F1 Data Junkie

The Best F1 Driver of 2012???

2013-01-03T23:30:00.001Z

I've been having a dabble with a database downloaded from the Ergast Motor Racing Database and came up with this ad hoc model for trying to get a feel for who the best F1 "racing" driver of 2012 was based on the difference in their grid position and final race classification.

The model I used was to calculate the following quantity: sum of (gridPosition-racePosition)/racePosition) over all races

The numerator (top term), gridPosition-racePosition, gives the number of positions gained (positive), or lost (negative).

These values are scaled by dividing through by the final racePosition in each corresponding race, which means that position changes at the head of the field count for more than those at the back of the field. (There is a certain balancing effect going on here though, because cars that start at the back of the field may gain several places through non-finishers amongst the cars that started ahead of them). Here are the resulting rankings...

I then tweaked the model to add in a term that accounted for holding position, equal to 1/racePosition (so the equation became sum of ( (gridPosition==racePosition)/racePosition + (gridPosition-racePosition)/racePosition) over all races. Here's the result this time:

A problem with that approach is that there is no differentiation between gaining a a place and holding position. We can account for this using the following refinement: sum of ( (gridPosition>=racePosition)/racePosition + (gridPosition-racePosition)/racePosition) over all races

Here's a final chart, this time using the product of the grid and final positions as the denominator (that is, calculating sum of ( (gridPosition==racePosition)/(racePosition*gridPosition) + (gridPosition-racePosition)/(racePosition*gridPosition) ) over all races).

So do any of these charts make (non)sense? (And if so, which make most (or least) sense and why?)

F1 2012 Race Review Charts App

2012-12-21T21:47:00.002Z

I just realised I haven't posted any links to my graphical race review app, so here's a link now: F1 2012 Race Review Charts App...

There's also a brief write-up at More Shiny Goodness – Tinkering With the Ergast Motor Racing Data API.

F1 2012 Brazil Third Practice Summary

2012-11-24T14:49:00.004Z

A quick visual summary of P3 at the 2012 Brazilian Formula One Grand Prix...

Here are the deltas between best lap time and ultimate laptime (so who's not driving to the limit?;-):

The ultimate vs. personal best laptime chart shows similar information in an alternative form - the further away form the line, the further off the ultimate lap:

How does each driver fare by sector?

We can also compare sectors separately:

Or like this....

Deltas again...

If we compare sector rankings with overall classifications, we can get a feel for drivers who are particularly quick - or slow - in a sector; something goes wrong for WEB in sector 3, but GRO is good in 2 and DIR in 3? ALO's losing in sector 1?

How do deltas compare by sector against sector classification?

How do the deltas compare in each sector (delta from fastes sector time)? Again, lets order by overall classification so we can see folk who are out of sorts:

By the by, how do speeds compare?

And sector rank v straightline speed?

Sector delta v speed?

F1 2012 VET vs. ALO in Practice and Qualifying

2012-11-23T10:05:00.002Z

A couple of quick sketches to summarise how Vettel and Alonso have compared over the season to date in practice and qualifying.

First up, the time delta between their best times in each session:

This doesn't take into account the lap length, though, so we can normalise by dividing through by the fastest laptime recorded across VET and ALO for each session:

Casting a quick eye over the charts, I think we could make at least an anecdotal claim that progression continues in qualifying at least... so if VET improves over ALO going Q1 to Q2, then we'll see a further increase going into Q3?

How do P3/third practice times compare with qualifying session times?

VET seems to straddle his P3 time with the Q1 and Q2 times? (Below the line shows the qualifying session time beat the third practice time.)

How about ALO?

Is there a tendency there for ALO to perform better in qualifying than in P3? This is where "proper" statistics come in, not just graphical stats "by eye"...

So, what statistical test should we use to see how qualifying session times compare with practice times?

F1 2012 Championship Going in to Brazil

2012-11-22T00:28:00.001Z

A quick round up of some of the elements of the races to date...

Intra-team comparison: the dots show the position of the two drivers ("driver 1" in the team is blue the "second" driver s orange; the bar shows the difference between positions in the team. Bar to the left of the centre line shows that driver 1 was higher placed):

As a side-effect, the lack of a green bar denotes that at most only one car finished for the team. The chart therefore immediately makes it clear that Ferrari had good reliability, but the McLarens had quite a few races without a double finish. ALO and VET are also seen to dominate their respective team rankings. HUL has had a good run in his team in the latter part of the season.

