Mercedes without Hamilton in numbers

[Ryar]

Mercedes having 1 pole from 2010-2013 to then dominate, the car is the reason on both occasions. Trying to prove anything otherwise, is futile exercise. Consider this. Nico Rosberg was the guy who took 1 pole from 2010-2013 and he was the guy who took most poles in 2014! What changed then?
Once again, this is not about denigrating Lewis. To me, this is about trying to understand, to what lesser extent, a driver can still win in those Mercedes cars.

And as has been said by many of us for many years - no one wins titles in bad cars. With few exceptions, every champion, and certainly every multiple champion, only has their records because they had the right car and it was always at least as good as any other and in most cases it was better than the rest. Better might just be a case of being more reliable (ironically Nico benefitted from just this in 2016). Sometimes, it's ​just being lucky at someone else's expense - Keke Rosberg won in 1982 because his main rival suffered a career-ending crash midway through the season - Keke only won by 5 points from a driver that didn't even race the last five races of the season. James Hunt won in '76 because Lauda pulled out of the last race having already missed two races earlier in the season.

Drivers need the right car to win. This is not news. They do also sometimes need some good fortune. Again this is not news. We don't need to run data to show it, because it's bleeding obvious.

I completely agree with this post. No arguments here. Well said.
My argument was, drivers are NOT the reason why cars are "dominant". They are, because they are built by intelligent people with some great ideas and at times, they are built without any inputs from a driver that jumps in it to dominate. It's interesting to understand, to what extent of a lesser driver could have still won in them.

[Gillian]

Ok, if we're not allowed to talk around the subject, I'll bring some data analysis to the table.

If one looks at the 1988 season, Senna's run of poles that year is phenomenal at 13 out of 16 races. He was regularly around half a second up on P2, famously in Monaco he was 1.4s up on P2. Applying the method in the OP, Mansell would have taken two poles instead, if the sub driver was more than 0.5 seconds slower in Brazil, and but only needed to be 0.1 seconds slower in Hungary for Mansell to take pole there. Otherwise, the McLaren sub or Prost would have taken the poles anyway. So what does that say about Senna and McLaren? The car was dominant, yes we all knew that, but what about Senna? Just a driver that was lucky to be in such a good car?

Apply the same thing to many dominant seasons and you'll get the same sort of result (back in the day, Fangio's pole laps were often multiple seconds faster than P2, so that could lead to lively discussions). Indeed, it would be worth changing the thread title to "Successful teams without the star drivers" and do a proper full analysis of all seasons. That would then be worthy of everyone's time. So, how about it? Are we up for that or is only a certain narrative supported hereabouts?

He was lucky. Isn't it? Look at what happened in 1992 and 1993. Someone else got those dominant cars and Senna's all dominant form disppeared. Senna looked like second rate by trailing multiple tenths on average and multiple seconds on occasions. In 1992, on occasions, outclassed by Schumacher in far lesser car and ended the season as 4th best driver behind Schumacher!

1992 - Qualifying deficit
---------------------
South africa - 0.741
Mexico - 2.445
Brazil - 2.199
Spain - 1.019
San Marino - 1.244
Monaco - 1.113
France - 1.335
Britain - 2.741
Germany - 1.146
Hungary - 0.791
Belgium - 2.198
Italy - 0.601
Portugal - 1.217
Japan - 1.015
Australia - 0.470

In 1992, Schumacher had 4 DNFs to Senna's 7 and still only beat him by 5 points. 5 of Senna's DNF were mechanical failures, one was him hitting Mansell and one was Schumacher taking him out. Schumacher ended the same race as a DNF after later running into someone else. But we're not allowed to add context in here as it's banned by popular acclaim and moderator diktat, so sorry everyone.

Context is needed. I put all kinds of disclaimers in my posts. We are not even discussing races yet. We can. Like I said probably 5 or 6 times already, that takes a lot more effort and I only want to do that if it can be done properly. I don't want to randomly post some numbers and call it a day. I want to do it thorough and disclose all the actual data so everyone can look at it and come to their own conclusions. If you have ideas to make it better I would love to hear it. If you want to collaborate on the analysis you are more than welcome to help me out. Feel free to DM me.

I am not a Hamilton hater. Hamilton is in my personal top 5 best drivers of all time. Please stop accusing me of Hamilton bashing, hidden agenda's and whatnot. That honestly hurts.

