2021 F1 Driver ThreadFormula 1 

I see no reason to go to Williams as a driver being, it's pretty much a dead end if you end up there. You might as well go to a different racing series where you can fight at the front. Any driver wanting to actually compete in a series would avoid Williams.
 
DTM is a good series for him, they will be merging with Super GT sooner or later so it's a series that's on the rise. I don't expect him to be on the same level as a Rene Rast or anything but he should do well.
 
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I see no reason to go to Williams as a driver being, it's pretty much a dead end if you end up there. You might as well go to a different racing series where you can fight at the front. Any driver wanting to actually compete in a series would avoid Williams.

Sure, but now ask yourself...if you were any middle-field Formula 2 talent, knowing you're not winning the championship and you're not in a junior program for one of the major competitive teams...wouldn't you still jump at the chance to drive for Williams, just to be in F1 - even if only for a couple of years?

At the end of the day you still get to say you were an F1 driver. Obviously no top tier talent is going to choose to go to Williams, but ANYONE else would likely kill to have that seat.
 
How to piss off a lot of people in one post:

https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2019/11/22/the-f1metrics-top-100/

Very interesting read if you have the time

Spent about two hours going through it this morning. The algorithm is interesting, but it's weighted way too heavily in favour of the current drivers, allegedly due to their increased athleticism. Marcus Ericsson being in the top 50 really rubs me the wrong way, and Prost and Senna being outranked by Perez is gonna make a lot of people unhappy.
 
Spent about two hours going through it this morning. The algorithm is interesting, but it's weighted way too heavily in favour of the current drivers, allegedly due to their increased athleticism. Marcus Ericsson being in the top 50 really rubs me the wrong way, and Prost and Senna being outranked by Perez is gonna make a lot of people unhappy.
Yeah the results are pretty questionable, but it’s interesting to see the results of these whenever they come out. Schumacher and Alonso are almost always on top, no matter the analysis though.
 
I think I found the breaking point:

Bollocks Article
. This approach is to use an objective statistical model to attempt to separate driver performance from car performance and other key factors...

To allow comparisons across eras, a uniform scoring system is applied, which has a similar shape to the current 25-18-15-12-10-… system, but extends (exponentially decaying) beyond 10th place to allow performance differences between lower performing cars to be easily discriminated

The hard fact is that a car which does not finish the race through failure, accident and/or driver error returns no score for a driver. It's impossible to use this system to generate driver-only data, the car is the limiter in which data are present.

This means that the theory works okay-ish (with some dubious correlations) within very particular eras of the sport but cannot be applied as a global metric for all years. Because then it turns out to be bollocks.
 
While it's true that in most cases mechanical failures are not the fault of the driver, it gives you relatively little to work on with drivers in the 1970s for example where they would be sometimes lucky to finish a single race a year. Including performance up until the point of retirement may work better, and the more I think about, the more it makes me angry that Sainz and Perez are above Prost and Senna.
 
While it's true that in most cases mechanical failures are not the fault of the driver, it gives you relatively little to work on with drivers in the 1970s for example where they would be sometimes lucky to finish a single race a year. Including performance up until the point of retirement may work better, and the more I think about, the more it makes me angry that Sainz and Perez are above Prost and Senna.
Modern reliability etc. It's how Hamilton was able to obtain 6 world championships as fast as he did. The car didn't break down on him which kinda helps lol

And with how long drivers stay healthy now I don't see why someone like Hamilton can't keep going to 10 championships I mean he's not showing signs of aging yet
 
Modern reliability etc. It's how Hamilton was able to obtain 6 world championships as fast as he did. The car didn't break down on him which kinda helps lol

And with how long drivers stay healthy now I don't see why someone like Hamilton can't keep going to 10 championships I mean he's not showing signs of aging yet

Fangio would probably have 20 if he'd started at the same age as Hamilton.
 
While it's true that in most cases mechanical failures are not the fault of the driver, it gives you relatively little to work on with drivers in the 1970s for example where they would be sometimes lucky to finish a single race a year.

I agree, and that's the point I was getting at. The system claims to remove the car from the equation but ignores the fact that there is no driver-only data, there's only data for drivers whose cars finished races.
 