Here's another take on that chart - but this time we order the x-axis for classification so that 1st is at x=23 (i.e. better placed is further to the right; winer is extreme right).

Reasons for non-finishes (no data for United States?):

Pit stop performance - delta from best pit times:

Here are the pit deltas from best pit time by race, with a LOESS best fit line to try and pull out any trends:

Here's a close-up of fast pit stops by driver number:

F1 2012 United States Qualifying Summary

2012-11-17T19:52:00.001Z

A quick summary of qualifying at the 2012 Formula One US Grand Prix.

Here's how the practice and qualifying sessions went:

Does that table need to have the y-axis reversed so that first is at the top? I think it does, doesn't it?

How about progress through the actual qualifying sessions?

How close to ultimate lap times did each driver get?

In response to a comment from MartinB, here's that same chart with the laptime axes reversed so the fastet laps are top right:

Does that work? Convention is to read axes as increasing value, so we break that here... but maybe the chart does make more sense? If anything, I guess it shows how you really would need to take care when reading axis titles and labels... Below the line is now slower than ultimate lap. Would it be more useful if Ultimate and personal best axes were flipped? Or maybe we should just focus on deltas between personal bests and personal ultimates?

How about this - looking at deltas vs the personal best time?

The different axis scales really make a big difference here - VET was "way off" his ultimate laptime compared to HAM. But a problem with this chart is that we can't easily tell whether HAM would have beaten VET if HAM had driven his ultimate lap compared to VET's personal best lap?

How about with flipped x-axis so fastest is to the right:

Any good?

If drivers had driven ultimate laps during qualifying, would the qualification classification have been any different? RAI would have moved up a place, it seems...

Here's how the best sector time deltas stacked up - drivers are ordered by qualifying classification, so it should be easy enough to spot anyone who drove good sectors on different laps, but didn't hook them up in a single qualifying lap:

Are the drivers performing particularly well or badly in any particular sector? MAL and ALO are making up ground in sector 1 compared to their overall classification, but MSC is losing places. In sector 2, HUL does well but WEB is down. In sector 3, MAS is up, GRO and HUL are down.

We can also look at deltas to the fastest time in each sector, again arranged by overall classification (rather than rank in sector). WEB and GRO both lose time in sector 2.

How do the session times vary from the ultimate laptime (and did anyone fare better in an earlier session than a later one?)? Seems like BUT did better in Q1 than Q2... and ALO did better in Q2 than Q3:

How did speeds compare?

How slow are the Red Bulls?!

Any obvious (to the eye) relationship between speed and ultimate laptime?

I guess the next thing to do is to start trying to tie these data views into session reports, such as this one form f1fanatic: Vettel takes pole as Alonso struggles to fourth row. What we really need to support session write-ups of that form is the timing data for each qualifying lap. This is available from the FIA media centre, but I've been laying off the PDF scraping for the second half of this season...

F1 2012 United States Grand Prix Third Practice Summary

2012-11-17T17:37:00.000Z

Sketches around P3 of the 2012 Formula One United States Grand Prix...

First, how to the deltas for each driver's best sector time compared to the best overall sector time stack up? Drivers are ranked by session classification, so we see that Button is out of position. WHilst he pulled in some good sector times, presumably he couldn't hook them up together?

If we look at the delta between best lap time and ultimate laptime, we should therefore see that BUT is way off...

...as indeed he is..

If we look at the ultimate vs. personal best laptime, we should see BUT out of postion - we can get a feel for the ultimate laptime ranking by look at how drivers are ordered along the y-axis:

This is a little cluttered - let's zoom in:

Now we see that if drivers drove their ultimate laps, BUT would have moved up three positions.

How does each driver fare by sector?

If we order by driver number, we can get a feel for how each driver fared as well as team behaviour:

One thing that jumps out for me in this chart is how much time can be lost in sector 2? The Red Bulls seem to be nailing it in sector 3 compared to everyone else?

If we compare sector rankings with overall classifications, we can get a feel for drivers who are particularly quick - or slow - in a sector:

So in sector 1, GRO is fast, and HUL slow. BUT is up in sector, wheres WEB is down. In sector 3, WEB picks up places, as does RAI, but MAL seems to be slow?