[Gillian]

Mercedes having 1 pole from 2010-2013 to then dominate, the car is the reason on both occasions. Trying to prove anything otherwise, is futile exercise. Consider this. Nico Rosberg was the guy who took 1 pole from 2010-2013 and he was the guy who took most poles in 2014! What changed then?
Once again, this is not about denigrating Lewis. To me, this is about trying to understand, to what lesser extent, a driver can still win in those Mercedes cars.

And as has been said by many of us for many years - no one wins titles in bad cars. With few exceptions, every champion, and certainly every multiple champion, only has their records because they had the right car and it was always at least as good as any other and in most cases it was better than the rest. Better might just be a case of being more reliable (ironically Nico benefitted from just this in 2016). Sometimes, it's ​just being lucky at someone else's expense - Keke Rosberg won in 1982 because his main rival suffered a career-ending crash midway through the season - Keke only won by 5 points from a driver that didn't even race the last five races of the season. James Hunt won in '76 because Lauda pulled out of the last race having already missed two races earlier in the season.

Drivers need the right car to win. This is not news. They do also sometimes need some good fortune. Again this is not news. We don't need to run data to show it, because it's bleeding obvious.

I completely agree with this post. No arguments here. Well said.
My argument was, drivers are NOT the reason why cars are "dominant". They are, because they are built by intelligent people with some great ideas and at times, they are built without any inputs from a driver that jumps in it to dominate. It's interesting to understand, to what extent of a lesser driver could have still won in them.

I also agree totally. And I up totally up for it to analyse it. I can make a website/app to display it and keep it arround forever. Would be a cool project to do.

[Gillian]

I added 2016 data to the opening post.

[Just_a_fan]

He was lucky. Isn't it? Look at what happened in 1992 and 1993. Someone else got those dominant cars and Senna's all dominant form disppeared. Senna looked like second rate by trailing multiple tenths on average and multiple seconds on occasions. In 1992, on occasions, outclassed by Schumacher in far lesser car and ended the season as 4th best driver behind Schumacher!

1992 - Qualifying deficit
---------------------
South africa - 0.741
Mexico - 2.445
Brazil - 2.199
Spain - 1.019
San Marino - 1.244
Monaco - 1.113
France - 1.335
Britain - 2.741
Germany - 1.146
Hungary - 0.791
Belgium - 2.198
Italy - 0.601
Portugal - 1.217
Japan - 1.015
Australia - 0.470

In 1992, Schumacher had 4 DNFs to Senna's 7 and still only beat him by 5 points. 5 of Senna's DNF were mechanical failures, one was him hitting Mansell and one was Schumacher taking him out. Schumacher ended the same race as a DNF after later running into someone else. But we're not allowed to add context in here as it's banned by popular acclaim and moderator diktat, so sorry everyone.

I am happy, at least in this one post, it's not about "my driver is great" and more about data of DNFs. I admire the fact that, when needed, context becomes useful.

Not that I didn't see the DNF data there, as it was popping out in wikipedia like a sore thumb. The only conclusion out of Senna being 4th, was to show that, if the equipment is not good, even if a driver that dominated a year back and probably a couple tenths faster than the field, still can't make much difference. Most F1 drivers are actually bloody good and if the equipment is right, they can produce the results. It's just a matter of being at the right team at the right time. Look at Lewis this year. in the last 14 races, just one pole and Bottas has a couple in that duration. It never happened to Lewis in 2014-2020 timefrme.

On the same breath, anyone that was slower by half a second than Senna, could have still won in those McLarens (without Senna) and the same with those Williams' of 92/93. The massive cushion they had, was only matched by the Mercedes of 2014-2020.

But they didn't have the huge cushion for the whole of 2014-2020, as has been pointed out ad nauseum.

No one with any sense would claim that the Mercedes cars weren't great cars - of course they were, they've been some of the best racing cars ever built, and I for one am proud that a British company has done such a stellar job just as RedBull did previously. Yes, they fly the German/Austrian flags at the races, but they're both just down the road from me so I know the reality of that.

In this season, Bottas has scored 3 poles to Hamilton's 3 poles. But only scored 1 win to Hamilton's 5. So there is a difference being made by the driver there, somewhere, just as in 1988 Prost only secured 2 poles to Senna's 13 but scored 7 wins to Senna's 8 wins. Again, driver differences coming in to focus. In both cases, the cars were needed to secure the wins. No one would say otherwise. Just as Max is leading the 2021 title race because he's got an excellent car at his disposal and he's making the most of it. He will be champion this year and deserve it just as much as every other champion.

