Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
It would not be biased, because that is the information that we want to be presented. It would be a waste of your time to group every dnf that every happened, as it will not tell you what was at stake in each case. You would have to further process that information. Bad luck in Lewis' context or any other driver, is if they were expecting a good result and then the dnf befell them. A driver like Sutil languishing at the back then his car taking itself out of it's misery is not necessarily veiwed as bad luck.
It doesn't matter if something is at stake. a failure is a failure, and always is undesireable.
You don't need to waste time. Take from every decade, say you go back to the 80s, randomly 50 samples. You'll get there that way.
For what it's worth 1988 to 1995 Nigel Mansell had 37 retirements which included 12 in one season. Admittedly I'm not sure of what caused every retirement perhaps someone out there can enlighten us.
Generally I don't care about what people say. I have to be clear with myself. When everything goes well, people celebrate you, when you make mistakes people criticize you.
Sebastian Vettel
People, this is about technical failures and if that is "bad luck" or a structural issue. We can later on add a topic to create a statistic model how many times Hamilton was lucky due certain race phases, but for now this doesn't belong here.I remove the last few posts.
I don´t think statistcs are allowed to measure something as subjective as luck or being unlucky.We never have equal start conditions for the samples we are comparing so how can we take any conclusions from the outcome?
All Formula1 racing is a complex series of decisions many of them interrelated and possibly not of your own choice.the decisions you have in Hand are the ones influencing the result of your efforts but at times other peoples choices will have a greater Impact .
Just look no further as Michael Schumacher ,who is the man to beat in all statistics.But then his statistic was hugely influenced by that Imola Event when Senna lost his life ..Schumacher had not clinched a single pole Position before Sennas death !Yet he stands now as the Qualy alltime best.What does it tell you about the mans qualy abilities? not much really because he was robbed of the ultimate gauage your ability against...
Hamilton is a talented but rather easy to unsettle Driver who will by the Looks of things be unable to get near Fangios or Schumachers tally and he will not even equal Vettel who was shown his Limits by Daniel Ricciardo this year .
Lewis lacks something but sure it is not luck.
marcush. wrote:I don´t think statistcs are allowed to measure something as subjective as luck or being unlucky.We never have equal start conditions for the samples we are comparing so how can we take any conclusions from the outcome?
All Formula1 racing is a complex series of decisions many of them interrelated and possibly not of your own choice.the decisions you have in Hand are the ones influencing the result of your efforts but at times other peoples choices will have a greater Impact .
Just look no further as Michael Schumacher ,who is the man to beat in all statistics.But then his statistic was hugely influenced by that Imola Event when Senna lost his life ..Schumacher had not clinched a single pole Position before Sennas death !Yet he stands now as the Qualy alltime best.What does it tell you about the mans qualy abilities? not much really because he was robbed of the ultimate gauage your ability against...
Hamilton is a talented but rather easy to unsettle Driver who will by the Looks of things be unable to get near Fangios or Schumachers tally and he will not even equal Vettel who was shown his Limits by Daniel Ricciardo this year .
Lewis lacks something but sure it is not luck.
Today's race along with the prior race should inform the fans that what Alonso said about qualifying losing its importance in this era of F1.
What one terms "bad luck" regarding Hamilton's engine in qualifying didn't mean a thing at the end of the day, as he still finished on the podium.
"Luck" doesn't exist. It's a way for people to try and apply order to what is a seemingly random event...or simply put, it's a way to make excuses for Hamilton if he doesn't win the title.
"I don't want to make friends with anybody. I don't give a sh*t for fame. I just want to win." -Nelson Piquet
GitanesBlondes wrote:Today's race along with the prior race should inform the fans that what Alonso said about qualifying losing its importance in this era of F1.
What one terms "bad luck" regarding Hamilton's engine in qualifying didn't mean a thing at the end of the day, as he still finished on the podium.
"Luck" doesn't exist. It's a way for people to try and apply order to what is a seemingly random event...or simply put, it's a way to make excuses for Hamilton if he doesn't win the title.
You think have all these reliability issues that Lewis has had compared to Nico's 1 is just excuses?
How can you score points when your car has blown up?
It doesn't matter if its in qualifying or the race or even in testing they are still damage he's performance and ability to compete on a level playing ground.
Last edited by f1-neil on 27 Jul 2014, 21:41, edited 1 time in total.
marcush. wrote:I don´t think statistcs are allowed to measure something as subjective as luck or being unlucky.We never have equal start conditions for the samples we are comparing so how can we take any conclusions from the outcome?
All sports start from unequal starting points and have numerous complex decisions along the way.
And yet people have isolated luck from skill/talent/whatever-you-want-to-call-the-bit-that's-not-luck in other sports:-
This signature is encrypted to avoid complaints, but it makes me laugh out loud:-
16S75 13E7K 41C53 7CT23 14O5O 67R32 76175 90B67 L4L42 41O63 72W56 98M10 52E87
where do you start or stop that isolating?
If Mr.LH is never really constant with placing his car in the wheel Change area when MrNR is very precise in this and you just look at the standstill time you may see that one of the two is on average quicker back in Business ..is this luck or skill how can you decide not being a member of the actual Team?
I´m a believer of luck does not really exist in motorsports
if only ther ewas not Chris Amon ..his time in formula 1 does make you think twice..Mario Andretti was once quoted saying this about Chris :Luck? If Chris was a undertaker People would stop deceasing.....nough said .96 races ,5 pole Position 850km in the lead no win but 11 Podiums .He desperately made sure to be in the right place at the wrong time...one time he got it all going for him winning in LeMons with Bruce in the GT40 but amazingly this was his sole finish in lemans in 8 participations...
f1-neil wrote:
You think have all these reliability issues that Lewis has had compared to Nico's 1 is just excuses?
