F1 Performance: is it the car, is it the driver?

[djos]

Well put Cam, I couldn't agree more!

[Cam]

The science of mechanical numbers only goes so far. For those interested in more - a good place to start is the WIKI. There are links off too research papers on the subject.

Happiness often precedes measures of success. Research demonstrates there is a relationship between happiness and workplace success. Happy people earn more money, display superior performance, and perform more helpful acts which typically exemplify success at work. Positive affect leads to improved workplace outcomes.

[Ciro Pabón]

Is it the car, is it the driver?

That's an easy one.

The answer is yes.

[Andres125sx]

And this is the thing, Alonso in 2010 and especially 2012 nearly did exactly that. If it wasn't for Grosjean in Spa 2012 Alonso would be 2012 WDC....

See, this is what I don't get. Massa let Alonso past in 2010 at least once. Factually, Massa let Alonso through many many times each season, even breaking seals and dropping grid spots for him. Perez even (questionably) let him past. So Alonso's performance and points tally is false. Alonso had a gifted run every championship. How 'great' it must be to have competitors move aside for you.

Alonso had a golden spoon run against a patsy teammate with the premiere sports car manufacturer and still couldn't do it.

If Alonso wants my respect as a 'great', he'll need to move teams and go against a real teammate, without the team favoritism. Until then, he'll always be questioned IMO.

And what´s the reason teams usually favour Alonso? They must be idiots...

There´s a reason, teams have objective data, it´s called telemetry. So they, in contrast to us, really know who´s better.

This is just an example, but quite illustrative IMHO:

19 Fernando Alonso Minardi-European 1:30.657 +3.765
20 Gastón Mazzacane Prost-Acer 1:30.798 +3.906
21 Luciano Burti Jaguar-Cosworth 1:30.978 +4.086
22 Tarso Marques Minardi-European 1:33.228 +6.3361

Yes those drivers were far from greats, but it was the very first qualifying Alonso did in F1 and he beated a Prost and a Jaguar... with Minardi. Not bad for his debut I think

And that´s just an example, but there´re tons more. For example he lapped his teammate more than once. How many times did you see a driver lapping his teammate?

Obviously I support Alonso, and yes I´m spanish too, but as a technician I don´t like to support anyone with no reason. I never supported De La Rosa, Gene or Alguersuari as I do with Alonso, because they never give me reasons (Jaime maybe some, but not enough). But Alonso did, repeteadly.

As JimClark said, 2012 was another example. It was only Grosjean who deprived Alonso from winning the WDC with an inferior car. Someone will say Vettel also lost some points, but that was because of himself or his own team so it was their fault. F1 is a team competition where counts the driver, the car, the crew at the wall... so any mistake at any of these areas are their fault, while Alonso or Ferrari did nothing wrong in Spa.


For those still thinking I´m defending Alonso because I´m spanish, I also think Hamilton won his WDC with an inferior car. Sorry but I can´t think Massa would fight Hamilton if they have similar cars.


Some drivers proved his talent before fighting for the championship with a top car as Alonso, Hamilton (I support him since 2006, what a seasson at GP2), or Schumacher, while others don´t.

Vettel won a race with STR, agree, and that´s great. But Bourdais qualified 4th with that STR (his car stopped at the race), to me that means something. I´m not saying Vettel is not a really good driver, he is, but there´s a difference between a really good driver, and one of the greats, and I personally need a little bit more to include him on that group

[Andres125sx]

About the "driver outperforming his car" debate, this is my point of view.

Not even best F1 driver ever, at the best race of his career, will get 100% of his car´s potential. Not even in qualifying. To do that he would need to:

1- brake at the last centimeter his car allow him
2- release the brakes at the first centimeter his car allow him
3- turn the wheel at the exact centimeter to get the perfect line
4- hit the throttle at the first centimeter his car allow him

And that´s only in one corner...

Any centimeter he misses from this, he´s underperforming his car.