In the 2014 season being discussed in this thread, Rosberg had 11 poles to Hamilton's 7 poles. Well done Nico. But Nico only secured 5 wins that season compared to Hamilton's 11 wins. Ricciardo converted 3 of Nico's poles in to wins, Hamilton converted 5 of Nico's poles to wins. Nico took the win from Hamilton's pole thanks to the latter's DNF in the first race, just as Hamilton benefited from a Rosberg DNF in Britain. But what it shows is that in 2014, pole position wasn't that important because the car had the pace. What mattered was race pace and racing ability between the two team mates, and there Hamilton pipped Rosberg more often than not. It's difficult to drag that out of data, however, because it needs context from the time to highlight how the season progressed. And that's the problem with data that isn't presented with context.

[Gillian]

In 1992, Schumacher had 4 DNFs to Senna's 7 and still only beat him by 5 points. 5 of Senna's DNF were mechanical failures, one was him hitting Mansell and one was Schumacher taking him out. Schumacher ended the same race as a DNF after later running into someone else. But we're not allowed to add context in here as it's banned by popular acclaim and moderator diktat, so sorry everyone.

I am happy, at least in this one post, it's not about "my driver is great" and more about data of DNFs. I admire the fact that, when needed, context becomes useful.

Not that I didn't see the DNF data there, as it was popping out in wikipedia like a sore thumb. The only conclusion out of Senna being 4th, was to show that, if the equipment is not good, even if a driver that dominated a year back and probably a couple tenths faster than the field, still can't make much difference. Most F1 drivers are actually bloody good and if the equipment is right, they can produce the results. It's just a matter of being at the right team at the right time. Look at Lewis this year. in the last 14 races, just one pole and Bottas has a couple in that duration. It never happened to Lewis in 2014-2020 timefrme.

On the same breath, anyone that was slower by half a second than Senna, could have still won in those McLarens (without Senna) and the same with those Williams' of 92/93. The massive cushion they had, was only matched by the Mercedes of 2014-2020.

But they didn't have the huge cushion for the whole of 2014-2020, as has been pointed out ad nauseum.

No one with any sense would claim that the Mercedes cars weren't great cars - of course they were, they've been some of the best racing cars ever built, and I for one am proud that a British company has done such a stellar job just as RedBull did previously. Yes, they fly the German/Austrian flags at the races, but they're both just down the road from me so I know the reality of that.

In this season, Bottas has scored 3 poles to Hamilton's 3 poles. But only scored 1 win to Hamilton's 5. So there is a difference being made by the driver there, somewhere, just as in 1988 Prost only secured 2 poles to Senna's 13 but scored 7 wins to Senna's 8 wins. Again, driver differences coming in to focus. In both cases, the cars were needed to secure the wins. No one would say otherwise. Just as Max is leading the 2021 title race because he's got an excellent car at his disposal and he's making the most of it. He will be champion this year and deserve it just as much as every other champion.

In the 2014 season being discussed in this thread, Rosberg had 11 poles to Hamilton's 7 poles. Well done Nico. But Nico only secured 5 wins that season compared to Hamilton's 11 wins. Ricciardo converted 3 of Nico's poles in to wins, Hamilton converted 5 of Nico's poles to wins. Nico took the win from Hamilton's pole thanks to the latter's DNF in the first race, just as Hamilton benefited from a Rosberg DNF in Britain. But what it shows is that in 2014, pole position wasn't that important because the car had the pace. What mattered was race pace and racing ability between the two team mates, and there Hamilton pipped Rosberg more often than not. It's difficult to drag that out of data, however, because it needs context from the time to highlight how the season progressed. And that's the problem with data that isn't presented with context.

Totally agree again and now I really don't understand your criticism so far. Even the pole numbers alone will prove your first statement correct. Races are interesting and let's do that too, but the limited analysis I am adding in the opening post alone will prove you are right.

[Just_a_fan]

My argument was, drivers are NOT the reason why cars are "dominant". They are, because they are built by intelligent people with some great ideas and at times, they are built without any inputs from a driver that jumps in it to dominate. It's interesting to understand, to what extent of a lesser driver could have still won in them.