How do the deltas compare in each sector (delta from fastes sector time)? Again, lets order by overall classification so we can see folk who are out of sorts:

So in sector 1, we see HUL is slow and GRO picks up time. Sector 2 is all over the place, but WEB's bad time stands out. Similarly, in sector 3 we see MAL mess up, but RAI makes up time.

If we view the same sort of chart order by sector ranking, we can get a better feel for whether there are any breaks in the team performances, as well as as whether any sectors present any particular problems to any given team (you need to know driver pairings to detect team patterns though...)

Looks like sector 2 spreads them out...

By the by, how do speeds compare?

Red Bulls are *slow*, aren't they?

Does there appear to be any relationship between speed and ultimate laptime?

How about speed and overall classification?

Can we spot any relationships between speed and sector times?

Maybe we'll see something if we group the driver's deltas and plot them against speed?

Hmmm... I'm not convinced I can easily spot any patterns there...? Thought I'm not totally sure what to look for... (That is, this view may not be meaningful at all;-)

The Race to the 2012 Championship

2012-11-17T16:13:00.001Z

F1 2012 Abu Dhabi Ultimate Qualifying Sketches

2012-11-04T12:58:00.001Z

The qualifying classification is based on the ranking achieved by each car in the last qualifying session they make it through it. WHich is to say, a car that sets the fastest time overall in qualifying in session 2 might only get a final qualifying classification of 10th if they don't perform in the final session of qualifying.

In addition, as part of the timing reports, best recorded sector times for each car throughout qualifying are also published - which means we can calculate an ultimate laptime based on summing the best sector times for each driver.

So if we plot quali sessions times and the ultimate laptimes, what do we see?

And if we rank the ultimate laptimes, and compare them to qualifying rank, here's what we get:

Which is to to: the ranking on the left is the qualifying classification, and the column on the right shows where they would have qualified if they had put together an ultimate lap.

F1 2012 Abu Dhabi Qualifying Summary

2012-11-03T14:48:00.001Z

This first chart aims to summarise the classification at the end of each of the three practice sessions and qualifying. I find it a bit hard to make any sense of? What position did Maldonado qualify in, for example, or where was WEB classified in P2?

Here's another take - does the tabulation offer more than the graphical view?

The next chart summarises positions at the end of each session in qualifying. There are two major considerations here - do we order results Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q3, Q2, Q1? And how do we order the drivers? In this configuration, I have drivers arranged by their classification at the end of Q1, ranked with first at the top and 24th at the bottom. I also need to work on a colour and line style palette.

The same chart as above, minus the lines. This contrasts with the way that the results are traditionally tabulated (one row per driver, ordered by overall classification, first at the top, 24th at the bottom).

In the next chart, I reintroduce the lines, order sessions Q3, Q2, Q1, and rank the drivers according to overall final qualifying classification. I have the Car Number column as a reference point; another reference point might be current ranking in the driver championship?

As above, but top-to-bottom and left-to-right orderings are reversed. (Should I plot the other 2 orderings so we can just see how they look/feel?)

Sector times are also available - here we compare the sector delta (time away from best sector time) against classification in that sector (the title of this chart is incorrect: it should say 'Sector classification" not "Overall Classification"). There's not a lot of slack in sector 1, sector 2 differentiates out the weaker teams, sector three also splits out the midfield teams. I think these sector split charts might make more sense if we look at a circuit map and get a feel for what sort of challenge each sector offers?

Compare speeds to overall qualifying classification - we see that MAL is fast in a straight line and that web and VET are slow. Note we could flip the y-axis, and maybe also label it as a speed delta away from the fastest speed? Would that be useful? In this chart do you get the raw feeling that HAM is faster or slower than WEB and VET?

The classification ranking is one thing, but it doesn't give us a feeling for how speed translates to laptime or laptime deltas between the cars? In this next chart, we use ultimate laptime on the x-axis, and see clear separation between the bottom teams and the rest of the field. We also see consistency between WEB and VET and ALO and MAS. Do you get the raw feeling that ALO is faster or slower than MAS (ALO was slower,,,)?

This chart looks rather more directly at laptime, comparing ultimate with best achieved laptimes. The distance away from the grey line, and the colour, indicates how far off ultimate the best time was. If we flip the axes, best laptimes slower than ultimate will appear above the line, which is a more natural way of looking at it, maybe?

