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Also it is very interesting that you gave kimi 10 points for the nurburgring when he was running 3rd before he retired. You are assuming that he would have beaten both alonso and massa to the checkered flag. This is a big if.
You restore points for lewis when a team made a tactical error in qualifying but did not apply the same to massa.
I think this analysis is one sided and accomodated to show desired results.
While he was running third at that moment, he was so much faster, at that point and for most of the race, that it was unlikely he wouldn't have won. The only reason he was in third was because he made a slip-up. And mechanical problems (wheel gun) are not the same as tactical errors.
I known they are not the same but that is exactly my point. You decided to chose, for convenience, which errors to include and which to ommit.
With changing conditions anything could've happen. Alonso became so much quicker towards the end of the race that it is very plausible that he would've still won that race even with kimi still racing...
Let's reset here and get back to basics. Often in racing, judging one's skills based on statistics can be skewed because of bad luck. If, outside of a driver's own fault, he loses many valuable statistics (points, wins, possibly a championship), analysing what a championship without misfortune would have looked like can give us some insight on drivers perfomances besides the statistics. It might show that while the actual champion may have performed really well that year, another driver also deserves praise for a great showing of his skills.
The purest way to accomplish that, is by taking out of account as much as possible the factors that 1)are (almost) completely outside of a driver's control, and 2)are purely negative. A tactical error is not misfortune, but a gamble. No matter how a engine blow-out ends up, it is always a bad thing. If a team and driver choose a certain strategy, it can either work or it can't. We wouldn't have ommitted the results if a gamble worked out, so we won't ommit them if it didn't.
I hope it makes sense to you. If not, I'm sorry for you, but this is in my eyes, and as it seems many others, the fairest way to do this.
I agree with your first point entirely, specially the part where you mentioned "if outside of a driver's own fault, he loses many valuable statistics...."
Where do you draw the line here? Notice you said driver and not team. If you know the full details behind qualifying that day in hungary you would have realized that, as you said, the fact that massa did not made it through q3 that day was something that was beyond his control and therefore qualifies to be taken out of accout. Or are you simply going to be dishonest about this situation and try to put some of this blame on massa's shoulders when the idea about this whole excersise is to actually remove the driver performance from all outside factors. Are you suggesting then that if massa had been given the opportunity to have a normal qualifying session, and the team had not forgotten to refuel his car, he would still have failed to make it to q3? Because that is the relevant question that we should be asking ourselves when evaluating the true performance of a driver.
Everyone would agree that massa would have advanced and therefore challenged for the podium during he race.
Luca Baldisserri, Head of Trackside Operations: "We cannot be happy with this result. We saw we had a very competitive race pace but the outcome of qualifying made the situation very difficult especially for Felipe, who was almost never able to run with a clear track ahead of him
Jean Todt, Team Principal: "A second and thirteenth place are a meagre reward for this weekend. There is a slight bitter taste at seeing how competitive we were in the race with Kimi, as it showed yet again that starting from the front is vital, especially at a track like the Hungaroring where overtaking is almost impossible. Of course, Felipe was even more heavily penalized because of the negative outcome of qualifying, given that he was constantly stuck in traffic.
"We made a serious mistake in our management of the second qualifying session for Felipe," said the team's Luca Baldisserri. Massa would start 14th.
In Australia, wasn't the Ferrari floor illegal? IIRC, it was that year when Ferrari had a spring to move the floor, so they could have been disqualified
BTW, very interesting thread and made me remember some great races
BMW_F1 wrote:Also it is very interesting that you gave kimi 10 points for the nurburgring when he was running 3rd before he retired. You are assuming that he would have beaten both alonso and massa to the checkered flag. This is a big if.
You restore points for lewis when a team made a tactical error in qualifying but did not apply the same to massa.
I think this analysis is one sided and accomodated to show desired results.
unfortunately I have to agree with the last statement
“To be able to actually make something is awfully nice”
Bruce McLaren on building his first McLaren racecars, 1970
“I've got to be careful what I say, but possibly to probably Juan would have had a bigger go”
Sir Frank Williams after the 2003 Canadian GP, where Ralf hesitated to pass brother M. Schumacher
