Mercedes without Hamilton in numbers

[Gillian]

No worries, when we get to 2017 and beyond it will look better for Hamilton.

This difference in results exposes the problems in the method, because the method used omits the fact that Mercedes was significantly clear of the rest of the field for the years 2014-2016, data isn't going to change much for 0,5s if the gap with the rest of the field is 0,5s.

The thing is that a driver can add, or take away, so much that will not be directly measurable through statistics.

But that's exactly what this does do. By taking the better/faster driver (debatable, but that's what Hamilton is imo), reducing his pole lap times by 0.1 second steps and determining the impact on qualifying result per driver and team, you can see the actual impact said driver has.

If the competition is close and there's a big difference between the drivers of a team, then not only would the result of the driver be significantly worse but also the results of the team.

What you can see now, for atleast 2014 and 2015, is that reducing Hamiltons pole times by 0.5 second, Mercedes still takes almost all poles and the slower time is still enough most of the times to be second or third. That's a clear indication of a dominant car.

It will be very clear when 2017 and 2018 are added.

[wesley123]

I have gone through the troubles of going through the 2017 data. It looks a bit messy I suppose, but overall it is clear enough. You can download the spreadsheet here. It should be easily adjustable to other seasons.

Driver Poles;


Team Poles;


The biggest shift occurs at approximately 0,2-0,3s, indicating the pole gap to Ferrari was somewhere around that area.
What also should be noted is that the Italian GP qualifying was in wet weather, where Lewis cleared the field by over 1s, which is an outlier in these statistics. The result that is worth mentioning though is the British GP, where the result was over half a second.

[PlatinumZealot]

I have gone through the troubles of going through the 2017 data. It looks a bit messy I suppose, but overall it is clear enough. You can download the spreadsheet here. It should be easily adjustable to other seasons.

Driver Poles;
https://i.imgur.com/x5mLJt3.jpg

Team Poles;
https://i.imgur.com/fTMQIME.jpg

The biggest shift occurs at approximately 0,2-0,3s, indicating the pole gap to Ferrari was somewhere around that area.
What also should be noted is that the Italian GP qualifying was in wet weather, where Lewis cleared the field by over 1s, which is an outlier in these statistics. The result that is worth mentioning though is the British GP, where the result was over half a second.

Can you please explain how to interpret your graphs?

[ringo]

We all know the cars were dominant, big deal. Hamilton had a teammate who could have taken all those titles but didnt, and that teammate whooped Shumacher for 3 years.

Qualifying pace does not tell the whole story also. Yes it was a two horse race from 2014 to 2016. But which great driver was never in a two horse race with another driver?

In fact Hamilton has spent more time of his championships in a 3 horse race, as he never had a #2 driver, and then had to deal with another competitive car.

The likes of Senna, Jim Clarke, Jackie Stewart and Shumacher spent most of their success racing in dominant cars, against a teammate, or in a dominant car with a #2 driver and a rival in another car. It's just what Formula 1 is. It's a team sport where having a very good car is required.
No one driver has ever on average over his career changed championship outcomes on a consistent basis.
We had Hamilton in 2008, Almost in 2007, we had the Hamilton vs Vettel in Ferrari years. Alonso almost in ferrari vs Vettel etc. But there is not one driver over his whole career and all his championships where at all times his driving was the deciding factor over the car for getting championships.

The cars were very good, in fact the engines were turned up during qualifying which distorts even more any kind of comparison or reasonable cut off for what is contributed by the driver over an average driver. For all we know Hamilton can be 1 second a lap faster than an average driver and we have seen this in quite a few of his Q3 laps.
At the end of the day, Hamilton is not enjoying any more advantage over the other greats of F-1 in his achievements. He is where he is on his own merit.

[Gillian]

No worries, when we get to 2017 and beyond it will look better for Hamilton.

This difference in results exposes the problems in the method, because the method used omits the fact that Mercedes was significantly clear of the rest of the field for the years 2014-2016, data isn't going to change much for 0,5s if the gap with the rest of the field is 0,5s.

The thing is that a driver can add, or take away, so much that will not be directly measurable through statistics.

Another point of futility, is that why the arbitrary number of 0.5s, why not 0.75 or 1s?
Gillian just has an ulterior motive. We all know the cars were dominant, big deal. Hamilton had a teammate who could have taken all those titles but didnt, and that teammate whooped Shumacher for 3 years.

Qualifying pace does not tell the whole story also. Yes it was a two horse race from 2014 to 2016. But which great driver was never in a two horse race with another driver?

In fact Hamilton has spent more time of his championships in a 3 horse race, as he never had a #2 driver, and then had to deal with another competitive car.