How do laptime deltas in each sector compare to overall classification (title needs correcting)? There's a bit more going in in these charts, but how easy is it to tell what?

The following stacked bar chart orders drivers by overall qualifying classification, and then shows their delta from the best recorded sector time overall:

In the next chart, we order cars by driver number (a common baseline); it might also make sense to annotate this chart with team identifiers?

How overall classification compares to rank in each sector. Above the line and sector rank is better than overall rank. Below the line, sector rank is worse than overall classification. So WEB is fast in sector 1, PER is slow in sector 2 and fast in sector 3. Would this chart be easier to read if axes were flipped? That is, below the line showing a driver is faster/better ranked in a sector than their overall classification would suggest?

A simple chart plotting speed versus driver in driver number order. We see team consistency in the main...

Does speed appear to translate to an advantage in any particular sector? If we plot speed vs. sector delta, what does it show?

F1 2012 Abu Dhabi P3 Summary

2012-11-03T13:20:00.000Z

F1 2012 India Pit Stop and Fast Lap Summaries

2012-10-28T16:11:00.001Z

F1 2012 - Reasons for Failing to Finish to Date (India)

2012-10-28T16:00:00.000Z

Summary of reasons for failing to finish to data (India), sorted by team:

F1 2012 India - Weekend Summary

2012-10-28T15:46:00.000Z

A quick summary of how folk were classified across the weekend sessions:

And numerically:

F1 2012 India - Qualifying Summary

2012-10-27T23:26:00.001+01:00

A quick graphical summary of qualifying for the 2012 Formula One Grand Prix...

To start with, here's how the best recorded sector times for each driver compare, as viewed under the lens of deltas compared to the fasted overall time recorded in each sector - the bottom 3 teams are clearly slower in all 3 sectors:

The following chart splits out the sector time deltas within each team - for RBR, we see that VET beat WEB in sectors 1 and 3, and in the Ferraris, MAS beat ALO in sector 1:

We can also look at how each driver fared with their fastest recorded laptime during qualifying compared to their ultimate lap - BUT did his best performance in Q2:

Here we see how close to the best recorded time in each sector each driver fared: HAM excelled in sector 1, whereas the Red Bulls shared the honours in sectors 2 and 3:

A peek at how the overall sector time deltas (compared to the best recorded sector times) added up - drivers are ordered by car/driver number:

We can also order the summed deltas by the qualifying session classification - if PIC had driven an ultimate lap, he might have improved his classification... MAL, ROS and GRO also look like they may have missed out by not making it into Q3:

Here we look at sector deltas against rank in each sector (not, as labelled, the session classification) - there's clear differentiation between the back marker teams and the rest of the field in sector 2:

Alternatively, we can rank according to overall qualifying classification sector 3 appears to correlate most closely to overall ranking, whereas there are different gains and losses to be had in sectors 1 and 2:

The next chart looks at normalised sector times - and the normalised speed - ordered by driver number; note how comparatively slow the Red Bulls are, and how the Ferraris seem to be a tad faster than the McLarens.

How do qualifying session times compare to the overall qualifying classification? As noted before, did MAL, ROS and GRO miss out?

How did the drivers' times in each session compare with their ultimate lap? HAM presumably made mistakes in each session compared to his ultimate possible lap?

The next chart lets us see how each team fared in terms of sector deltas compared to the best overall sector time, as well as comparing driver performances within each team. If BUT and ALO could both make up one or two tenths per sector, they'd be nailing it? HAM's sector deltas are more dispersed though?

Another take on how far each driver was away from their ultimate laptime in terms of their best recorded laptime throughout qualifying - KOV really seems to have messed up, and HAM obviously dropped time compared to his ultimate lap:

And finally, how drivers' overall classification in qualifying compared to their rank in terms of sector best times - again, we see the closest correlation in sector 3, with GRO and ROS both faring better in terms of sector rank in sectors 1 and 2 than their overall classification might suggest: On the other hand, RAI had lousy sector 1 and 2 rankings compared to his final qualifying classification, but a good performance in sector 3:

PS here's a summary of classifications across the quali sessions:

F1 2012 Japan Session Classification Summary

2012-10-07T23:41:00.000+01:00

A tabular chart summarising classifications for each driver in each major session of the race weekend.

(If necessary, quali could also be split into the three quali session classifications, rather than just the overall quali classification.)

