Formula One
Despite all the dumb DRS stuff with F1, recently, if you love fast cars, rich heritage, presitage and drama you’ll love Formula One. I decided to take a small dive into mining some interesting insights out of some F1 data sets.
Disclaimer: these plots are highly curated to show only interesting, deemed by myself, data points. Otherwise the plots become nonsensical. There are drivers left out. There are teams left out. I used only the most interesting data points for the plots below. I’m sorry to any F1 drivers that might be offended. Please feel free to contact me anytime. I mean it! I’m looking at you Michael Schumacher.
Mining sources
I used Tableau for these plots. I found a nice comprehensive data set from kaggle.
The King
Ferrari has been deeply rooted in racing tradition for eons. This is proof of it. They have also been dominating for quite some time. There’ve been a lot of other teams throughout the years. These are just the ones I was interested in looking at, for overall points. Mercedes and Red Bull are fierce competitors right now. However, it’ll be awhile until they catch up, if they do.
The Silver Arrow
Ferrari, no doubt is on an upward trend, but Mercedes has established itself to be a finely tuned winning machine. With Lewis Hamilton and Nico Roseburg behind the wheel, they appear unstoppable.
Interestingly, right around 2008, which coincides with the global recession you can see that Ferrari, McLaren and Renault all suffer immensely. This is likely due to cutbacks in R&D funding. However, Red Bull doesn’t seem too affected by this. Perhaps, this is because their main source of income isn’t driven by expensive car sales. Even in a recession people are still drinking Red Bull? Nevertheless, we can see that McLaren is clearly struggling and Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes are the clear leaders to beat.
Lewis and Jenson
The previous plot doesn’t really show second major aspect to the teams, namely the drivers. F1 is an intriguing sport, in that, a team needs a great car and a phenomenal driver. Lewis for example, started out on McLaren in 2007. After coming up short to Fernando Alonso everyone knew he was going to be great. Then, the fierce battle between him and the amazing Jenson Button. Lewis beats Jenson in 2010, then Jenson Beats Lewis in 2011 but the most exhilarating battle is in 2012. Lewis wins by a mere 2 points! I don’t even want to know what those post race debriefs were like on McLaren. Lewis finished out his contract with them and switched over to the current reigning champ, Mercedes.
Lewis and Nico
This was a story full of enough power struggles and intrigue, at times, you might have felt as though you were watching a fabled mid-evil dynasty take over. Lewis joins Mercedes and quickly establishes himself as a dominant force. Nico however, helped pioneer the newest, at the time, Mercedes W04 race car. Despite this, Nico gets barely edged out as Lewis beats him in points for 2013.
Nico clearly is the type of guy that rises to the occasion because the following year, in 2014 he fought hard. He came so close, not just to beating Lewis, but actually winning the F1 series as the drivers’ champion. However, after a seriously dramatic season with some car failures, teammate collisions and dodgy team politics he ended up second to Lewis.
After another close race season and overcoming some issues with g-forces and blackouts Nico made another very strong effort to overtake Lewis, but came up short in 2015.
2016 though was the year he toppled the Lion. After extensive mental training, helmet improvement hacks and new gloves! He finally beat Lewis and took the victory as the 2016 drivers’ champion of the world! Barely edging out Lewis by 5 points. Nico decided to pull a Seinfeld and go out while he’s on top.
Now we know what it takes to beat Lewis. Extensive sleep training, shaving grams off your helmet, new gloves, kart racing on all your off time, losing muscle mass to reduce weight, changing your diet to eat no sugar and alcohol, studying philosophy and meditation. That’s why we love Nico, he’s all about the Marginal Gains.
Cool Down
There’s so much fun that can be gained from this plot. There’s all the battles between Mark Weber and Sebastian Vettel on team Red Bull. Then there’s the interesting high pressure driver business model that can be ascertained from looking at Red Bull’s high driver turnover in 2014-2017.
In the end, data can tell us a lot. However, it’s only a part of the narrative. Always, keep this in mind while data mining and don’t jump to conclusions. Likewise, always remember; be like Nico and get those marginal gains!
Background and thumbnail image by: Dan Haraga
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