The final part of my look at the performance of this years’ new drivers sees Virgin’s Lucas di Grassi take on ex-Toyota driver Timo Glock. Lucas joined Virgin after four seasons in GP2. In 2009 he finished third for the second time in a row having had one win and eight podiums to his credit. His highest place finish over the four seasons had been in 2007 where ironically, he finished second behind his current team-mate Timo Glock.


Qualifying

The young Brazilian has struggled to keep up with his more experienced team-mate and trails in qualifying by 1 session to Glock’s 11 (although di Grassi failed to set a time during qualifying for the German Grand Prix); their average starting grid positions being 22.3 and 19.9 respectively with all of di Grassi’s qualifying sessions having ended in Q1, an unsurprising result given the relative pace of the car. Glock hasn’t managed much better, having only made it through to Q2 in one session to date. In common with the other driver performance blog posts I’ve looked to see if di Grassi is qualifying better as the season progresses or if he is maintaining ground, this has been assessed by looking at the difference in their fastest lap time in the last session in which they both competed.

As a reminder, the method used to calculate these time differences is explained in an earlier post which looked at the top drivers by points scored. As before, the cumulative advantage (the sum of all the individual lap time gains) over a team-mate is indicated by a grey vertical bar nearest the time axis. In di Grassi’s case, the cumulative advantage Glock has achieved is so much higher than any individual lap data that I have had to truncate the graph at eight seconds instead of showing the full 13.534 seconds to aid clarity.

Whilst the 13 plus seconds cumulative lead indicates that di Grassi is on average over a second behind his team mate at every qualifying session it does not tell the full story. The large time difference between the team-mates at Malaysia (7.579 seconds) has skewed the data significantly towards Glock. If this outlier point (caused by di Grassi being caught out by rain) is removed, the cumulative advantage is reduced to 5.955 seconds, just short of six tenths of a second per session behind Glock’s pace. *Note the data point for the German Grand Prix is missing because Glock did not set a qualifying time.

Race

In race conditions, the situation is much better with Glock leading his colleague 6:5; their average finishing positions are 17.8 (Glock) and 17.7 (di Grassi) over the six races they have each been classified. The team have been plagued by reliability issues especially in the early part of the season and it was five races in (Spanish GP) before both drivers finished a race. The broad range of retirement reasons are shown in the graphic below, surprisingly only one of those non-finishes was caused by an accident.
Although di Grassi has started a race two grid places behind his team mate on average, he is the driver with the higher Championship standing, having taken 14th place in Malaysia. Glock’s highest place finish was 16th at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The two drivers seem to be relatively evenly matched during a race and I can’t quite decide if that’s because Glock has failed to live up to expectations or because di Grassi has actually done quite well, perhaps the true reason is a little of both.

Overall, Lucas does seem to have narrowed the gap to Timo in the last few races. Although his pace of improvement (in qualifying at least) seems slow, his race performance is much better. I believe he stands a good chance of retaining his drive for next season, especially if he can improve his qualifying performance in the short term. All that he needs now is for the team to sort out those reliability issues and give him a car capable of showing off his skills.

Portal Image © Virgin Racing

The fifth new driver under the performance spotlight is Williams’ Nico Hulkenberg. Affectionately known to his team as “The Hulk” this driver is just too nice to be compared to the large green comic book hero of the same name. Has Nico the potential to be a super hero or is he too mild mannered to succeed?

Hulkenberg, the 2009 GP2 champion joined Williams after a single season in the premier feeder series; with five wins under his belt he convincingly led the championship ahead of second placed Vitaly Petrov. At the Grove based team he’s partnered by Rubens Barrichello, now in his eighteenth season in the sport but his first with Williams. It’s no surprise that the young German, in common with other new drivers, is taking time to settle into his team but with Rubens delivering consistently high standards has “The Hulk” lived up to expectations?

