sDRS Focus: Hulkenberg Continues to Fall

Nico Hulkenberg didn’t finish Sunday’s United States Grand Prix, completing just 35 laps before crashing out. Five of the last seven races have resulted in DNF’s for the German, with just one of the those being ‘excused’ (a did not start in Belgium). The rest were all crashes that one could argue could have been avoided. Meanwhile his teammate Sergio Perez has placed in the top ten in five of the last six races — including a third place podium in Russia.

Because of Formula One’s top heavy scoring system (drivers only score points if they place in the top ten), Hulkenberg sits a respectable 12th place in the championship. But his recent performances have dropped him down to 17th in our sDRS rankings with a score of 1414. The sDRS rankings punish drivers for not finishing races and being consistent. In the eyes of the rankings, Hulkenberg’s six top tens are not that impressive when it sees his six DNF’s and other poor performances.

Ignoring Alexander Rossi (who has not completed enough races to have an accurate sDRS score), Hulkenberg is the driver with the biggest gap between his championship position and sDRS position. He’s lost over 70 sDRS points in the last five races and only scored twice in the Formula One points since Silverstone.

Although he has out-qualified Perez more often than not, his R+/- score is also being effected by his poor race performance. It’s currently at -2.2 and is the second lowest score, ahead of only Pastor Maldonado (-2.4). For comparison, his teammate has an R+/- score of 1.5 and an sDRS score of 1531. Based on their ratings, sDRS says Perez should beat Hulkenberg 66 percent of the time: through 16 races of the season, he has beaten him 63 percent of the time.
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	Hulkenberg	Perez	Diff.
sDRS	1414	1531	117
R+/-	-2.2	1.5	3.7

Hulkenberg has just three races left to regain some traction and show Force India he’s worth it. So far this season, there has been very little to be happy about if you’re team principal Vijay Mallaya.

by: Drew B., Founder

The Last Time Qualifying Was Postponed to Sunday

Qualifying for the United States Grand Prix was pushed back to Sunday morning because of rain and standing water on the track. Q3 was cancelled Sunday, leaving Nico Rosberg with yet another pole position start. Lewis Hamilton took second place followed by both the Red Bulls and Force Indias.

The last time a qualifying session was postponed to the following day was at the 2013 Australian Grand Prix. Sebastien Vettel started on pole but Kimi Raikkonen took home the race win starting in seventh. Lewis Hamilton ended up in fifth place while his teammate Nico Rosberg was forced out of the race due to an electrical failure.

If that were to happen today, Lewis Hamilton would clinch the 2015 Driver’s World Championship with a ninth place or worse result from Sebastien Vettel.

More information on the 2013 race can be found here.

by: Drew B., Founder

sDRS Ratings: Round 15

Ratings Valid Through Round 15

Read about how sDRS is calculated here.

The Statistics

Lewis Hamilton won round 15 of the season at the Russian Grand Prix two weeks ago. After a brief battle with Nico Rosberg, Hamilton led 48 laps on his way to being 5.9 seconds in the clear of the field. The win was Hamilton’s ninth of the year and put him 66 points ahead of his closest championship contender, Sebastien Vettel.
Force India made it to the podium once again with Sergio Perez taking home a third place finish. His teammate, Nico Hulkenberg, wasn’t as lucky Sunday and retired on the first lap of the race after a crash with Marcus Ericsson.
Nico Rosberg also retired from the race with a throttle issue on the seventh lap of the race. With this retirement not only did his sDRS rating drop, but his hopes of a championship have been depleted greatly. He sits 73 points out from Hamilton with just four races remaining (100 maximum points). Hamilton just needs a few points each race to secure his title.

The ratings after Round 15 heading into the United States Grand Prix are:

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sDRS Pos.	Driver	Rating	Champ. Pos.	Diff.
1	Lewis Hamilton	1740	1	0
2	Sebastian Vettel	1688	2	0
3	Nico Rosberg	1660	3	0
4	Kimi Raikkonen	1574	4	0
5	Valtteri Bottas	1571	5	0
6	Felipe Massa	1559	6	0
7	Daniil Kvyat	1534	7	0
8	Daniel Ricciardo	1525	8	0
9	Sergio Perez	1522	9	0
10	Romain Grosjean	1485	10	0
11	Max Verstappen	1483	12	1
12	Alexander Rossi*	1483	21	9
13	Felipe Nasr	1452	13	0
14	Carlos Sainz, Jr.	1449	15	1
15	Marcus Ericsson	1435	17	2
16	Nico Hulkenberg	1419	11	-5
17	Pastor Maldonado	1416	14	-3
18	Fernando Alonso	1391	16	-2
19	Jenson Button	1390	18	-1
20	Roberto Merhi	1382	20	0
21	Will Stevens	1342	19	-2

* Has not completed the minimum number of races to be qualified with an accurate score.

by: Drew B., Founder

sDRS

The statistic – sDRS (Simple Driver Rating System)

What it is – sDRS is loosely based on the Elo Rating system, but has some major differences to account for the multiple competitors in motorsport racing. The system tells us how strong a particular driver is during a season and how close the competition is to each other. It can be used to predict which driver will be the strongest heading into a race and also accounts for past year’s performance.