The likes of Senna, Jim Clarke, Jackie Stewart and Shumacher spent most of their success racing in dominant cars, against a teammate, or in a dominant car with a #2 driver and a rival in another car. It's just what Formula 1 is. It's a team sport where having a very good car is required.
No one driver has ever on average over his career changed championship outcomes on a consistent basis.
We had Hamilton in 2008, Almost in 2007, we had the Hamilton vs Vettel in Ferrari years. Alonso almost in ferrari vs Vettel etc. But there is not one driver over his whole career and all his championships where at all times his driving was the deciding factor over the car for getting championships.

So yes if you removing an arbitrary amount of time from qualifying results the Mercedes would still be on pole. That did not take rocket science to figure out. The cars were very good, in fact the engines were turned up during qualifying which distorts even more any kind of comparison or reasonable cut off for what is contributed by the driver over an average driver. For all we know Hamilton can be 1 second a lap faster than an average driver and we have seen this in quite a few of his Q3 laps.
At the end of the day, Hamilton is not enjoying any more advantage over the other greats of F-1 in his achievements. He is where he is on his own merit.

I have given a dataset of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 seconds. I can expand it to 1.0 second if you want.

What I don't get is why you are attacking me? You know literally nothing about me or my motives. What is my ulterior motive according to you? Hamilton is a great driver. Want me to say that again and again?

If your last statement is correct, what I'm doing would only prove it. The fact I'm getting attacked for doing it only shows it probably doesn't.

[hollus]

OK, gentlemen.

Someone comes here and drops a mountain of data (by now two people have dropped lots of data, promising to fill the gaps shortly).
The data are as good and as bad as they are, as representative or not as they are. And it is being presented in exactly that way.

It is data. It is good data. Data in a technical site. So please, interpret the data, add to it, question it, comment on it.
But don't poop on it.
Data, in a technical site, is a good thing. Thank you to the data providers.

[WaikeCU]

Oi lads, shall we start a thread about "F1 without Max"?

I think Kvyat or Gasly might still be at RB alongside Ricciardo

Thanks for the downvote. Much appreciated. One can't even make joke these days in here.

I'm not sure what we're trying to figure out here tbf?

Are we looking into how slow a driver can be to still actually help Merc achieve 100 poles since 2013?

[ringo]

OK, gentlemen.

Someone comes here and drops a mountain of data (by now two people have dropped lots of data, promising to fill the gaps shortly).
The data are as good and as bad as they are, as representative or not as they are. And it is being presented in exactly that way.

It is data. It is good data. Data in a technical site. So please, interpret the data, add to it, question it, comment on it.
But don't poop on it.
Data, in a technical site, is a good thing. Thank you to the data providers.

But what's there to intepret from a subtraction?
I am not really attacking Gillian. I was asking what was he/she investigating in the first place. I am questioning the usefulness of the type of data that was collected.
It's obvious the 2014 benz was dominant and that like 2009 with Button.. it's likely that half the field could be champion in it. That's my conclusion even before subtracting 0.5s.
Then what happens if Hamilton is in a redbull and the gap to mercedes was smaller? to many hypotheticals.

I think the thread is best served by a deeper analysis.
And quite possibly results are a better representation than Q3 times. Using Q3 would suggest the driver was hired for raw speed and thats the main value he brings to the team. Also the gap to the rival's car is constant.
So a driver like Bottas would actually look good compared to Massa if you use Q3 gaps. Would Williams in 2014 be worse without Bottas and another average driver just because their nearest rival was 0.1s off in Q3? too subjective.

What would be better assessed is how much gurantee Hamilton or any driver brings to the table. If a car is a front row car, any one can win in it. But how sure is the team that any driver can execute all the time regardless of conditions?
I think that is what Hamilton or any Top driver is hired to do when they get a top car.
Newey even once said in the v8 days all he wants in his car is a 50kg driver. That's when you know the car was damn good. But whats important i think is guarantee to get results most of the time.
So a good measure i think is to look on is % of points scored to maximum points for the overall rank of the car.

You find the rank of the car by averaging the average lap time for both drivers over a race for all races while ignoring safety car laps. Or to be pedantic we can look on average stints on one tyre for 20 laps or whatever.
So if 2019 redbull has the second fastest average lap time over a seaon then we could say its rank 2nd. Maximum points would be 15 points x 17 races finished for 2nd best car in 3rd = 255 points for driver expected.
Then we look on how many points say Max scored over the seaosn in 2020 If he got 214 points.

You could say okay well expectation of Max is 84% effectiveness. His effectiveness could be higher if he had mechanical dnfs that year; not crashes.