Qualifying

Its fair to say that Nico’s performance in qualifying has been quite good, having taken the lead in just under a third of their joint outings. Understandably Rubens leads the way, having won eight of the twelve sessions, Nico lead in three, whilst in Spain they tied on exactly the same time. The majority of Nico’s qualifying sessions (66%, 8 sessions) ended in Q2 with the remainder in Q3; Rubens most successful session was Q3 (50%) with 41% (5 sessions) in Q2 and one in Q1; on average, this has meant Rubens starting grid position is 10.5 to Nico’s 11.9. But straight head to head counts don’t tell the full story, what of the differences in lap time, has Nico been able to narrow the gap between them as the season progressed?

Whilst Rubens’ average lap advantage is 0.439 seconds on those laps he has led, Nico’s average is just 0.278 seconds, leading to an overall advantage to Rubens of 2.681 seconds. This is not a bad as we have seen from other pairings but I have to admit I had expected more, given his pre-F1 qualifications. There is no consistent trend towards smaller lap time differences as the season has progressed but Nico is slowly eating into Rubens advantage, mainly because of his performances in Canada and Europe where he set similar times. I’d expect the younger driver to need to need the remainder of the season to be consistently on the pace of his team-mate.

Race

In race trim, Rubens is again the stronger of the two, finishing eleven races to Nico’s nine with neither driver finishing the race in Monaco. Of those races, Nico has beaten his team-mate twice, at Malaysia and Hungary, both of which were races where he had the higher qualifying grid slot. Looking at their average finishing position over the whole season to date we can see that Nico’s average is 12.9 compared to 10.0 for Barrichello, their highest finishing positions being 6th and 4th respectively. Rubens also leads Nico on championship points by 30 points to 10.

It seems clear that Nico has the pace but has been let down by his qualifying position, once he has managed to sort that out his qualifying gremlins he should be a force to contend with and a great prospect for the future.

Image © LAT/AT&T Williams F1

Being a bit of a Star Trek fan the name Kobayashi always brings to mind the training exercise that’s meant to offer Star Fleet training cadets the opportunity to test their resolve and decision making skills in a no-win scenario known as the Kobayashi Maru… bit like F1 really! So is Kamui destined for Star Fleet admiralty or his he just a space cadet? Let’s see.

Kamui Kobayashi, the fourth of the new drivers I’ve analysed, following on from Vitaly Petrov and Hispania’s Karun Chandok and Bruno Senna takes on experienced driver and ex-McLaren tester Pedro de la Rosa at Sauber. Whilst Kobayashi is not technically new, having stood in at the final two races last year with Toyota for the injured Timo Glock, he is included here because he has yet to complete a full season in Formula One. Kamui is the only one of the six new drivers to be ahead of his team-mate on WDC points with a respectable seventeen points to de la Rosa’s six, but how has he faired during qualifying and racing?

Qualifying

Directly comparing of the number of sessions each team-mate has won sees de la Rosa having the upper hand with 7 wins, to 5 for Kobayashi. Although their average starting grid positions are 13.5 to 14.6 respectively Kobayashi is the only one to have made it through to Q3 having done so on three occasions. At the other end of the scale though he has also had three sessions where he has failed to make it past Q1. Just going by sessions won, there seems little to choose between the drivers; a better estimate might be to look at the time difference between their lap times in the latest session in which they both competed.


Using that metric we can see that Kobayashi has performed the better of the two, his cumulative advantage (sum of all the differences in his favour) sees him lead de la Rosa by 1.253 seconds over the season so far. It’s not a huge advantage but enough to show his potential performance once those reliability gremlins that have plagued the team are sorted out.


Race Pace

Appallingly, Sauber have only completed 11 of 24 possible finishes, mainly due to engine and hydraulics failures. Of those, only four races have seen both drivers complete the race, making direct comparisons difficult. In all, Kobayashi has been classified on six occasions to de la Rosa’s five; the younger driver having scored points four times, his highest being eight points at the British Grand Prix for finishing sixth. Whilst Sauber must look to continuing their recent performance and reliability gains I feel they’ve made a wise choice in signing Kamui Kobayashi, he certainly seems to be the real deal and has passed the “no win scenario” with flying colours.

