Castrol Driver Rankings?
Discussion
From what I can tell its like tennis rankings where you have to repeat the success of the previous year to maintain your level, which is as reasonable metric as any there is to work with.
There seems to be some additional weighting between racing series, which may be a bit more discretionary, but it enables drivers of different series to be ranked alongside each other. F1 does seem to have the highest weighting here so F1 drivers rise higher in the overall.
There seems to be some additional weighting between racing series, which may be a bit more discretionary, but it enables drivers of different series to be ranked alongside each other. F1 does seem to have the highest weighting here so F1 drivers rise higher in the overall.
Life Saab Itch said:
Since they came out they've been the biggest pile of s
te. I've been ignoring them.
I fail to see how a driver goes down in the rankings when he wins a race (Button, earlier this year).
Quite!?te. I've been ignoring them.I fail to see how a driver goes down in the rankings when he wins a race (Button, earlier this year).
How can Webber be higher than Button despite Button beating Webber in the WDC in an inferior car? Or Hamilton being ahead of Button in the same car same WDC and no mathematical chance of beating Button in said WDC.
Simply Illogical Captain!
Life Saab Itch said:
Since they came out they've been the biggest pile of ste. I've been ignoring them.
te. I've been ignoring them.
I had also noticed F1 has a massively higher weighting than any other series, disproportionate IMO - I see no reason at all to suggest a top circuit racer is inherently better than a top rally driver.
I looked at it once, decided it was a meaningless PR stunt and forgot about it until now!
The one that made me chuckle was when Jolyon Palmer appeared higher than Justin Wilson.
It's complete crap.
I'm sure I could come up with a better way of rating the drivers.
Something along the lines of how many races are in their series altogether, so NASCAR drivers would earn 33 points for a win, 32 for second etc. Then all the points can be weighted from that (assuming NASCAR is the most prolific series).
Then there should be a very slight weighting in favour of the top echelons (F1, WRC, WSCC, WTCC, Indycars) but not too much so that if you come eighth in an F1 race you will be forever above an eight times world champion.
It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a more credible system.
It's complete crap.
I'm sure I could come up with a better way of rating the drivers.
Something along the lines of how many races are in their series altogether, so NASCAR drivers would earn 33 points for a win, 32 for second etc. Then all the points can be weighted from that (assuming NASCAR is the most prolific series).
Then there should be a very slight weighting in favour of the top echelons (F1, WRC, WSCC, WTCC, Indycars) but not too much so that if you come eighth in an F1 race you will be forever above an eight times world champion.
It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a more credible system.
[quote=zac510]From what I can tell its like tennis rankings where you have to repeat the success of the previous year to maintain your level, which is as reasonable metric as any there is to work with.
quote]
So how can Webber be doing so well when at this stage last year he was fighting for the championship?
quote]
So how can Webber be doing so well when at this stage last year he was fighting for the championship?
Nick3point2 said:
zac510 said:
From what I can tell its like tennis rankings where you have to repeat the success of the previous year to maintain your level, which is as reasonable metric as any there is to work with.
So how can Webber be doing so well when at this stage last year he was fighting for the championship?This ranking is mathematical.
The only part that compares one driver to another is the points he is given for his position in a race. This is not a web forum ranking (eg X beat Y in F3 in 1996 but Z beat X in a 1988 thumb wrestle at a kart track therefore Z is faster than Y).
Webber has also scored more points in the last 5 races this year than the same 5 last year which would mean his rolling 12 month average will have increased in the last 5 rounds.
He has also scored an average of 12.94 points per race this year. His average for last year was 12.26 points per race.
You also get extra points for fastest laps and Webber has had more of these this year.
His season has actually been better this year.
This Castrol ranking would be far more controversial if human discretion and emotion were allowed to 'put Loeb ahead of that guy!' !
edit: fix quote.
zac510 said:
Nick3point2 said:
zac510 said:
From what I can tell its like tennis rankings where you have to repeat the success of the previous year to maintain your level, which is as reasonable metric as any there is to work with.
So how can Webber be doing so well when at this stage last year he was fighting for the championship?This ranking is mathematical.
The only part that compares one driver to another is the points he is given for his position in a race. This is not a web forum ranking (eg X beat Y in F3 in 1996 but Z beat X in a 1988 thumb wrestle at a kart track therefore Z is faster than Y).
