BBC All time great stats fest

[aeropilot]

Obviously someone was bored at the BBC

Interesting though......but probably no surprises for those with a modicum of knowledge of the history of F1.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/26464195

[Spawn]

I would be interested to see the stats if you took away Schumachers 'second career'.

[DJRC]

My reading of it, is the three most consistent chaps across all those catagories are Fangio, Prost and Seb.

Glad to see Ascari ranks fairly highly aswell.

[Derek Smith]

Such statistics fail to take into account that historically and currently, F1 is a team event. You can't have a 'greatest' without taking the team into consideration.

[DJRC]

Yes you can Derek and quite easily, esp when you do it on the defined basis points the Beeb did their lists and also when you follow the last contexts of their conclusions.

[Porky]

These statistics make me wish Fangio had retired at the end of 1957. He would then have won 50% of the races he started and his pole ratio would have been even better.

I will always be convinced Fangio was the greatest ever and selective reading of these figures bears that out (but I agree about the shared drive aspect).

Points totals or points per start are irrelevant as the scoring systems have changed so much. How can you compare Fangio's 8 points for each of his wins with Vettel's 25 points for his?

They should have produced a list of fastest laps per race. We would then have had three meaningful measures of comparable driver greatness: Wins per start, Poles per start and Fastest Laps per start.

Fastest laps (on brief research)

Fangio 23 from 51 = 45%
Clark 28 from 72 = 39%
Moss 19 from 66 = 29%
Schumacher 77 from 308 = 25%
Prost 41 from = 20%
Vettel 22 from 120 = 18%
Senna 19 from 161 = 12%

The result for Senna was a real surprise

[aeropilot]

Porky said:

Points totals or points per start are irrelevant as the scoring systems have changed so much. How can you compare Fangio's 8 points for each of his wins with Vettel's 25 points for his?

The BBC stated they had applied the current points scoring system to the 'old' results to create these stats.

[aeropilot]

Porky said:

Fastest laps (on brief research)

Fangio 23 from 51 = 45%
Clark 28 from 72 = 39%
Moss 19 from 66 = 29%
Schumacher 77 from 308 = 25%
Prost 41 from = 20%
Vettel 22 from 120 = 18%
Senna 19 from 161 = 12%

The result for Senna was a real surprise

Kimi is right up there on this stat, with 39 from 193 = 20.2%

Only Prost and Schumacher are ahead of him in fastest lap count, and he only needs 3 more to overtake Prost.

[NormalWisdom]

I have just been reading this, very interesting (I do get a little excited by lots of numbers!).

Good piece of work that told a story (stats can do that), looks like the story needed to be Fangio. Was a little surprised by GB as a nation being so far out at the front (until I sat and thought about it!).

Need to get my excel out and do some more

[Porky]

aeropilot said:

The BBC stated they had applied the current points scoring system to the 'old' results to create these stats.

Didn't notice that, thanks. It still makes it hard to balance though when Fangio drove 51 races from 1950 to 1958 (8.5 seasons) whereas Vettel has driven 120 races in 7 seasons

[Vocal Minority]

The only ones really affected by that are the overall stats though.

The 'per start' statistics are the most interesting. Whilst it gives you more opportunity to improve your stats, you can also balls them up. In addition the more races you do, the smaller the meaningful impact of a win or whatever on your stats. Eg: one extra win for Fangion would have a bigger swing on the percentage than one extra for Vettel

[Eric Mc]

One major flaw in these stats is that they only look at world championship Grand Prix races. They never include the stats from non WDC races for F1 cars (of which there were4 many up until the 70s) and all those non F1/GP races that all drivers took part in until the 70s.

Drivers like Fangio drove in only about ten GPs each year, but drove up to 40 or 50 other car races each year - far more than modern drivers.

[CBR JGWRR]

Porky said:

aeropilot said:

The BBC stated they had applied the current points scoring system to the 'old' results to create these stats.

Didn't notice that, thanks. It still makes it hard to balance though when Fangio drove 51 races from 1950 to 1958 (8.5 seasons) whereas Vettel has driven 120 races in 7 seasons

Simple - At the start of the championship, IIRC there were only 6 races in the championship, with loads more F1 level events which didn't count - now we have 20 odd races a season and little or no non-championship F1 races

[Qcarchoo]

Defining who is the greatest driver will always be subjective; when you consider some of these drivers' careers were tragically cut short.

[Vocal Minority]

Eric Mc said:

One major flaw in these stats is that they only look at world championship Grand Prix races. They never include the stats from non WDC races for F1 cars (of which there were4 many up until the 70s) and all those non F1/GP races that all drivers took part in until the 70s.

Drivers like Fangio drove in only about ten GPs each year, but drove up to 40 or 50 other car races each year - far more than modern drivers.

Eric - remember




It's just a bit of fun...

[Eric Mc]

No harm in pointing out where the comparisons fall down though.

Stats are great if they mean something.

And they are misleading if don't show where the flaws and assumptions are.

[Derek Smith]

Eric Mc said:

Stats are great if they mean something.

Stats are indeed great but in effect mean little beyond the actual statistics themselves. Extrapolation is always false and is almost always fun.

Not only that, but the word 'great', unless defined, is meaningless. If we define it via the statistics alone then so be it, but that's putting the cart at the front. There are many, many arguments against that method.

[AJS-]

Spawn said:

I would be interested to see the stats if you took away Schumachers 'second career'.

That's an easy one
306-58=248
Divide by his 91 wins
Gives 2.73
He would slot into 3rd ahead of Clark and behind Ascari.


Interesting set of stats (someone has a LOT of time on their hands!)

Worth noting that people had much shorter careers then. Hamilton has already started more than twice as many races as Fangio did, and could easily have another 5-6 years in him. 10 at a stretch. I remember Riccardo Patrese being considered the old man of F1, and a quick Wiki just confirmed that he became the first driver ever to compete in 200 Grand Prix in 1990, and 250 by 1993, his final year.

The nationality stats are interesting too. Britain leads on 14 between 10 different drivers, Germany is in second place with 11 titles between just 2 drivers, and all int he last 20 years. Fangio's 5 keeping Argentina in 4th place.

Prost also comes out of that very well. He's not as emotive as Senna or Fangio and not as divisive as Schumacher, but the numbers don't lie - he was a bloody good driver.