Drivers are part of the team. They help to team to develop the car. They work with the engineers to fine the tune the car's set up to their own requirements (where possible/allowed) and then they make use of it.

The idea that any driver can win in a good car is interesting. Thinking back to someone like Jarno Trulli. He often did well in qualifying and even took 4 poles in his F1 career; he took 2 poles to Alonso's single pole in 2004. But he only took one win and is famous for one thing - the Trulli Train. He could be blisteringly quick over a single lap in qualifying but in the races his pace dropped away. Alonso finished the season ahead of him even though he didn't win a race where Trulli did score his one and only win that year at Monaco - where he took pole and was over four tenths faster than Alonso in the other car.

So, yes, the teams design and build the cars but they need the driver to deliver the performance, not just over a single lap or a single race but over a whole season.

Driver without car is walking, car without driver is sculpture.

[Dee]

My argument was, drivers are NOT the reason why cars are "dominant". They are, because they are built by intelligent people with some great ideas and at times, they are built without any inputs from a driver that jumps in it to dominate. It's interesting to understand, to what extent of a lesser driver could have still won in them.

Drivers are part of the team. They help to team to develop the car. They work with the engineers to fine the tune the car's set up to their own requirements (where possible/allowed) and then they make use of it.

The idea that any driver can win in a good car is interesting. Thinking back to someone like Jarno Trulli. He often did well in qualifying and even took 4 poles in his F1 career; he took 2 poles to Alonso's single pole in 2004. But he only took one win and is famous for one thing - the Trulli Train. He could be blisteringly quick over a single lap in qualifying but in the races his pace dropped away. Alonso finished the season ahead of him even though he didn't win a race where Trulli did score his one and only win that year at Monaco - where he took pole and was over four tenths faster than Alonso in the other car.

So, yes, the teams design and build the cars but they need the driver to deliver the performance, not just over a single lap or a single race but over a whole season.

Driver without car is walking, car without driver is sculpture.

Which is exactly what this post is about, what is the car and what is the driver regarding Mercedes 2014 - 2020...

People have two options, You can help with the data given and discuss it or you can derail the thread by saying it's a witch hunt and hopefully be locked out by admin...

This is analysis of driver X with qualifying speed of Y and/or driver X with race pace of Y, where in the grid would he have ended up in Merc 2014 - 2020

[Just_a_fan]

My argument was, drivers are NOT the reason why cars are "dominant". They are, because they are built by intelligent people with some great ideas and at times, they are built without any inputs from a driver that jumps in it to dominate. It's interesting to understand, to what extent of a lesser driver could have still won in them.

Drivers are part of the team. They help to team to develop the car. They work with the engineers to fine the tune the car's set up to their own requirements (where possible/allowed) and then they make use of it.

The idea that any driver can win in a good car is interesting. Thinking back to someone like Jarno Trulli. He often did well in qualifying and even took 4 poles in his F1 career; he took 2 poles to Alonso's single pole in 2004. But he only took one win and is famous for one thing - the Trulli Train. He could be blisteringly quick over a single lap in qualifying but in the races his pace dropped away. Alonso finished the season ahead of him even though he didn't win a race where Trulli did score his one and only win that year at Monaco - where he took pole and was over four tenths faster than Alonso in the other car.

So, yes, the teams design and build the cars but they need the driver to deliver the performance, not just over a single lap or a single race but over a whole season.

Driver without car is walking, car without driver is sculpture.

Which is exactly what this post is about, what is the car and what is the driver regarding Mercedes 2014 - 2020...

People have two options, You can help with the data given and discuss it or you can derail the thread by saying it's a witch hunt and hopefully be locked out by admin...

This is analysis of driver X with qualifying speed of Y and/or driver X with race pace of Y, where in the grid would he have ended up in Merc 2014 - 2020

It would be very informative for all if the exercise was extended to other drivers and I have brought some data to the discussion accordingly.

This would help to show the reality of the superstar driver vs superstar car across the years - after all much of the public mystique of F1 is down to the "amazing performance of driver X" narrative driven by the media.

Or is that an issue for you? You haven't brought anything useful to the discussion other than to call for others to be barred if they disagree with you.

[Dee]

Drivers are part of the team. They help to team to develop the car. They work with the engineers to fine the tune the car's set up to their own requirements (where possible/allowed) and then they make use of it.