I'm thinking colour might also be useful, but in what dimension? Maybe to highlight grid penalties? In the race column, where a reason for not finishing is given, might it make sense to add that statement to this column?

F1 2012 Japan Race Review Charts (Pits and Fast Laps)

2012-10-07T11:02:00.000+01:00

SOme very crude sketches - I need to sort the titles and label sizes out but don't have the opportunity right now...

F1 2012 Japan Qualifying Summary Chart

2012-10-06T23:06:00.000+01:00

I've just been playing with a new chart type, a qualifying summary chart that shows the classifications at the end of each qualifying session...

Useful summary, or not?

PS @sidepodcast's Mr C. thought VET should surely be at the top.. Like this?

Here's another way of reviewing the qualifying classifications:

Although redundant, we can also label the positions?

We can then start to think about combining the charts...

I guess the next improvement is to use qualifying time rather than classification as the y-co-ordinate? But that requires a bit of dataframe tinkering and it's too late to start that now...

F1 2012 Japan Qualifying Summary Snapshots

2012-10-06T11:33:00.001+01:00

(Part of the rationale for these posts is to explore what we can learn about a race just from the published data. Many of the "anomalies"/deviations from expected behaviour or "odd things" in the charts may be easily explained by anyone who saw the session, but can we use the data to help us as questions about what happened to a particular driver for example (even if the answer turns out to be obvious, like a driver spinning off at the start of the session). Another way of thinking about this might be to ask what additional data do we need to explain what happened in a session if all we have to go on to generate a race report is the published data?

Comments appreciated particularly relating to:

1) what sorts of things do each of these charts reveal about the session/what sorts of commentary/interpretation would you like to see/how might these charts help make sense of, reveal things that happened in, or hint at possible stories relating to the session?

2) how could the charts be improved?

3) what other charts might be useful?

Thanks ;-)

Deltas to best overall sector time by driver 1/driver 2 within a team:

Normalised sector times and normalised speed, ordered by car number:

Qualifying session laptimes, ordered by classification - both ALO and RAI, at least, appear to have slipped up in Q3? (I find the green and blue quite hard to distinguish? Use symbols, maybe? A line chart may even be in order, using session groups, because line crosses would show where things maybe went wrong?)

How close to their ultimate laptimes did each driver get? SEN and KAR were way off, and VET didn't do so well either?

Sector comparison across qualifying - what are the deltas to the best overall sector times?

Sector time deltas compared to best overall sector times, summed, ranked by classification:

If we order the drivers by car number, team performances are a little clearer to see?

This chart suggests to me that sector 1 is where most time is being lost in the first sector, but I'm not convinced about those colours (does a block of the pinkly colour feel bigger than a similarly sized stacked block of the green colour?) Looking at the range of the y-axis in the chart below, which shows the deltas to the best sector time, we do see that for cars 6-8, they are losing more time in sector 1 than sector 2.

Sector time deltas, ordered by car number, split out by sector:

Sector 3 is quite close cut, with sector 2 in particular differentiating between the teams at the back of the field, and sector 1 particularly differentiating those team from the top three quarters of the field. (Just noticed that I have posted a normalised chart, showing how close teams are to the 107% threshold.)

Sector deltas by rank for those sectors (maybe also worth doing by overall classification rank?):

So for example, here the order is by overal qualifying classification - of a driver looks to be high in a column, for example, PER in sector 2 and 3, they're losing time there... If they appear to be low in a column, for example SEN in sector 1 or ROS in sector2, they're making up time.

That then suggests this next chart, immediately below, where we compare sector ranking with overall classification ranking. Using overall classification on y and sector ranking on x, if a label is above the line the driver performed better on that sector than we might expect, and if it's below the line, they performed worse...
So for example, ROS did better in sector 2 than his overall classification suggests, and whilst MSC messed up/was below the line in sector 1, he did well (above the line) in sector 3... BUT also appears to have the better of WEB in sector 2? PER is underperforming in sector 2 and 3, as was also suggested in the previous chart.

The previous charts, based as they are on best sector times, suggest that HAM was performing better based on best sector times than his classification suggest. Looking at the lap time deltas relative to each driver's ultimate laptime, we see that indeed HAM was way down on his ultimate lap time in each of the qualifying sessions; we also see that HAM recorded a better time in Q2 than he did in Q3, as did RAI:

Session and ultimate laptimes, ordered by car number:

How are the teams losing time by sector? Does this chart help?

