement based on your senses, for another subjective judgement based on numbers. I always think a fluid, sort of dynamic subjectivity of our own judgements of just watching drivers drive, is better than a subjectivity masquerading as objectivity.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

No, I wanted to say I find them interesting and maybe even fun, but not particularly helpful. That's because you can't seem to avoid making them subjective by the weight you give to some criteria to over another. So all you have done is swap your own subjective judgement based on your senses, for another subjective judgement based on numbers. I always think a fluid, sort of dynamic subjectivity of our own judgements of just watching drivers drive, is better than a subjectivity masquerading as objectivity.

I agree, but if someone wants to do it, let it be done, I say. At the very least, it'd be interesting to know who F1's Kevin Bacon is.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I got an A in GCSE statistics at school, so I feel qualified to say that all of these types of systems suck tongue.png

I thought the only statistics you studied were of the 36-24-36 variety! :) No, seriously, I am not worthy!

No, I wanted to say I find them interesting and maybe even fun, but not particularly helpful. That's because you can't seem to avoid making them subjective by the weight you give to some criteria to over another. So all you have done is swap your own subjective judgement based on your senses, for another subjective judgement based on numbers. I always think a fluid, sort of dynamic subjectivity of our own judgements of just watching drivers drive, is better than a subjectivity masquerading as objectivity.

Yeah I know... I was hoping to have something that would deal with the age-old statement of: "well if <INSERT FAVOURITE DRIVER'S NAME> was in a <Red Bull/McLaren/Ferrari>, he'd poo all over <Alonso/Kimi/Button/Vettel>, etc.....

I'll think about it..... hmmmm

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think about what Hulkenberg would've done in the Mclaren instead of Perez.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think about what Hulkenberg would've done in the Mclaren instead of Perez.

No one's doing anything in that car.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

No one's doing anything in that car.

How dare you downplay the valiant 5th place achieved in the Chinese GP!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...