ATP

Average Track Position, or ATP, is The Single Seater’s own stat that will make its debut in the 2019 season.

ATP serves to measure how a driver’s entire race went and capture what average finishing position or finish position for a single race can not. If a driver raced in the top five all day long but was crashed out towards the end, their finishing position will make their race look worse than it truly was. In terms of quality of driver and car, that driver is actually very good and should be expected to have more good days.

If a driver secures a podium but has an ATP of 12th, we can now ask the question of did they get lucky, was there some smart strategy employed, or was it something else that got them up there.

ATP is computed by taking the position the driver was in at the end of each lap and averaging that over the number of laps they ran. If a driver was crashed out on lap 32, their ATP will only be their average track position of those first 31 laps. If a driver is out of the race before the final 25% of the race starts, their ATP25 will just be their finishing position of the race.

ATP25 is a variation of ATP that reports a driver’s ATP during the last 25% of the race.

Comparing ATP to a driver’s actual starting and finishing position for a race will give a judgement to how their day really went, and over the course of the season ATP will be useful in predicting who has been lucky and unlucky and when we can expect certain drivers to start getting results.