The calculation: sDRS for Formula One is calculated fairly simply. All new drivers are initialized with 1500 points (which also happens to the long term average of all driver’s ratings). Points are awarded based on finishing position after each race as follows:

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Place	Points	Place	Points
1	20	11	0
2	15	12	-2
3	12	13	-3
4	10	14	-5
5	9	15	-7
6	7	16	-9
7	5	17	-10
8	3	18	-12
9	2	19	-15
10	0	20	-20

The formula for calculating the new sDRS score is:

NEW_sDRS = OLD_sDRS + POSITION_POINTS

The nature of this scoring means that the system, like Elo, is zero sum. This means for every point one driver loses, another one gains. This serves to keep the system balanced and easy to judge throughout seasons, no matter the scoring system in use. sDRS is also a much better predictor for mid to back field drivers who don’t get much love from Formula One’s top ten scoring system. It can show the best of the rest just as easily as it can show the best overall.

sDRS rewards consistency over one off races, too. A driver may get a big jump in points for a good result one week, but if he doesn’t back it up after that, his rating will fall back down. This avoids a major pitfall of Formula One scoring in that one driver could get a lucky result and sit in a good points position all year long. A driver will always gain points for being better than average (tenth or eleventh place), and always lose points for a result worse than average.

Speaking of average, the majority of the field will have an sDRS score of 1400-1700. 1500 is considered an average driver, less than 1400 is a bad driver (worthy candidate for replacement next season in most cases), and greater than 1700 is a great driver. A score above 1850 is the sign of a world class driver.

At the end of each season, driver’s scores are reverted to the mean by one half. This accounts for the unpredictability of car performance each year. With car redevelopment each season, it’s highly likely that a team who was successful one season could be well of the pace this year. Reverting to the mean corrects for this and makes the ratings more accurate at the start of a season. Think McLaren from 2014 to 2015.

Telling the relative strength of the field for a given season is a strength of sDRS. The point spread between the lowest and highest rated drivers tells us how closely matched the field is. A spread of less than 200 points is incredibly close and usually doesn’t occur in Formula One. 300-400 points is what an average Formula One field looks like and more than 500 usually means there is a powerhouse team dominating most of the season.

Drawbacks – Like any rating system, sDRS is not perfect and has its quirks. For starters, sDRS doesn’t know which track the series is going to next or how many races a driver has competed in. So for example, a driver’s great historical record at a track isn’t accounted for in the calculations before that race. All sDRS knows is that a driver has been good, bad, or average this year. The second problem is that new drivers will usually have unpredictable ratings for the first five races of the season. It takes sDRS a few races to center in on their real score and see if their early results were a fluke or a sign of things to come.

It’s a simple rating system, meaning it uses very limited variables to give a score. This is beneficial in a lot of cases as the more saturated a predictive statistic becomes the more likely it is to fall victim to too much noise – which screws up the data. sDRS does a great job of showing the strength of drivers relative to each other, but shouldn’t be used as an all or nothing guide by any means.

Ratings will be updated after each week of the Formula One season.

by: Drew B., Founder

Formula E Preview: Round One

Formula E commences its second season this weekend with round one of the 24 race season in Beijing, China. The ten team and 20 driver setup features a wealth of talent in drivers like Simona de Silvestro, Lucas di Grassi, and Bruno Senna – and of course last year’s champion Nelson Piquet, Jr. Di Grassi won the race last year by 2.8 seconds and only led one lap the entire race!

Let’s take a look at some numbers of note heading into the first round.

Last year’s championship was decided in the last race of the year and the two contenders ended up only being separated by a single point. A championship that close gave Formula E some good publicity last season and the FIA will certainly want another close battle this year. Just for some reference, the last time Formula One had a championship like that was three years ago when Sebastien Vettel edged out Fernando Alonso by three points. IndyCar had a championship decided by zero points (a tiebreaker was used) this year.
Seven different drivers won races last season and the most any one driver won was three. These numbers will obviously change this year as the schedule is over double the length of last year’s. 65 percent of the field (13 drivers) made it to the podium.
There was just one caution at Beijing last year that lasted for two laps for a crash by Bruno Senna on the second lap of the race. Just like Formula One, the Formula E series also uses a safety car in the event of larger crashes or debris on track.

Series Refresher

The points system is the same as Formula One except there are five extra points available over the course of the race weekend. Three are awarded to the driver who secures pole position and two more are given to whoever sets the fastest lap during the race.

Drivers must stop once during the race to change cars. Yes, get out, run over, and jump in another car. It’s a little weird at times but hasn’t seemed to detract from the tight racing and battles. There were 29 lead changes last season, averaging 2.6 per race. The race with the most lead changes (5) was Miami while the least (0) was Monte Carlo – which is kind of expected considering its notoriety as a processional race.

by: Drew B., Founder