So let´s say the average F1 driver will get 90% of his car potential, a really good driver maybe get 93% of his car potential, and the greats are able to get 95% of his car potential constantly. Numbers are just illustrative obviously.


Now let´s take different cars into the equation. If car A is 2% faster than car B, but driver B can get 95% of his car, while driver A only get 90%... Is driver B outperforming his car?

It depends how do you see it. Technically, no, that´s not possible. But since he´s beating a car wich is faster than his, I think it´s not crazy to say he´s outperforming his car, because his car is slower than car A, but he was able to beat him.



So to me yes, drivers can outperform his car, but only when the difference between cars is small. If a car is 6% faster (to be consistent with the example) than the rest he will win no matter who´s the driver... at least if you don´t put Luca Badoer inside

Hope it makes sense

[MercedesAMGSpy]

Totally forgotten Fernando Alonso's 2012 season, if you need prove how a driver can outperform his car, watch the 2012 season with Fernando Alonso behind the wheel.

[flynfrog]

I always thought of the driver car relationship as an area formula. Car X Driver = Package


The best car on the grid is no good with a 0 driver. The best driver on the grid is no good with a 0 car.

[Phil]

And as much as folks sometimes say that "Car-X could only perform at a high level with Driver-Y behind the wheel," it's important to remember that mechanical capability is finite and will never exceed itself under any circumstances, and it's also heavily dependent upon the setup of the car. In fact, one could probably make a reasonable argument that two examples of the same car, but with different setups, are actually two different cars, because their capabilities will inevitably differ from one another. For instance, if Hamilton's engineers took 10 psi out of his tires for some reason, Rosberg would eat him alive as if the former World Champion was standing still. Would that then be an accurate reflection of the drivers' capabilities or of the cars' capabilities?

We saw something similar put to the test at the 2010 Italian Grand Prix where Button and Hamilton used different versions of the same car to achieve different qualifying results (Button was nearly 0.6s quicker). What does that mean?

http://i.imgur.com/7pswaq7.jpg

Ready? Sing it with me: it's always the car.

EDIT: By the way, I think this thing has been bludgeoned to death many times over at this point. So, if I don't have anything else to say on the matter, it's not because I've ignored anyone. I just don't want to repeat myself...anymore. lol

I actually +1 you on this post, although I still think that the answer is still not that simple. It's simple to some degree that yes, the ability of the car represents the ultimate limit on what is possible and what isn't. I'll refer to this limit being the absolute performance of a car and track. I'm including track, because the track is just as dependant on how the car performs, i.e. its setup and the track surface condition etc.

Lets assume the following:
The absolute performance of the Mercedes W05 i.e. around a track like Barcelona might be 1:20.000. That is assuming the perfect lap - something that's theoretically not humanily possible to achieve, since a driver will always account for some latency by himself, his ability, the reaction time on throttle and brakes etc.

This year; the pole lap was Hamilton in Q3 with a 1:25.232. If we assume the 1:20.000 to be correct for the W05, that would mean that Hamilton got to within 6.54% of what's theoretically possible. Now, lets take Rosbergs W05 - who might have been driving with a slightly different set-up. His W05, with the set-up he chose, might have been slightly slower than Hamilton's car and good for 1:20.250 in absolute terms (probably way too much). Rosberg ended up doing a 1:25.400. Using these numbers, that would mean Rosberg got to within 6.42% of what's theoretically possible. This would mean that Rosberg actually got closer to the absolute limit, even if the numbers show that Hamilton was quicker.

These are just arbitrary numbers. I'm in no way trying to demonstrate that one driver is better than the other - but I think the point is somewhat that without knowing the car's absolute performance, it's hard to deduct how much the driver (his ability) extracting out of it. The other interesting point is; different cars (or even equal cars with differing set-ups) have varying performance differentials (in absolute terms). No driver outthere can extract 100% out of his car - the easier the track and the more consistent the track, the closer he will be though. A track around an oval course for instance will show that a driver will almost definately be within a percent of what's possible. Add other drivers (slipstreaming) and it becomes more difficult (although the absolute performance increases) - or adding less predictable conditions (uneven surface, bumps, slippery patches etc), corners and make the track overal more complex or longer, will also create a bigger difference between the drivers ability of 'perfection' and what is theoretically possible by the car.