Webber has also scored more points in the last 5 races this year than the same 5 last year which would mean his rolling 12 month average will have increased in the last 5 rounds.
He has also scored an average of 12.94 points per race this year. His average for last year was 12.26 points per race.
You also get extra points for fastest laps and Webber has had more of these this year.
His season has actually been better this year.
This Castrol ranking would be far more controversial if human discretion and emotion were allowed to 'put Loeb ahead of that guy!' !
edit: fix quote.
I think even Webber would hardly believe it himself!
The 12 month rolling average may even be weighted like an exponential average which would mean that more recent results have a stronger influence.
It's funny that F1 does not use metrics like this more often to rate driver or team performance. The first I heard of it was via the famous book on baseball sabermetrics called Moneyball (recently released as a movie). If you're interested it's well worth a read - you don't need to know anything about baseball.
However Mercedes are definitely doing a lot of it this year. Just look at what they are releasing via the PR arm and imagine that they are doing 10x that much analysis behind the scenes. So maybe it is, but it just hasn't filtered down to the fans yet.
Their heavy analysis of when and where you can overtake will not only influence race strategy in the more common sense but influence their 2012 car design. A good example of this is of RBR choosing the right DRS wing early in the season (it was biased towards quali performance).
The 12 month rolling average may even be weighted like an exponential average which would mean that more recent results have a stronger influence.
It's funny that F1 does not use metrics like this more often to rate driver or team performance. The first I heard of it was via the famous book on baseball sabermetrics called Moneyball (recently released as a movie). If you're interested it's well worth a read - you don't need to know anything about baseball.
However Mercedes are definitely doing a lot of it this year. Just look at what they are releasing via the PR arm and imagine that they are doing 10x that much analysis behind the scenes. So maybe it is, but it just hasn't filtered down to the fans yet.
Their heavy analysis of when and where you can overtake will not only influence race strategy in the more common sense but influence their 2012 car design. A good example of this is of RBR choosing the right DRS wing early in the season (it was biased towards quali performance).
Quite agree - I can't believe that there is a single person out there who takes it seriously.
When I was a lad Castrol put their name to a motorsport quiz. It was a sort of roadshow version of University Challenge with a panel of experts/drivers challenging members of local car clubs. Good entertainment it was, as a spotty anorak adolescent my father was always happy when I arrived home in the late evening with an armful of cans of GTX...
When I was a lad Castrol put their name to a motorsport quiz. It was a sort of roadshow version of University Challenge with a panel of experts/drivers challenging members of local car clubs. Good entertainment it was, as a spotty anorak adolescent my father was always happy when I arrived home in the late evening with an armful of cans of GTX...
In F1 there are a finite amount of places on the grid. The weighting onto the F1 series also represents the difficulty of getting into F1 in the first place. WRC does not have this problem at the moment.
I have made some effort to explain why this is a mathematical ranking. I've read the document explaining the ratings formulae and included some of my own interpretations from my learnings of statistics.
Why don't you guys make the same level of effort to refute the ranking if you think it is wrong?
I have made some effort to explain why this is a mathematical ranking. I've read the document explaining the ratings formulae and included some of my own interpretations from my learnings of statistics.
Why don't you guys make the same level of effort to refute the ranking if you think it is wrong?
Life Saab Itch said:
Since they came out they've been the biggest pile of ste. I've been ignoring them.
I fail to see how a driver goes down in the rankings when he wins a race (Button, earlier this year).
te. I've been ignoring them.I fail to see how a driver goes down in the rankings when he wins a race (Button, earlier this year).
I'm sure they have some arcane mathmatical system that works it out... doesn't stop them being a complete load of horsest though.zac510 said:
Why don't you guys make the same level of effort to refute the ranking if you think it is wrong?
I can't see how the drivers currently 2nd (JB)
3rd (FA)
4th (MW)
5th (LH)
in the F1 WDC can be rated differently in the Castrol rankings?
2nd (MW)
3rd (LH)
4th (FA)
5th (JB)
Same formulae, same competition, different results.
So MW is having a better season than last year according to the Castrol ranking, but he is not having a better season than FA or JB this year. In fact, given his car advantage it could be argued that he has had a poor season when you look at his team mates performance in the same car.
I very much doubt that team principals look at this when deciding who to hire/fire. Clearly JB, LH and FA are more likely to be able to dictate pay terms to a team than MW. And that is the true ranking. Darwinian in fact.
Steve
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