The idea that any driver can win in a good car is interesting. Thinking back to someone like Jarno Trulli. He often did well in qualifying and even took 4 poles in his F1 career; he took 2 poles to Alonso's single pole in 2004. But he only took one win and is famous for one thing - the Trulli Train. He could be blisteringly quick over a single lap in qualifying but in the races his pace dropped away. Alonso finished the season ahead of him even though he didn't win a race where Trulli did score his one and only win that year at Monaco - where he took pole and was over four tenths faster than Alonso in the other car.

So, yes, the teams design and build the cars but they need the driver to deliver the performance, not just over a single lap or a single race but over a whole season.

Driver without car is walking, car without driver is sculpture.

Which is exactly what this post is about, what is the car and what is the driver regarding Mercedes 2014 - 2020...

People have two options, You can help with the data given and discuss it or you can derail the thread by saying it's a witch hunt and hopefully be locked out by admin...

This is analysis of driver X with qualifying speed of Y and/or driver X with race pace of Y, where in the grid would he have ended up in Merc 2014 - 2020

It would be very informative for all if the exercise was extended to other drivers and I have brought some data to the discussion accordingly.

This would help to show the reality of the superstar driver vs superstar car across the years - after all much of the public mystique of F1 is down to the "amazing performance of driver X" narrative driven by the media.

Or is that an issue for you? You haven't brought anything useful to the discussion other than to call for others to be barred if they disagree with you.

I think I have more than helped this thread because you brought new data into it instead of calling it a witch hunt. I like the concept of superstar drivers vs superstar cars. That is something which should be looked at and it is essentially the basis of this one.

Maybe you can set up that thread right now.

And leave this to be Merc 2014 - 2020 for whoever wants to delve into the data

[hollus]

Feel free to open another thread, JAF. But stop derailing this one. "Done is better than perfect". Please stop asking for perfect.

[dans79]

Fell free to open another thread, JAF. But stop derailing this one. "Done is better than perfect". Please stop asking for perfect.

With respect, he isn't asking for perfect he is asking for better!

You must have some criteria to deal with the outliers, so they don't skew your data. For example last year Lewis was on pole for the styrian grand prix by 1.2 seconds over Max. The Merc was not 1.2 seconds faster, Max had an off on his best lap. Outliers like this occur every season and need to be accounted for in some way, ether via a mathematical formula, exclusion, or referencing some other form of clean data.

secondly subtracting the same amount of time from every track is flawed, because the tracks are drastically different in length. Being a fixed amount of time ahead in Austria (4.318 km lap), is much more significant than being the same amount of time ahead in spa (7.004 km lap). Thus the amount of time subtracted needs to somehow be correlated to total lap time or track length.


Off the top of my head, if you want the results to be more statistically relevant, then you need to do something like the following.

• for any given track look at multiple clean qualifying sessions, from previous year (prior to 2014). say 5 to 9 to get a good sample size. More is better.
• for each session calculate the average lap time of the manufacture that took pole, and the next manufacture.
• Calculate the % difference in lap time based on the previous averages. for example if the average for the manufacture who took pole was 60 seconds, and the average for the second fast car was 60.5 seconds we end up with the following. (60.5-60)/60.5*100 = 0.83% faster
• Take the above number and average it over the 5 to 9 samples.

The above gives you a number that takes into account the following things.

• the length of the track
• the fact that the cars get faster or slower based on rule changes
• The difficulty of the track to drive, or general noise reduction depending on how you want to look at it. Some tracks just have larger pole deltas than others.

You can then use the number above to calculate how much better or worse The the car, Lewis, or his teammate was compared to the historical average.

[Just_a_fan]

If the only discussion allowed is to agree with the OP, then the thread should be locked. A thread where discussion is not allowed is pointless and rather contrary to the whole point of a forum.

[hollus]

Feel free to open another thread , JAF. But stop derailing this one. "Done is better than perfect". Please stop asking for perfect.

[Dee]

If the only discussion allowed is to agree with the OP, then the thread should be locked. A thread where discussion is not allowed is pointless and rather contrary to the whole point of a forum.

Not wanting to start a new thread about what you want/feel this thread should be about is not anyone else's problem but your own.

What is there to disagree with about OP? The data is doing the talking here, you can discuss/analyse that data all you want. Put it through your own system of analysis if you want.