If there are people that are arguing that one driver is better than the other - it's probably a misguided view of comparing one driver in one car, with a different driver in another car. Or sometimes, even using the same car, with very different set-ups, i.e. Hamilton / Button at Spa 2012 when Hamilton ended up posting telemetry data showing that his car was slower over the entirety of the lap due to the different set-up and downforce package.

If the cars absolute performance is within a second, perhaps we can assume that the drivers ability does make the difference, between putting the car on pole or not. And if that difference is small enough, then I don't think it's always the quickest car - but then for all intends and purpose, being armchair experts, we would probably call the cars on equal terms. There are rare occasions though - when a driver pulls out magic and perhaps extracts way more out of his car (closer to the absolute limit) than a different driver in a usually quicker car manages.

Going back to Monaco of 1988 when Senna put is car on pole by over 1.4s - he was in another league with his lap. Back then, when cars used to be more challenging to drive (higher difference between what is between the perfect lap and what could go wrong), the driver had a lot more weight in how the car performs. Make cars and the track easier to drive and the difference between drivers decreases. While the cars today are perhaps the biggest differentiator, we still have the battle of team-mates on more or less identical cars which show how the same car can lead to different qualifying laps (by differing driver style and how much they manage to get out of the car ultimately). I also wouldn't rule out that there are some extraordinary drivers outthere that simply extract more out of cars (than their team-mates) on a regular basis - even when the car isn't the easiest to drive.

[turbof1]

Good comment Phil. I think it pretty much sums up quite a lot.
There's one little flaw in your reasoning. Let's go back to your example of rosberg not having the optimum setup and thus concluding rosberg extracted percent-wise more out of the car. Often a non-optimum setup is picked to make the car more driveable and more predictable. Say he looses 0.250 in peak potentional but comes 0.500 closer to the new potentional laptime. The gain is 0.250. Is that increase due to the driver? No; the team had to take out 0.250 peak performance in order to make the driver perform 0.5 better.


It often goes like that in reality. A car set up at its peak always is humanly undriveable, so you convert some of the peak performance into driveability. And some drivers need to have more converted then others.

I think we should put down some unofficial laws:

-No driver can possibly outperform his car. This is physically not possible.

-Difference in performance between 2 drivers in one team can be explained through 3 variables: difference in setup (let's include here whether or not having updates the teammate has or hasn't), difference in track conditions and difference in driver quality.

-driver performance can be expressed as a % of the ultimate performance of his car at a given moment. The % he's off this ultimate performance at that given moment (so we keep the variable of track conditions constant) is dependent on a combination of the driver's natural variance from said ultimate performance, setup taking performance away and time found in the driver's variance through the compromised set up.

[bhall]

While admittedly an extreme example, Markus Winkelhock's adventurous 2007 European Grand Prix paints a pretty vivid picture of what can happen when a driver is in the right car at the right time.



He qualified dead-last, yet had a 33-second lead after the first lap of the race because he was the only driver on wet tires when the skies opened and turned the event into a veritable regatta. That gave him the fastest car when hardly anyone else could stay on the circuit, much less challenge him for position. Absent the safety car, who knows what that kid could have done?

It clearly wasn't for talent, however, as he never raced in F1 again.

[Phil]

I guess this shows nicely how big of a performance differentiator a car or simply its tires can be. What if the cars are give or take within a second of each other in absolute terms? Could we agree that the driver then probably is the larger speed differentiator?

Even if it's 90% the car, and only 10% the driver - that 10% can still account for if the car lands on pole or is narrowly beaten by a driver who got more out of his slightly less capable car. I guess the argument just seems too much that the pole setter has always got the quickest car. I think there are various instances where the cars are that close that the drivers do actually account for most of their achieved times.

