The finding will sadden admirers of Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Michael Schumacher or Jacques Villeneuve, but should not surprise them too much. If we rely on advanced statistics, the talent of Formula 1 drivers does not weigh heavily in their success on the track. Possibly for as little as 20%, at most, the rest coming from the car and all the other members of the team. But this may correct itself a little in the next few years.
But what happened to Lewis Hamilton? people who follow the Formula 1 championship from afar will wonder next week who will discover, when the big circus arrives in Montreal, the Briton lagging behind in the rankings after having dominated this unchallenged sport for years. and narrowly missing out on an eighth world championship title last year.
Basically, those who follow the competition more closely will tell you, it has happened that the technical regulations have changed and that his team (Mercedes) has been less able to adapt to them than Red Bull or Ferrari. But you could also say that the same thing could be happening to him that happened to the four-time world champion, Sebastian Vettel, a few years ago, or to the other seven-time world champion, Michael Schumacher, before him. , and many others before them. That is to say that he no longer has the best car in the peloton in his hands.
Of oil and statistics
Several mathematicians have had fun comparing the performance of teams and drivers between them since the start of the Formula 1 championship in 1950, reported in 2020 the late log The Correspondent. Their statistical models took into account a multitude of factors, such as the type of track, weather conditions, technical failures and pilot errors, the results of the pilots compared to their teammates of the same team or their normal curve of learning and decline.
The linking of all these variables made it possible to establish, a posteriori, what level of results the cars of each team could aspire to each season and then compare them to the results obtained by their drivers. We could thus not only appreciate the advantage (or disadvantage) conferred by certain teams on their pilots, but also the capacity of each of them to do better, or less well, than their racing cars would normally have allowed.
First observation, the performance of the drivers is essentially dependent on the car in which they are. This phenomenon is even growing, concluded a British study in 2016, with the share of driver performance attributable, in fact, to their team increasing from 56% in the early 1950s to more than 80% in recent years.
These differences in performance from one team to another can be due to several factors. First, there is the size of their budget, of course, which allows them to deploy more or less human, technological and tactical resources to constantly snatch a few tenths of a second here and there. According to the specialized site RaceFans, the teams at the head of the peloton thus had, in 2019, two to three times more financial resources than the others, at the rate of 425 million US $ for Mercedes, 335 million for Red Bull and 435 million for Ferrari, against a budget of around 150 million for half of the ten competing teams, including Racing Point, Haas and Williams.
But money isn’t everything. It happens, for example, that a less fortunate team gives birth to a major technological innovation that allows it to rise among the best until it is copied by everyone. You can also come across an exceptional driver who, even with only 20% influence on the overall result, can wear the colors of a team higher than they normally should. At least until that driver is offered more money and better chances of winning races by a richer team.
The best pilots in history
Armed with their complex statistical models, our mathematicians can also estimate which drivers added the most value to the performance of the cars we put in their hands, whether those cars were the best of the pack or not. Their lists of the best pilots usually include several names that are also found in the more subjective rankings of amateurs and experts. However, they also come to conclusions that will make the hair on their heads stand on end.
An expert in applied mathematics specializing in the analysis of sleep at the School of Psychological Sciences at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, Andrew Phillips has refined a statistical model in his spare time which has enabled him, for example, to draw up in 2019 a ranking of the 100 best drivers in Formula 1 history based on two career best years.
Michael Schumacher tops the list, followed by sports legends like Scotsman Jackie Stewart (2e), Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio (4e) and the Italian Alberto Ascari (5e). There are also several pilots still active, such as Lewis Hamilton (7e), the German Sebastian Vettel (8e) and Dutchman Max Verstappen (9e).
But you have to look much further to find certain drivers who usually top the rankings of experts and sports enthusiasts, such as the Frenchman Alain Prost (20e), Brazilian Ayrton Senna (21e) or the Quebecer Jacques Villeneuve (37e), who arrive behind, or not so far ahead, drivers whose names will probably not be remembered in history, such as Nico Hülkenberg (17e), Heinz-Harald Frentzen (24e) or Kevin Magnussen (27e).
And Gilles??
Only at 78e rank, the legendary Gilles Villeneuve shows up much further, behind obscure drivers, like Jean-Éric Vergne (50e) and Timo Glock (51e), as well as his son and world champion in 1997, Jacques (37e), and Montrealer and current Aston Martin driver, Lance Stroll (46e).
“If we favor anecdotes over results, Gilles Villeneuve is surely one of the greatest of all time, observes Andrew Phillips. He was a spectacular driver, who had mysterious control of the car and had an innate sense of driving on wet tracks, but he also made many driving errors. »
The Australian mathematician and his statistical models nevertheless estimate that, given his talent, his superiority over his teammates and the strength of the Ferraris of his time, the Quebecer would probably have been crowned world champion in 1982 and 1983 if he had not died at the start of this streak at the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder.
New budget ceiling
What’s the point, then, of watching Formula 1 races if the results are largely recorded before the drivers have even made their first laps? You can always follow the fights between teammates from the same stables. And then, the gaps between the teams and the drivers are not so great that a good or bad day for one or the other does not cause a few surprises.
But above all, we can hope that the recent imposition of a budget ceiling on teams will eventually produce its work. From 145 million per team last year, this ceiling has been lowered to 140 million this year and will be 135 million next year. Excluding marketing expenses, the salaries of the drivers and the team’s three highest paid employees, this cap aims to put an end to an era where the smallest teams were constantly on the brink of the financial abyss as well as to tighten the level of competition.
As the cars are developed several months in advance, this season is the first where we should start to feel the impact of the new rule. Is it a coincidence, but this is also the first season in F1 history where all teams have placed at least one car in the top ten in any of the first five events of the year.