F1 Team Driver Battles in 2018

Mercedes

	Hamilton	Bottas
Points	408	247
Points finishes	20	19
Pointless finishes	0	0
DNFs	1	2
Points per finish (average)	20.4	13

Looking at those stats, the sheer chasm between the two drivers is laid bare. Must say it was larger than I imagined. Hamilton’s average points (per finish, so discounting the DNF) is between a 1^st and 2^nd place. That’s unbeatable. Bottas’ equivalent stat is between a 3^rd and 4^th, which isn’t bad by any stretch but is only two-thirds what Hamilton achieved. Indeed, by the end of the 14^th race (Italy), exactly two-thirds through the season, Hamilton had 256 points, exceeding Bottas’ final tally.

It’s worth noting Bottas had some bad luck, occasionally being hit by others, and the debris in Baku robbed him of a certain victory, replacing a 25 point haul with 0. There’s quite the gulf, though, between the two. I do wonder if Mercedes will be saying goodbye to Bottas fairly soon.

[After writing this, I happened to comment on Twitter about it and a polite stranger (they do exist, even on Twitter) indicated he and a friend had worked out Bottas had lost circa 80 points through misfortune in the first half of the season. And that the second DNF was a similar failure that occurred when he was leading. That’s more than I would’ve guessed, and is a mitigating factor, but doesn’t make up for a weak second half of the year].

Ferrari

	Vettel	Raikkonen
Points	320	251
Points finishes	20	17
Pointless finishes	0	0
DNFs	1	4
Points per finish (average)	16	14.76

This is a bit closer than one might think, largely because Raikkonen suffered worse reliability. The Finn had a pretty good year, including his first win for some time, and an impressive string of podium finishes (12, including a run of 5 consecutive in the second quarter). That said, Vettel’s own DNF was self-inflicted, throwing away 25 points for 0 in Germany. The average for the German was just better than a 3^rd place, and the Finn’s was a tiny margin worse than 3^rd place. With an equal DNF rate, Raikkonen would’ve had about 295 points.

Pretty evenly matched overall, although Vettel did have the edge.

Red Bull

	Ricciardo	Verstappen
Points	170	249
Points finishes	13	17
Pointless finishes	0	0
DNFs	8	4
Points per finish (average)	13.08	14.65

It’s easy to ascribe the vast chasm between Ricciardo and Verstappen down to DNFs. And, to a large extent, that’s true. It’s worth noting almost all of Ricciardo’s DNFs were down to bad reliability, whereas most of Verstappen’s were down to reckless driving early in the season. However, the Dutchman got himself together mentally and by the latter half of the season was driving out of his skin (one might argue the Ocon collision was a 50/50 incident or even Verstappen’s fault, but personally I’d blame the Frenchman). The points per finish difference is small, but a little larger than the Ferrari difference, perhaps counterintuitively. Both scored an average of between a 3^rd and a 4^th, with Verstappen a small but significant step ahead of Ricciardo.

Force India

	Perez	Ocon
Points	62	49
Points finishes	12	10
Pointless finishes	7	6
DNFs	2	5
Points per finish (average)	3.26	3.06

And so we leave the heady heights of the chaps who always score if they finish and move into the mortal realm. The very evenly matched Perez/Ocon partnership remained as tight as ever. The only significant difference was the DNF rate, minimal for Perez and middling for Ocon. Taking that into account, the gap between them on average points was tiny, just 0.2 (as an aside, I initially mistakenly only included points finishes, the gap of which was almost the same – 0.27). Closely matched, fast, consistent, and (mostly) without the clattering on-track melodrama of earlier times, Force India had a great lineup, and it’s a shame Ocon’s taking a forced sabbatical. He’s definitely good enough to return to the sport.

Renault

	Sainz	Hulkenberg
Points	53	69
Points finishes	13	11
Pointless finishes	6	3
DNFs	2	7
Points per finish (average)	2.79	4.93

I rate both Sainz and Hulkenberg, and was intrigued to see how the pairing would match up. Got to be said the German had far the better season. Despite 7 DNFs to the Spaniard’s 2, he still finished significantly ahead on points, and with an average points-per-finish 2.14 higher (given the big teams dominated the top positions, that’s quite significant). Next year, Hulkenberg versus Ricciardo could be rather good, and it’s a tasty lineup for Renault, who really need to narrow the gap to the top chaps. As a proportion, Hulkenberg had a better points-per-finish tally over his team mate than Hamilton (Bottas scored about two-thirds the Briton’s average, Sainz 56% of Hulkenberg’s). A strong performance indeed from the German.

