Formula 1 : A quick guide

In Formula 1, there are a great amount of factors that play into a win or a loss. Of course, the individual skill and determination of the driver is incredibly important, but obviously other elements play a role as well: think about the quality of the car, the choice of tires for a particular race, the performance of the supporting staff (both technical and tactical), ... Changes in the rulesets may suddenly destroy an individual driver's tactics.

So if you imagine for a moment that you are a real Formula 1 driver, how can you win? What can you change to improve your odds of competing against the other drivers as best as possible? Which things will not influence your chances of winning at all? We will talk about a couple of aspects here.

Of course, one of the most obvious influences on your performance as a driver is the car you drive in. After all, driving in a slow car should obviously make you slower, right?

As it turns out, many Formula 1 drivers would seem to agree: most have swapped teams (and therefore car manufacturers) multiple times in their career, hoping to gain a better advantage over their adversaries. But is this actually a good idea? Does the brand of your car matter in your race for the first spot?

To illustrate the importance of the constructor, we made a plot where we compare the performance of a handful of drivers who swapped manufacturers once or multiple times during their careers. Every circle shows a race where they ended at the position shown by the height, and the color of the cicle tells you which brand they drove the race with.

You can clearly see that, at least for some drivers, there is a big difference in their performance between multiple brands: if the top of their performance slider has a different color than the bottom, then it is clear that one or more of the constructors are clearly better (at least for this driver) than others, since they win more often.

However, we can also notice that this is not really the case for every driver: take for example Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton has won a great amount of his races, whether he was driving with Mercedes or McLaren. Though constructor is important, it does not (as one may suspect) fully decide the race: it is not just the car that is important, but also the skill of the driver in charge of the vehicle.

Therefore we can conclude that you should definitely pick a good car manufacturer to run with. You should also not be afraid to switch if another manufacturer turns out to be a lot better, since car brands can have a real influence on your performance. However, you will also need to work on different parts of the race to truly guarantee your victory.

Something that is incredibly important yet often overlooked is the weather during a race. It stands to reason that you need to drive slower during rainfall (after all, the same is true in ordinary cars). However, the consequences for Formula 1 are more far-reaching: think about the choice of tires, rule changes and tactics that can no longer be used. You need to be able to drastically adapt to the new conditions.

Of course, when these conditions change it also offers up the chance to shine: some people might be exceptionally good at knowing how to handle rain while others are worse at it. In the following graph, we will see if the weather conditions actually influence the outcome of the race.

Because everyone obvioulsy drives slower during the rain, comparing average speed in a race isn't a very good qualifier. Instead, we look at the end position the driver reached during a race: this automatically compares his performance to the other drivers in the race. On the graph, we compare how often a driver has reached an end position in the race in dry weather conditions (in red) and in wet weather conditions (in blue). If the driver consistently performs better in wet weather (the top of the graph has a lot of blue and not a lot of red) or vice versa then we can assume the weather has a big influence on this driver.

As we can see, it seems that the weather is not very important for the most famous drivers. They still perform top-tier irrespective of rain or sunshine. If they are skilled enough to perform at the very top of the charts, then it seems rain will not easily stop them from winning.

At the same time it is clear that the weather matters for at least some drivers. Some of those perform a lot better when the weather is good (Arturo Merzario) where others are at their best when the weather is worse (Chico Serra, Raul Boesel). Figuring out better tactics and adjustments to their cars during specific weather conditions may help these drivers improve their skills in adverse situations.

By reading the main introduction page you already know that the circuit isn't wide enough to start everyone equally, and so the starting formation is staggered. That of course begs the question: who gets to start in the front? This problem is solved in Formula 1 by organizing a solo time lap before the race. The drivers are then ordered by their preliminary laptime: those who did the fastest trial lap get to start in the first position.

The next question of course is: "Does the ordering matter?". Do people who start more in front this race actually have a better chance at ending up the winner? To analyze this, we plot starting positions and finishing positions against each other. The frequency this combination occurs with is the size of the ball in the grid.

As we can see, the starting positions have a big influence on the ending positions. This is clear because the diagonal is more pronounced than the rest of the grid, which means there's a strong corellation between starting position and ending position.

Of course, we must take into account that both the starting positions and ending positions are determined by some measure of skill: the first by a time lap and the second by driving the race. It stands to reason that a highly skilled pilot would perform well on both. However, it also shows the importance of the time lap: it is not always easy to pass another car on the circuit, so the more cars you need to pass to reach first place the harder your objective becomes. It is a good idea to also train your drivers at solo time laps and not just on competitive races.