Portal image © Sauber Motorsport

Since the F1 teams are off on holiday it’s the ideal time to have a look back at the season so far, but instead of just re-hashing some of the statistics I gather throughout the year I thought I’d take a slightly different look at qualifying. This isn’t just a list of who beat who at each race but an attempt to see if a driver has improved with time or if their performance has fallen: in short it’s who’s hot and who’s not! There’s far too much data to digest in one long blog post so I aim to split it up into manageable chunks, today it’s the turn of Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari

It’s so very tight at the top of the drivers’ standings: the three teams are all in contention to win the Constructors and/or Drivers trophies so every aspect of their race weekend is under scrutiny. So how can we compare driver timings when perhaps they don’t make it through to the same session? The method I use looks at the difference in qualifying pace between team-mates over the whole of the season thus far, if one driver in a team makes it through to Q3 and the other only manages to set a time in Q2 in a particular race the graph shows the qualifying time difference in the highest session they both competed in.

Red Bull
Red Bull have had a remarkable season so far with eleven pole positions out of a possible twelve; they currently lead both Drivers and Constructors Championships by the narrowest of margins but have seemed at times, prone to self destruction. In terms of starting grid statistics, Vettel leads Webber by 7 to 5 with their average starting positions being 1.8 to 2.2 respectively, Vettel has seven pole positions so far to Webbers four. But how has this changed as the year has progressed?


Before talking about the results I need a little explanation of how the data is presented. The graph looks at the results from the point of view of the teams number one driver (by that I mean the driver with the lowest car number). If driver one has set the faster qualifying speed than driver two in a given qualifying session the “difference” point on the graph will be a positive number, conversely if driver one has set a slower speed than driver two, the “difference” point on the graph will be negative. In each graph there is also a small vertical bar above or below the title BAH (Bahrain) indicating whether driver one or driver two has set the cumulative fastest time over the course of all the sessions so far.

My perception had been that there was very little to choose between the Red Bull pair. Vettel started the season as the faster driver but there followed a period between the Spanish and British GP’s where they were more evenly matched with Webber the faster of the two. Since the European GP Vettel is once again the faster of the two however the cumulative bar shows that his lead ahead of Webber is incredibly tight at 0.256 seconds.

McLaren
With two World Champions at McLaren one would expect that there would be little to separate the drivers, but this does not seem to have been the case. Button lags Hamilton by 4 sessions to 8 for grid slot with their average positions being 7.8 to 5.8 respectively, Hamilton is the only non Red Bull driver to have taken pole position this season.


What surprised me with this pairing was that the graph showed such variability; I was surprised that Button had dominated Hamilton early in the season for I’d presumed that having an established team-mate would be a disadvantage. However, as the season has progressed, it has become clear that Button is losing ground and has been unable to qualify well unless he can find a set-up that suits his driving style. Hamilton on the other hand, seems able to extract the maximum from the car no matter how it is set up and this chasm is now starting to build in Hamilton’s favour. It’s also worth noting that team error was to blame for Hamilton’s position in Malaysia when the team were caught out by rain, otherwise his cumulative advantage of 1.678 seconds may have been greater.

Ferrari
With Ferrari under investigation by the WMSC for “team orders” at the German GP I wanted see if their drivers’ performance in qualifying could shed some light on why they chose to favour one driver over the other. In terms of grid slot, Massa was the slower qualifier in 9 of 12 events, their average starting positions being 6.8 for Massa and 7.0 for Alonso mainly due to Alonso starting from 24th place at Monaco. Although the stats show a ratio of 9:3, the graph shows only two of Massa’s three “wins” because Alonso’s accident in Monaco free practice meant he took no part in qualifying. Accordingly, the Ferrari data show performance over eleven races instead of twelve.


What fascinates me about this graph is just how much faster Alonso’s qualifying pace, in general, is compared to Massa’s. On the two occasions Massa has led the session, his average lead was 0.389 seconds whereas Alonso’s was 0.419 seconds at each of 9 sessions. There’s not much to separate them on that statistic but cumulatively the four tenths advantage ramps up to an overall lead of 2.994 seconds, the largest lead of all three teams. To be fair to Massa, he does seem to have narrowed the gap slightly in Hungary, perhaps because he wanted to prove that he was no number two driver after the German GP saga. I’m not so sure that this far through the season it’s enough to show the team he deserves their backing over Alonso… though only time will tell.