Williams

	Sirotkin	Stroll
Points	1	6
Points finishes	1	2
Pointless finishes	17	16
DNFs	3	3
Points per finish (average)	0.06	0.33

Bit difficult to assess much as the Williams this year was an absolute dog of a car. I think Sirotkin is a bit underrated. Calm, hard-working, commentary claimed he would often not complain about problems if they couldn’t be fixed and gave good feedback. Stroll started well at many races, but, fundamentally, neither had a car capable of anything other than rare points finishes. Hopefully next year’s car will be an order of magnitude better.

Haas

	Grosjean	Magnussen
Points	37	56
Points finishes	7	11
Pointless finishes	8	8
DNFs	6	2
Points per finish (average)	2.47	2.95

Must admit I was slightly surprised by this. Magnussen was very reliable (I forget his second DNF, but the first was due to the double pit stop horror in Oz). Grosjean had a scratty start to the season, but did improve markedly thereafter. The Dane had a better finishing record, more points overall and a 0.48 better points-per-finish average. Reasonably close, and given they were Renault’s closest rival, puts into perspective Hulkenberg’s dominant performance over the year.

McLaren

	Alonso	Vandoorne
Points	50	12
Points finishes	9	4
Pointless finishes	5	14
DNFs	7	3
Points per finish (average)	3.57	0.67

We had some tight battles in 2018. This wasn’t one of them.

Vandoorne averaged, per finish, points less than 19% of Alonso’s average. The most dominant performance by miles. The Spaniard had more than quadruple the Belgian’s raw points tally, and that’s with more than double the DNF rate. Sheer dominance from Alonso. Vandoorne did show flashes of speed, but didn’t seem in the same league as his illustrious team mate (whose points per finish average is higher than everyone in the midfield except Hulkenberg).

Sauber

	Ericsson	Leclerc
Points	9	39
Points finishes	6	10
Pointless finishes	11	5
DNFs	4	6
Points per finish (average)	0.53	2.6

Almost as crushing as Alonso’s dominance on both raw points and the average per finish (Ericsson’s being just over 20% of Leclerc’s), this was a fantastic performance by the highly rated Monegasque. There’s almost a precise inversion of the points and pointless finishes, with Leclerc scoring at two-thirds of races he finished and Ericsson only managing to do so at just over a third. That may be the real story. Ericsson was sometimes faster than Leclerc, but not often. He also didn’t screw up much or drive like a Magnussen, but, ultimately, the Swede just wasn’t as fast as the Monegasque.

Toro Rosso

	Gasly	Hartley
Points	29	4
Points finishes	5	3
Pointless finishes	11	11
DNFs	5	7
Points per finish (average)	1.81	0.29

Hartley averaged about 16% of Gasly’s points-per-finish. That’s an even larger margin than Alonso achieved over Vandoorne, or Leclerc over Ericsson although the raw points difference was only 25 (38 for Alonso/Vandoorne). Gasly had a couple of very good results, including an early 4^th in Bahrain, and Hartley often seemed to end up barely out of the points. Nevertheless, that’s a large margin overall. I do wonder how much of that was down to some bad luck for Hartley. Gasly’s a better driver but the margin’s a bit heftier than I imagined it would be (a little bit like Sainz against Hulkenberg).

Note: as I wrote this, Alexander Albon was announced as Kvyat’s team mate for next year. The Thai-Briton (I believe he’s dual national and races under the Thai flag) was a bit off my radar but apparently people who pay attention knew he was coming.

Summary

Hope you enjoyed the stats. Interesting that amongst the top three teams, two were pretty tight, and Hamilton beat Bottas by a significantly wider margin (although Bottas did have some misfortune). Also worth noting the remarkable stat that there wasn’t a single pointless finish from the top six. All of them either scored or had a DNF at every single race.

Amongst the midfield, Force India was ultra-competitive, and Haas was almost as close, but every other team had a dominant driver, some of them by a very significant margin.

Next year seems to have more driver churn than I can remember happening before. Mildly amused Mercedes bleated about Ocon not getting a spot when they’re one of only two teams (Haas, I believe, being the other) to have an unchanged driver lineup. Young, talented drivers join two top teams, with Leclerc to Ferrari and Gasly to Red Bull.

Force India (which may well be renamed but seems likely to retain its pink livery) and Renault retain one driver each, with McLaren, Williams, Toro Rosso, and Sauber all having total changes. Eight drivers, by my reckoning, stay where they are, and 12 either enter the sport or switch teams.

In the future, I’ll have a look at those head-to-heads and ponder how things might go.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more F1 thoughts and news.

Morris Dancer