For Hamilton if he got 347 points. and car ranks #1 based on average pace over a season. 25 x 16 races finished = 400 points Max.

Driver Effectiveness = 87%

Of course the higher the rank of the car the nore perfect you need to be and the more DNF affects your results. But that's part of the game.

So i think this may not say where Mercedes would be.. but it shows how much the driver is extracting from the package and why he would deserve to be in that fastest car over another driver who would be less effective.

[Mchamilton]

OK, gentlemen.

Someone comes here and drops a mountain of data (by now two people have dropped lots of data, promising to fill the gaps shortly).
The data are as good and as bad as they are, as representative or not as they are. And it is being presented in exactly that way.

It is data. It is good data. Data in a technical site. So please, interpret the data, add to it, question it, comment on it.
But don't poop on it.
Data, in a technical site, is a good thing. Thank you to the data providers.

Amen

[Just_a_fan]

The biggest shift occurs at approximately 0,2-0,3s, indicating the pole gap to Ferrari was somewhere around that area.
What also should be noted is that the Italian GP qualifying was in wet weather, where Lewis cleared the field by over 1s, which is an outlier in these statistics. The result that is worth mentioning though is the British GP, where the result was over half a second.

But aren't the stand out performances where the driver is making a difference? If a driver is that much ahead of the field in a car that normally isn't that far ahead, then that's a "driver difference". Just as with Singapore in 2018 where Hamilton took a pole that no one expected Mercedes to take. Or Britain in 2008 when he lapped the field in the wet bar two drivers and he was over a minute ahead of P2. And that was a race where his team mate (that he lapped) had been 0.8s faster in qualifying.

It's the stand outs that show the quality. Lots of drivers have solid seasons, year after year with few if any stand out performances. It's the "where did that come from?" moments, the outliers, that highlight the class of the field. That's where we see the driver making the most of the car's performance.

It's the combination of consistent performances and stand out performances that gets a driver a chance in a decent car. People (some of them inhabiting this very thread) complain about Hamilton having had good cars, but he had to perform in order to get those cars, and then once in them he had to continue to perform t get the success. Look at the drivers that have had good cars over the years and just looked very average in them. Many of those drivers had done well before - that's partly why they were in the good car to start with - but they couldn't perform on the highest stage for whatever reason.

<stuff about other posters and mind reading removed>

[Manoah2u]

Again, those numbers indeed are that, numbers, and quite frankly, i dont see what they add though. They're only qualification numbers, so they mean even less. It only means that the performance of the Mercedes would have been sufficiently substancial that they would still mean Mercedes would have most of the Pole positions etc. And as such, 'proves' the lead of the Mercedes team in performance. Apart from that it means absolutely nothing, as there are no figures, and no calculations - as they are not possible either - for race statistics, let alone 'what if' Hamilton wasn't there.

As for the latter, it's simple. Had Hamilton not signed with Mercedes, Rosberg would have likely had the championships in his hands. Also the fierce competition against Hamilton had Rosberg leave, so in another chapter, no Hamilton, no reason for Rosberg to leave. Then again, if Rosberg had won those championships since 2014, Rosberg would have almost guaranteed have had 3 titles on his conto at the end of 2016. The question is, who would have he been partnered with if not Hamilton, what would that driver have accomplished, and what would happen post-2016?
Would we have seen Verstappen signed with Mercedes? Take on the candle from Rosberg?
Would Wehrlein have been Rosberg's teammate? etc. etc.

It's practically guaranteed that Mercedes would have been succesful in 2014, 2015 and 2016. However, as of 2017 the competition changed. Both with Rosberg gone and Bottas there, but also with Ferrari in the mix and later on RedBull.

Hamilton's quality, speed, craft and ferociousness is unquestionable, and obviously he is the greatest asset the team has right now, and looking at that, if Hamilton was not there, chances are much bigger that atleast the WDC could have been snatched by a non-mercedes driver. After all, the challenge in 2017 was not Hamilton vs Bottas, it was Hamilton vs Vettel.

This entire topic ignores all that in the one-sided data provided by the OP, and quite frankly, even that data is greatly questionable.

The problem with this data and the way presented is the clicbait and wrongful topic title:

"Mercedes without Hamilton in numbers"

It's simply not true and provocative so it's logical people respond to it. Also: Why this data? Why Hamilton?
Why not without Rosberg, without Bottas, or why not RedBull without Max, why not Ferrari without Vettel?

And again, it's misleading as the topic heralds nothing about that, it only randomly subtracts laptimes during qualification,
nothing in regards to even a single race during the total 9 (!) seasons of Hamilton racing for Mercedes. All that whilst Hamilton has been racing longer for Mercedes
than he has been for Mclaren.