While it's true that in most cases mechanical failures are not the fault of the driver, it gives you relatively little to work on with drivers in the 1970s for example where they would be sometimes lucky to finish a single race a year. Including performance up until the point of retirement may work better, and the more I think about, the more it makes me angry that Sainz and Perez are above Prost and Senna.
Look at the number of engine and gearbox reasons for retirement back in the day. That's missing a gear and buzzing the engine more often than not.

It took the introduction of the flappy paddle gearbox to fix that.
 
I think I found the breaking point:



The hard fact is that a car which does not finish the race through failure, accident and/or driver error returns no score for a driver. It's impossible to use this system to generate driver-only data, the car is the limiter in which data are present.

This means that the theory works okay-ish (with some dubious correlations) within very particular eras of the sport but cannot be applied as a global metric for all years. Because then it turns out to be bollocks.

Bit harsh to label it a 'Bollocks Article' the chap's done a lot of work and it isn't just some blog-post by some angry fanboy or someone desperate for click-bait. The work and maths involved is respectable and interesting.

It's always going to be difficult to compare drivers from different era's due to how sports naturally evolve and become more focused and professional. So I think to try and come at it from a new approach is interesting and offers more talking points I think.
 
Bit harsh to label it a 'Bollocks Article' the chap's done a lot of work and it isn't just some blog-post by some angry fanboy or someone desperate for click-bait.

I see your point but I'd say that it's possible to do a great deal of work on a bollocks premise and end up with a bollocks article. It's only my opinion :)
 
People been playing this game ever since I can remember...

Is Hamilton faster than Fangio?

Is Lebron or Kobe as good as Michael?

Is Crosby as good as Gretzky?

Could boxer XYZ beat Tyson in his prime?


Equipment evolves, rules change, etc. It’s pointless to compare competitors from different eras.

Would Fangio have the reflexes to drive a modern F1 car? Would he have discipline to maintain peak physical condition to deal with the G forces? Would he be fluent enough in engineer speak to be able to sit in a post race debrief and make useful contributions? Conversely, with all the complaining about “that was unsafe” that Lewis does on the radio, would he even have the stones to pilot a 1950s era F1 car to victory?

Would Kobe or Lebron have been tough enough to play in Jordan’s era?

What would Gretzky be able to do with a carbon fibre stick that flexes like a compound bow?

I suppose it fun to muse over these things with friends, but trying to come up with mathematical equations and metrics to compare people from different generations is a waste of time, and only serves the purpose of generating click bait articles when there’s nothing else to report on.
 
You simply cannot compare drivers from completely different eras to an objective standard. We can each argue the toss about where one era ends and another era begins but the simple fact is that each rough era/decade/period/whatever is its own crucible wherein you can only reasonably compare the drivers from said same era.

It's a bit of fun to say "What if Senna drove today, what if Schumacher drove back then" etc. but you can't extrapolate a comparative standard from that. Too many things are different; when Jim Clark was racing, tyres were expected to last 3-4 races; when Fangio was racing, you could abuse the technical rules to have a closed-wheeler; when Senna was racing, cars were still expected to have a 50% chance of mechanical failure at any given Grand Prix; hell, even when Schumacher was racing, there was refuelling to add a strategical problem current and other drivers don't and didn't have to worry about.

I've always found the athleticism argument interesting though. Obviously, drivers today are supreme athletes and have to maintain a rigorous regime to stay in that shape but that doesn't mean drivers from other decades weren't fit. Athleticism and fitness are two different things. I'm sure when Nuvolari and Caracciola where struggling to turn the wheels of their power steeringless, heavy, no aero cars it was a bloody tough endeavour to stay motivated and strong enough for 90 laps.

What you might be able to do is have each of us list who we think are the best 5-10 drivers ever (not necessarily our Rubens Barrichello favourite) and aggregate the results to find an average frequency. And even that has the obvious pinch of salt that some people might only rate drivers they've seen as fans in real-time and others might try and rate drivers they've heard about who raced previously; even at the age of 28 I cannot rate Senna or Prost as drivers whom I actually saw race.
 
If I was a betting man I would say it's little more than a negotiation tactic considering he really has no reason to leave Mercedes. Unless of course he feels he needs to with a championship with Ferrari in order the be the greatest ever.
 
This means nothing. If I were Lewis I would be talking to every single team on the grid to see what they have in mind for 2021. Then he makes his decision based on that.

The only reason he went to Mercedes is because Ross Brawn showed him the 5 years of development that was underway on the V6 engine and showed that they would be the dominant car for at least a few years.
 

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