Well here it is, the third and final part of my naughty step trilogy. This time I am concentrating on the 2008 Formula One season and on trying to discover whether there is any inherent bias towards or against any one team. In particular, I plan to focus on Ferrari and McLaren since those are the two teams most frequently assumed to be more or less likely to have a penalty… but there will be more about that later.
The thing I noticed straight away from the 2008 season stewards reports is that the emphasis was firmly on the drivers, with what I would have considered “team” as opposed to “driver” indiscretions being received by the drivers alone.
First a bit about the stats, how I collected them, and how they were analysed.
After searching around the blogging community and with assistance from Maverick and Rubber Goat I was able to lay my hands on a complete set of steward records for the season. This was important, firstly because I didn’t want to add to any personal bias to the stats and secondly because it gives us a more complete picture of the changing attitude of the regulatory body.
How I calculated the constructors naughty points?
As in part 1, I awarded points for the various penalties. The highest score of 10 points was reserved for a race disqualification whilst a reprimand from the stewards received 1 point.
I looked at the total penalty points each driver received and also took account of those for minor, speeding in the pitlane type penalties. I also examined the total amount of fines a driver received for any incidents and divided those into speeding fines or fines for other offences. A final point, if a driver was fined and reprimanded he will have been given a number of points under the fine category and also a point for the reprimand; likewise if he impeded another driver he will have points under the impede category plus any points associated with a grid drop.
There are quite a few graphs to get trough before I get on to the “meaty stuff” so I’d best press on.
The good, the bad and the naughty?
Of the 22 drivers who took part in the 2008 season, 18 of then received a penalty of some sort. Surprisingly the only driver to have escaped a penalty in both 2008 and 2009 was Nelson Piquet Junior; shame he made up for his excellent behaviour so spectacularly at the Singapore GP last year. The other good guys were Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Takuma Sato having neither fines nor penalties applied for the whole season. But as I mentioned earlier, some offences were relatively minor and some required grid drops or a disqualification. I’ll start with the easiest and most common category, speeding in the pitlane.
Eleven drivers received a fine for speeding; top of the list was David Coulthard on 4 fines with a further 5 drivers being guilty of multiple speeding offences. The graph on the right hand side of the panel shows the averaged fine per penalty. This gives us an idea who who was driving fastest through the pitlane, that honour goes to Rubens Barrichello, with Raikkonen, Bourdais and Coulthard not far behind.
Fines
There were more fines than those I have mentioned for speeding; 15 drivers received a monetary punishment bringing in a whopping 103,400 Euro’s to the FIA’s coffers.
The right hand graph shows the five drivers given a fine for something other than speeding. Coulthard was fined for failing to attend a drivers parade, Hamilton was fined for being late for an FIA press conference and for crossing the line at the entrance to the start of the pitlane in Europe. Raikkonen, was late for a drivers meeting. The other two penalties were more unusual; Kovalainen was fined for not switching off his engine during re-fuelling with a non-approved fuel rig and Barrichello was fined for decelerating early at the pit lane entrance.
Impeding another driver
Five drivers accrued points under this category with Nick Heidfeld gaining points twice. Funnily enough the “standard” penalty for blocking was a 5-place grid drop, except for Mr Heidfeld who was given a 3 place drop on both occasions, another example of FIA inconsistency?
There were a few other penalties of note but I’m pleased to see that there does seem to have been some properly defined tariff for these. Both Barrichello and Sutil had modifications made to their car whilst in the pitlane, the penalty for which was to start the race from the pit lane.
Alonso, Hamilton and Trulli each crossed the line at the start of the pitlane at one event, that was given a reprimand and a 10,000 Euro fine in all three cases. Hamilton and Rosberg were found to have caused a collision, both were given a 10 place grid drop for the next race whereas Kovalainen’s collision at Spa was punished with a drive through penalty.
So far so good, but on to the main question that I’ve been asked about, what of McLaren and Ferrari?
It’s tough at the top.
Let’s concentrate on the left hand panel first. On first inspection, both in terms of the total penalty points gained and the points awarded for penalties that were not related to speeding, McLaren were way ahead of Ferrari with 57 points to 22 points respectively. However, this initial analysis doesn’t look at the number of penalties that each driver within a team was awarded so, onto panel two.
Heikki Kovalainen’s three speeding penalties and Kimi Raikkonen’s two would tend to bias the data somewhat making it look like McLaren were penalised much more than Ferrari, but even when you ignore the speeding offences, both McLaren drivers are still ahead of the Ferrari pair in terms of the number of penalties achieved.
So how did the drivers get those penalties?
I’ll start with Heikki Kovalainen’s penalties which were not for speeding.
France – Driving very slowly during an outlap, hindering a driver on his fast lap (5 place grid drop).
Germany – Car refuelled with a non FIA approved race refuelling system and engine should have been stopped during refuelling (5000 euro fine).
Malaysia – Impeding two cars on their flying lap by travelling at slow speed on the racing line (5 place grid drop).
Belgium – Causing a collision (drive through penalty)
Next, Lewis Hamilton’s five penalties, none of which were for speeding.
Canada – Caused a collision (10 place grid drop).
Europe – Crossed the line at the entrance to the pit lane (reprimand and 10,000 fine).
Japan – Forced a driver off the track (drive through penalty).
Malaysia – Impeded a car on its flying lap by travelling at very slow speed on the racing line (5 place grid drop)
Belgium – Cutting a chicane and gaining an advantage (drive through penalty, given post race so becomes 25 second time drop)
Since Raikkonen only had penalties for speeding, the final round-up of penalties are those of Felipe Massa.
Europe – Unsafe release from pit stop although no sporting advantage was gained (reprimand and 10,000 fine).
Japan – causing a collision (drive through penalty).
Singapore – unsafe realease from pit stop (drive through penalty).
So what stands out as being obviously different in the treatment of the drivers?
Hamilton had two more penalties than Massa. It could be argued that Massa’s pit stop penalties impinged on his title chances as he took the penalty for the teams mistakes. That’s something that seems to be remedied this year as unsafe pit releases have been given team fines instead of driver fines.
Hamilton’s penalties on the other hand seemed to have been given for his more agressive approach to driving with the cutting of a chicane, forcing a driver off the track, causing a collision and impeding another driver amongst his tally. I’d have to suggest that these more serious offences should have been dealt with by stiffer penalties and that seems to have been the case, though I believe, not excessively so and here’s why.
Although Hamilton certainly has more points (because he has an extra 2 penalties), the normalised data show that the ratio of points per offence is not very different to Massa or Kovalainen’s. The actual numbers are Hamilton, 6 points per incident, Massa 5.3 points per incident whilst Kovalainen’s ratio is 5.25.
When taken together, the McLaren ratio comes out at 5.7 and Ferrari ’s remains at 5.3 because Raikkonen only had speeding offences which, like Kovalainen’s were not considered here.
Whilst it’s true that Hamilton had more points and penalties than Massa, I believe this ratio tends to quash the idea that seemed rife last year that Hamilton was unfairly penalised at every opportunity. I would argue that his agressive style of driving put him firmly in the stewards radar but that once they looked at the offences they did not overly punish him compaired to Massa on a points per incident basis.
One wonders what the ratio’s would have been like if Massa’s incidents had been been for his driving style as opposed to what I consider to be partly the fault of his team though I guess that’s something we’ll never know.
Were McLaren and Hamilton the FIA’s scapegoats at the expense of Ferrari? I guess that question is aimed at you.