Maybe we are spoilt that in todays Formula, the drivers are all pretty close in ability and skill. Put them all in an identical car and they'd probably qualify all within the same half second (maybe). Do the same on a wet track when things become less predictable and the same drivers might be split by second(s). This I think gives off the impression that it's usually the car, because we find the biggest differentiator there. If our drivers were more erratic in their performance, perhaps we wouldn't be solely talking about the cars strengths and abilty.

It's an inherently complex question to answer. I thought a way to messure a cars worth is to look at the best sector times any driver has ever achieved during a session - and the combined best sectors would give a theoretical benchmark. If we disregard differing set-ups between team-mates, doing this across team-mates, perhaps where one driver's style suits one sector better than the other, might give a picture of how the combination of both within the entirety of a lap might create the ultimate laptime. Then take both drivers and see to how close they got their best effort. Of course this doesn't quite work out in practise, because sometimes, the set-up changes might account for better cornering at the expense of straightline performance and vice versa and are thus not interchangable.

Still, if you do this across all drivers, perhaps you could still form a picture to label the relative performance of each car (and driver) on the grid. Even with a struggling Mark Webber, would the RedBull probably end up being on top (relative to the other cars) over the 2011 season. Doing this for the 2010 or 2012 season would probably yield closer results.

There's one little flaw in your reasoning. Let's go back to your example of rosberg not having the optimum setup and thus concluding rosberg extracted percent-wise more out of the car. Often a non-optimum setup is picked to make the car more driveable and more predictable. Say he looses 0.250 in peak potentional but comes 0.500 closer to the new potentional laptime. The gain is 0.250. Is that increase due to the driver? No; the team had to take out 0.250 peak performance in order to make the driver perform 0.5 better.

Very good point, absolutely. I actually thought about mentioning that in my post whilst writing it, but decided against it, as I thought it would just make the overal simplified message/hypothesis even more complicated as a result. I also think that some cars (especially the Redbull in 2011 and later parts of 2012 and especially 2013) looked so planted with the amount of downforce that when driving it correctly, surely must have been substantially easier to extract a lot of performance out of. I guess this sounds as if I'm taking a lot of credit out of what Seb achieved - especially Webber wasn't close to getting the same out, so how easy could it have been? But then you still have other cars on the grid, like at times Alonso's Ferrari that just looked like a handfull. Well, probably any car besides the Redbull to a degree...

[turbof1]

If we would make a curve with the X-axis performance (let's hugely simplify things and say this is total grip), and the Y-axis the performance the drivers gets out of the car, we'll probably never get lineair curves for any individual driver. In a perfect world the curve would be Y=X (meaning the driver fully exploits the ultimate car performance), but not only does the driver only exploit a part of the performance, something like for instance Y=0,95X, but also the curve will show non-lineair increases and decreases. Something like Y=0,97X-50/X wouldn't be unthinkable for Vettel, while Webber could have a curve something like Y=0,94X -25/X. So Webber will by nature get less close to a high performance car, but is less effected when cars have low grip.

[bhall]

[...]

You've made some very good points with which I'm in complete agreement. For me, it just boils down to the fact that a car can "flatter" a driver, but a driver cannot "flatter" a car; all he can do is get the most from it. However, doing so is no guarantee for success, because a lesser driver in a better car is still more likely to come out ahead.

Another facet of this is the somewhat ironic tendency for the fastest cars to be the easiest to drive, as driveability is a key aspect of a car's capability.

Would anyone rate Alonso lower than the drivers who preceded him below? Or is the Ferrari simply a handful to drive? What does that say about the Drivers' Championship?

The Fast and the Furious: Barcelona Drift

[stephenwh]

It says that car development is very important, as is driver feedback to the engineers.

[djos]

It says that car development is very important, as is driver feedback to the engineers.

That must be why every team that hires Jenson goes backwards within a few years!