How can you score points when your car has blown up?
It doesn't matter if its in qualifying or the race or even in testing they are still damage he's performance and ability to compete on a level playing ground.
You don't score points for qualifying position.
Take Canada, Nico had a brakes problem as well. He chose to do everything he could to conserve them in order to finish the race with points. Lewis did not. Nico finished. Lewis did not. He damaged his own performance there.
Fact is, you cannot determine fully what type of a factor his driving style plays in equipment problems conclusively.
"I don't want to make friends with anybody. I don't give a sh*t for fame. I just want to win." -Nelson Piquet
GitanesBlondes wrote:Take Canada, Nico had a brakes problem as well. He chose to do everything he could to conserve them in order to finish the race with points. Lewis did not. Nico finished. Lewis did not. He damaged his own performance there.
Those are big words considering they were still racing each other hard up to the point Lewis failure caused him to DNF and Nico - only then - decided to do everything he could to conserve in order to finish the race with points - the race, that at that point saw his nearest and only competitor out of the race with any points he could achieve as increasing his own lead in the championship.
I'm all for facts and on some level, i even agree that there is no such thing as 'luck' - but really, there's no reason to twist the events of a race and give credit in the decision making of a driver that at that point was non-existant.
Nico (and the team) both salvaged what was left for grabs with a compromised car after Lewis had DNFed. It's impressive how Nico finished 2nd there, no doubt, but he was helped by Lewis's failure. Had that not occured, we might have well had two Mercedes DNFs in that race instead.
Not for nothing, Rosberg's Championship is the only thing that lends credibility to Hamilton's recent success. Otherwise, he'd just be the guy who's had the best car. — bhall II #Team44 supporter
I am trying to isolate a set of statistics that shows the main traits you want to identify in a driver, and that can be easily calculated from the desired output of the whole F1 process, which in the case of drivers is WDC points.
I have come down to just two things I think matter and that are measurable:-
1) maximization of finishes from races entered*
2) maximization of points/place from each finish**
Each in isolation is not helpful - finishing every race last is not helpful for points scoring. Equally scoring 25 points in the one race you finish is also not helpful.
But together they give you an insight of the ability to get the car to the finish - even when driving a dog, like Max Chilton - which is a critical skill in scoring points, as you get none for a DNF; and of the ability to score strongly when finishing.
For both these stats you easily derive mean and SDs and draw a distribution for the populations of all drivers going back 40 years.
Does anybody have an alternate point of view?
* I noticed some people had DNS, or only competed in 2 races from 20, and this skews their points or average places per race a lot, which is why I went for finishes vs. entered races rather than vs. total races.
** Still considering if there is any difference in the two, but what pushes me to places over points is the fact that points system have changed over the years, and this allows me to normalize results across all eras.
This signature is encrypted to avoid complaints, but it makes me laugh out loud:-
16S75 13E7K 41C53 7CT23 14O5O 67R32 76175 90B67 L4L42 41O63 72W56 98M10 52E87
f1-neil wrote:
Take Canada, Nico had a brakes problem as well. He chose to do everything he could to conserve them in order to finish the race with points. Lewis did not. Nico finished. Lewis did not. He damaged his own performance there.
Fact is, you cannot determine fully what type of a factor his driving style plays in equipment problems conclusively.
That statement is so false it's paramount to lying, I expected better. Nice wasn't advised about brakes until Lewis had DNF, if lewis had being told the same then he could have controlled it. THats a very poor excuse you've put there.
I think this discussion suffers from the fact that people have different opinions of what luck really is. I think we should try to clarify what we are talking about here. Some people seem to imply that if a failure is caused by human error, it is not a matter of luck. But you could easily argue that if Hamilton's engineers are in fact causing more DNFs than Rosberg's engineers, then Hamilton is unlucky having to live with these sloppy engineers. Let's imagine that Hamilton's car is fitted with a faulty brake disc. I will give three different scenarios:
1 - There is a large visible crack in the brake disc that will ultimately grow and cause a brake failure.
2 - There is a crack in the disc which will ultimately cause a failure, but it is not visible to the naked eye. It could, however, be detected using a microscope.
3 - There is an internal crack in the disc which will ultimately cause a failure, but the surface is perfectly fine.
I would argue that for the driver, having this faulty brake disc installed on his car is bad luck no matter what. But for the engineering team preparing the car, it is not bad luck that they fail to inspect a critical part like a brake disc for visible flaws. In scenario 2, it's a matter of team processes, determining what should be done in order to obtain good reliability. One could imagine that some teams have microscopes to perform inspections like this, while other teams don't. In scenario 3, it is probably more a matter of the producer's routines. But for the driver it doesn't matter who has made a mistake or who doesn't have a good quality process. As long as it is not the driver's own fault, I would say that he is unlucky if a component fails.
Ultimately it is all down to luck, as neither Hamilton or Rosberg have chosen their DNA, talents etc. but let's not get too far off the topic here.
At some point we need to count number of unlucky events. How do we define this? Are we only talking about technical problems, or do we include unfortunate timing of safety car, collisions and so on?
I agree fully with SidSidney that knowing the details of the process is not necessary to do a statistical study. In fact, that is the whole point of using statistics: to analyse the outcomes of processes that are too complex to describe deterministically. When you roll a die, the outcome is a result of a very complex process involving high sensitivity to the spin, velocity and position of the die when it is thrown, as well as details about the mass distribution, the shape of the surface of the die itself and the table it is rolled on to. When you play Yahtzee you don't know anything about this on the level of detail you would need, but still statistics is a very useful tool to analyse the result of the process.
The problem in this case is that we are lacking data. The difference in reliability issues is obviously too small to find out anything from just a handful of technical problems.
