State of the Championship: who is most likely to catch Palou?

July 20, 2021 DrewLeave a comment

After a few more weeks of summer break, IndyCar will head to the streets of Nashville for the first time on August 8th. Palou will enter the final six races of the season with a 39 point lead in the championship over O’Ward. Dixon sits 56 points out of first place and Newgarden is 69 points behind Palou.

State of the Championship: What’s going on with Palou’s numbers?

July 3, 2021 DrewLeave a comment

With seven races to go in this IndyCar season, Alex Palou has 349 points and leads Pato O’Ward and Scott Dixon by 28 and 53 points, respectively. At Road America, Palou was able to come away with 51 points after his win and Dixon had a quiet day that saw him move from 13th to 4th throughout the 55 laps to earn some much needed points in order to keep the championship battle within reach.

State of the Championship: Dixon Maintains Early Edge

April 28, 2021 DrewLeave a comment

The season has started and that means The Single Seater’s championship simulations are running. Things are pretty similar in the simulation as last season. We simulate each remaining race using our Elo ratings, add up the points earned in those races, and add them to how many points drivers currently have in the championship. We run these simulations “hot” so drivers can gain or lose Elo rating points during the simulations which allows for more variation in the outcomes and reflects the truth that we don’t know everything about driver performance and it might change as the season goes on.

Threads: Evaluating The Single Seater’s Elo Ratings and Predicting DNFs

December 4, 2020 DrewLeave a comment

I wrote two Twitter threads over the past week or so that I wanted to share here in case anyone doesn’t follow on Twitter or missed them.

Transaction Analysis: Rosenqvist Takes Askew’s Seat at AMSP

November 29, 2020 DrewLeave a comment

Felix Rosenqvist is taking over Oliver Askew’s seat at Arrow McLaren SP for the 2021 season. The 29 year-old Rosenqvist is moving from the team that helped Scott Dixon win another IndyCar title, Chip Ganassi Racing, to a team that has done some restructuring in the past year as the combination of McLaren and Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and hired two young drivers. Rosenqvist finished eleventh in the championship in 2020, just ahead of his teammate Marcus Ericsson by fifteen points. In a year where Dixon won the championship, both of his teammates would have liked to put up better performances for themselves too.