Look out for further analysis later in the week when I turn my attention to the qualifying performance of some of the new teams.

Portal Image © Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

USF1 failed but Hispania, Virgin, Lotus and Sauber (courtesy of USF1’s failure) all finally made it to the 2010 grid. However, that was only the start of their difficulties and as they take a break, it’s perhaps a good time to reflect on the reliability issues that have hampered their respective seasons so far. They may have had no delusions about the possibility of finishing first, but the other half of the old Formula One mantra: “…first you’ve got to finish” will be playing heavily on their minds. Tony Fernandes summed it up back in February when asked about his expectations for the season: “Well I would just love to finish every race.”

The first observation, from the figure below, is that the rest of the grid hasn’t had anywhere near as many reliability troubles as Hispania, Virgin, Lotus and Sauber. With an average of 89% of laps competed, including Ferrari with an impressive 99.8%, the four at the bottom of the pitlane have a lot to live up to that isn’t explained by being several laps behind the leader when they do finish.

Looking in more detail, Sauber have had their well documented misfortunes with the Ferrari engines, and Pedro de la Rosa is well into the lifetime of his seventh of eight allocated engines and facing grid penalties later in the season. However, one of the few pieces of equipment that the new teams have been able to rely on has been the Cosworth engine, and other than Sakon Yamamoto accidentally shutting his down, they’ve caused few issues. Gear boxes, on the other hand, are a different story – the most unfortunate being Heikki Kovalainen who failed to even start the race in Spain after electronic issues with his gear selection.

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Overshadowing all other problems, though, has been the cars’ hydraulic systems, with all four teams suffering a significant number of complications. In fact, from the rest of the grid, only Toro Rosso have had to retire a car due to the hydraulics. Above all, it has been the new teams’ biggest reliability weakness and while the attention has been on Virgin’s all-CFD aerodynamic design, it has been more fundamental problems that have been costly.

Perhaps surprisingly given the number of inexperienced drivers at the back of the grid, as well has having to deal with being passed by lapping cars 60-70 times a race, the new three new teams have suffered a similar number of accidents and collisions as the rest of the grid. Not that the same can quite be said of de la Rosa and Kobayashi.

Nobody said it was going to be easy for Virgin, Hispania and Lotus when they joined the Formula One circus, nor will it be for the thirteenth team when the FIA eventually get around to choosing one. It’s clear, however, that pace isn’t the only thing they’re lacking and if one of the three new teams are going to steal some points this year, they need to make sure they’re around at the chequered flag to do so.

Notes: The figure represents the number of retirements for the three new teams along with Sauber. Sauber are included because they’ve had a similarly problematic season, indeed they have completed the fewest number of laps of any team, just 58% between their two drivers. The area of the circle is representative of the number of each type of failure for each driver. For comparison, the rest of the pit lane is summarised along the bottom, with the total number of failures averaged across the eight other teams. More details about the individual teams can be found in the Statistics pages.

Home page photo © Virgin Racing

As the Formula 1 season takes a break, Mark Webber and Red Bull hold a narrow lead in the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships respectively. Just 20 points cover the first five drivers with a mammoth additional 175 points still possible for any of them. Meanwhile, Ferrari’s recent revival sees them join what was starting to look a two-horse race between McLaren and Red Bull.

So how will the rest of the season pan out? Much will lie in the hands of the designers and maybe a little in the rule makers as the debate over flexible front wings continues to simmer but if the last five races (Canada to Hungary) provide any kind of guide to form, it should be a tight finish. It’s plotted below but obviously shouldn’t be taken too seriously although the conclusions are interesting. Extrapolating Jenson Button’s recent dip in form would hand the Constructors’ title to Red Bull although Lewis Hamilton would just squeak the Drivers’ trophy ahead of Webber and Sebastian Vettel but with just six points separating the three of them, it’s too close to call. Certainly, Hamilton and Webber won’t want to repeat their recent race retirements and Vettel needs to clear up his recent habit of carelessly dropping points. However, even the extrapolated fifth placed Fernando Alonso is only 28 points behind – little more than a race victory.

Then again, as I say, don’t take this extrapolation of form too seriously but it does promise to be exciting championship run-in.