He had many of his retirements late in the season when the W02's pace was acceptably in the void between Ferrari and 'the rest', and was usually running 8th or higher with the expectation being that he would eventually place in MGP's typical 7th or 8th.
To illustrate to myself, I imagined the expected position for MSC and ROS if their races had been ordinary (excluding Aus):
Code: Select all
ros_actual = [ -- 12 5 5 7 11 11 7 6 7 9 6 -- 7 10 8 6 6 7 ];
msc_actual = [ -- 9 8 12 6 -- 4 17 9 8 -- 5 5 -- 6 -- 5 7 15 ];
ros_adjust = [ -- 12 5 5 7 11 11 7 6 7 9 6 7 7 10 8 6 6 7 ];
msc_adjust = [ -- 9 8 12 6 8 4 8 9 8 8 5 5 9 6 7 5 7 8 ];
In the imagined case, MSC has a points haul of 100, and ROS has 95. To any statistician these performances are the same.
So, the question to ask oneself is whether MSC's greater likelihood for incident is just unlucky/one-off-for-2011, or whether they are a fundamental effect of his driving.
My gut is with the former. But either way, AMG have themselves a very handy line-up in ROS and MSC: As drivers they do seem to have different, but complementary, point-yielding characteristics.