Mercedes and Toro Rosso seem to be losing out in sector 1? Maybe ranking teams by their average sector times would be useful? Something like this maybe?

Hmm - a boxplot isn't right... not enough data for a distribution. Maybe just the tomes for each driver in a team and a bar for the team mean? How about:

Or maybe presented by team?

Tinkering With a New Chart Type - Comparing Sector TImes

2012-10-06T02:34:00.001+01:00

I've been doodling a few new charts, some quite complex to pull together and that I'm still working on, some a bit simpler.

Here's a quick one to compare the best sector times within a team. If one driver in a team is better than the other by a consistent normalised amount in each sector, we'd get parallel lines. If the lines cross, one of the drivers significantly outperformed (or underperformed) the other in one of the sectors:

This chart shows the the cumulative delats over sectors in P2 - BUT messed up I think?

A new chart I'm working on that gets messed up by Friday drivers, but I may have a fix. This chart is read right to left - the most recent session is leftmost, and the y-axis labelled according to the classifications in the most recent session. We see for example that VET improved over P1 to P2, whereas BUT lost out compared to P1.

I'm starting to think the y-axis should be flipped, so the first placed driver in the most recent session is at the top? Then as we read right to left, if a line goes up the position has improved?

F1 2012 Singapore - Race Review

2012-09-30T22:37:00.001+01:00

I've doctored the pit time data a little, in part ot try to make this chart a little clearer - the min pit time as far as the char y-axis is concerned is 0.01s less than the fastest recorded laptime... which means we get a bar displayed for the driver with the fastest pit time, although only a small one. (In fact, in this case, two drivers got pretty much the same fastest pit time...)

This text plot is actually misleading - it looks as if HAM took the fasted lap, but actually it was VET...

F1 2012 - Differences Between Qualifying and Race Classifications

2012-09-22T21:51:00.003+01:00

Inspired by a tweet from Mr C/@sidepodcast, here's a chart showing the differences between race and qualifying classifications by driver and race over the season so far...

The above chart doesn't make clear which races were completed by a driver, and which ones they were classified in the same postion for the race and during qualifying. The following chart adds in the race classification...

Hmm...I think we need to draw an line in at y=0 to make the axis clearer. Alternatively, how about if we use colour to highlight a gain or loss in position?

Here's another take, using a linerange to indicate the change in classification between qualifying and the race. The larger red dot shows the race classification, the smaller blue dot the qualifying classification. The dots are layered so that if the qualifying and race classification are the same, the smaller blue dot sits on top of the larger red dot. The line segment draws attention to the difference between classifications, and is coloured to show whether positions were gained or lost between qualifying and the final race classification. The y-axis is inverted to better reflect height as "good", better ranking, lower down the screen as fall or loss of position.

I think the sizes and colour encodings may be confusing - red is the final, but red is also loss in position from qualifying to race. The larger dot represents race classification, but the eye moves (I think?) from the larger to the smaller dot? So the larger dot should represent qualifying, and be on a lower layer, and the smaller dot the final race classification, so you eye is led from qualifying to final race position?

Here's how the drivers compare when we look at the statistical distribution of classification differences between qualifying and the end of the race:

VER, RAI and PER are looking good on this view? (We know from elsewhere that the backmarkers tend to make up places through other drivers not finishing...?) Again, a line at y=0 might help to make things a little clearer in terms of whether places tended to be gained or lost? And again, we have lost information with respect to the average classification awarded to each driver during qualifying and/or at the end of the race that could act as a reference point? Hmmm...

F1 2012 - Season to Date - Weekend Session Classifications

2012-09-22T18:28:00.001+01:00

A quick sketch showing how drivers were classified across each of the sessions over the race weekend for the races to date:

Each line corresponds to a single driver - the charts show how each driver was classified in practice 1, practice 2, practice 3, qualifying and at the end of the race.

Do any processional races jump out at you (low number of line crosses going from Quali to Race classification)?

The following chart shows how each driver was classified across the weekend sessions over the races to date this season:

The recipe I use to generate the chart plots lines - so if a driver only appeared in first practice, we don't actually get to see how they performed... Any R/ggplot2 gurus know how I can tweak geom_line() to cope with this?