The title should read: 'Qualification might of Mercedes in numbers including a handicap'

Instead, we have a YT-style clicbait title with unscientific data.

The criticism on this topic is greatly deserved to be fair.

[Gillian]

Hamilton is great, that's not the subject. A great driver winning in a dominant car does not make the driver bad. Nor does it make it an undeserving champion. How much of the succes of Mercedes is down to Hamilton is a subject of many discussions. I try to put it in numbers which makes it easier to judge.

I have stated many times now I think Hamilton is one the best. I will say it again, Hamilton is a great driver.

I am open to doing the same analysis for other eras/drivers. Schumacher's career with Ferrari would be a nice comparison.

I will add race analysis. Yes only qualifying results hardly show the full picture.

[Manoah2u]

As others have pointed out, randomly cutting away numbers does not represent anything at all. You can take off 0.10 of a second of any race lap of, in this case, Lewis, but that doesn't decide any race outcome at all as there are many many other factors. Even if a front running driver is 0.10 secs slower a lap, you still need to overtake that driver.

Vise versa, you could argue if Hamilton was NOT at Mercedes, where would he then be and what would he achieve?
Let's say Rosberg stayed at Mercedes in 2017, and Hamilton was @ Ferrari in 2017 instead of Vettel. Would you need to add 0.10 seconds of every Vettel lap?
Would that mean Hamilton would have won in 2017 with Ferrari?
Is Hamilton 0.1 secs faster than Vettel, is he the same, is he slower? Where do you get your data?
With Rosberg getting a title in 2016, and craving more time with his family in 2017, and staying with Mercedes still, would you need to take 0.05 or 0.1 seconds of his pace in 2017 compared to 2016?
Even then, you take 0.1 or 0.5 seconds off Hamilton, but was Hamilton driving at 100% of his capacity, or has he been 'slacking' if he unbeknownst to anybody actually has far more uber-skills to his posession that even with a super dominant car he could have been 1.0 second faster if he even went more committed?
Is hamilton 0.1 secs faster than the best other driver or is he 3 seconds faster than any driver in the field?

Sorry to say it but though i respect that you went full into this and commited and invested (precious) time into this,
it's absolutely unscientific and completely random numbers, it's not even actually data.

You would have to have ALL the official team and driver data from 2013/2014 onwards towards now, from all Mercedes drivers,
but also compare it to Ferrari and RedBull, and THEN perhaps, you can come to a numeral conclusion on the races.
And you'd still need to take into account all the races, race data, race circumstances, and what happened.
You'd need a huge algorithm to do that, just randomly replacing numbers is achieving nothing but, again, sorry to say, deserved criticism.

Sorry but this topic makes as much sense and has as much merit as seeing Hamilton get beaten by a random driver, let's say Wehrlein, by 0.2 seconds during Race of Champions in exactly the same material and then claiming: if Wehrlein was contracted instead of Hamilton, he would be 8-time champion.

[Just_a_fan]

Sorry but this topic makes as much sense and has as much merit as seeing Hamilton get beaten by a random driver, let's say Wehrlein, by 0.2 seconds during Race of Champions in exactly the same material and then claiming: if Wehrlein was contracted instead of Hamilton, he would be 8-time champion.

We do have "data" from Kovalainen who did win the Race of Champions, beating a certain Michael Schumacher in the semis and a certain Sebastien Loeb in the final. That means Heikki was better than those two. Wow, he got thrashed by Hamilton. So that proves that Hamilton is better than Michael and Loeb and should also be a multiple WRC title winner as well as a multiple F1 title winner. Cor, the guy's a driving god!

Of course, that's just silly (as you suggest) and an example of how we can make up all sorts of things if we wish.

[Manoah2u]

Sorry but this topic makes as much sense and has as much merit as seeing Hamilton get beaten by a random driver, let's say Wehrlein, by 0.2 seconds during Race of Champions in exactly the same material and then claiming: if Wehrlein was contracted instead of Hamilton, he would be 8-time champion.

We do have "data" from Kovalainen who did win the Race of Champions, beating a certain Michael Schumacher in the semis and a certain Sebastien Loeb in the final. That means Heikki was better than those two. Wow, he got thrashed by Hamilton. So that proves that Hamilton is better than Michael and Loeb and should also be a multiple WRC title winner as well as a multiple F1 title winner. Cor, the guy's a driving god!

Of course, that's just silly (as you suggest) and an example of how we can make up all sorts of things if we wish.

exactly the point, hitting the nail on the head.