We can also look at the statistical distribution of classifications by session using a boxplot, though I'm not sure it's that useful?

I guess what it does show is drivers who seem to do better in races that in qualifying (excepting drivers at the back of the field who make up places as a result of other drivers not finishing). So for example, di Resta, Alonso and Vergne appear to be doing quite well. Also notice how consistent Alonso and Vettel are in race classification.

F1 2012 Singapore Qualifying Summary

2012-09-22T15:50:00.000+01:00

How did the drivers compare within a team in each sector (comparing sector best times for each driver captured across all three qualifying sessions)? A greeny-blue bar to the left shows "driver1" in a team got a better time than "driver 2". A reddy-orange bar to the right shows "driver 2" did better:

This chart helps us see how the drivers compared to their team mate, but it doesn't really tell us anything about overall competitiveness?

If we rank by final classification, how do laptimes across qualifying sessions compare, and how do they compare to the ultimate laptime for each driver (the sum of their fastest sector times)? It seems that if VET had driven an ultimate lap, he might have made second?

(Note to self - increase label sizes!) This is a much more informative chart, I think: the ultimate laptimes might be revealing, and we can also get a feel for how things improved session on session (though why they might have improved is another matter?)

Another intra-team comparison chart - the view over all the panels gives us some idea of the competitiveness of each team. I wonder whether adding lines at y=10.5 and y=17.5 to show cut off for each session would be useful?

The session times (and ultimate lap times) for each driver in "standard" driver order - this is a little confusing, I think, in terms of making sense of the whole, but is an easier chart to navigate if you are used to looking for drivers by car number?

The next chart uses bars to show the delta between each driver's session time and the overal fastest time in the session. We lose information about which driver was fastest in the session - I maybe need to add a marker to show this driver?

Looking at session times is one thing, but it can be more useful to try to see where performance differed in terms of sector times. The following shows the deltas between fastest recorded sector time and each driver's personal sector time. I have ordered the drivers by driver number:

One issue with this is that we occlude markers, eg in the case of HAM. This might be addressed by using different shaped markers (eg empty circle, square and triangle) or layered, differently sized markers...

The following stacked bar chart makes it easy to see how the overall performance differences per driver by sector compared to the fastest time recorded in each sector:

The ordering by driver helps us find driver's by car number.

An alternative ordering shows the stacked bars by final classification. There's something odd going on here - MAS and RAI are inverted and the classification order is different to the classification ordered ultimate laptimes chart above? Bah..... I was going to say this is a really handy chart, because it lets us compare sector times (ish) between drivers next to each other in classification terms. But with the inversion in ordering, I can't trust what data is there:-( Ho hum... back to the scripts... I guess this suggests I should really do incremental commentary as I produce each chart so I can check they are all consistent as I go along... [SPOTTED IT... I'm using the wrong ranking... Will fix .....] - DONE.

This chart is handy for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it lets us compare sector times (ish) between drivers next to each other in classification terms; secondly, where columns appear inverted (eg as in case of MAL and VET), it shows us that VET, in this case, had an ultimate laptime that would have bumped him up the order, if he could have driven to it...

The following chart allows us to see the time distance between drivers per sector compared to their ranking within that sector:

This provides an alternative view on the deltas from best sector time for each driver, as ordered by driver number:

This chart goes back to the session (rather than sector) comparisons - it attempts to show the delta for each driver between each session best time and their ultimate laptime:

And finally, a view over the sector times, normalised according to the fastest sector time recorded:

Again, this chart suffers from occlusion of points, as for example in the case of HAM.

F1 2012 Singapore P3 Comparisons

2012-09-22T13:30:00.001+01:00

Time differences between each driver's best sector times in third practice compared to the best overall sector time:

Comparing deltas compared to best overall sector time with sector based classification:

Summed deltas from best overall sector times:

Another comparison of sector times deltas compared to the best overall sector time:

Speed trap comparison:

Intra-team sector delta to best overal sector time comparisons:

Differences between personal classified time and team ultimate laptime:

(I need to check the code on this one - eg we could imagine the fatset ultimate comparing the ultimate lap of each driver in the team, or we might imagine constructing an artificial ultimate team lap based on the best sector time recorded in each team for each sector.)

Here's how the drivers compare within a team - the size of the bar gives the differences between the sector times of drivers within the same team. If the bar goes to the left, "driver 1" has gone faster than "driver 2".