Wednesday, August 29, 2012

F1 2012 Mid-Season Review - Qualifying Analysis

Some summary charts comparing qualifying performance across the teams for the first half of the 2012 Formula One season.

First up, a smoothed plot showing qualifying laptimes of both drivers in a team normalised against the overall best lap time in the session:
We  can also look at a smoothed plot showing qualifying laptimes of the best driver in each team normalised against the overall best lap time in the session:

How about a comparison of the raw speed (as measured by the speed trap) for each driver across each circuit? A nice spin-off of this chart is that it allows us to compare fastest speeds across circuits (though bear in mind the weather may also contribute...)
How about if we normalise those speeds compared to the fastest time set in the trap during qualifying in each race?
 We can also compare the normalised speeds across the races for each each driver by team:
Code used to generate these charts can be found here.
Comments, suggestions, interpretations etc appreciated via the comments... or grab the code and run some analyses yourself (if you do take this route, please blog the results and post a link back here in the comments:-)

5 comments:

  1. Only a suggestion, but I'd be tempted to change the colour of either Mercedes or McLaren in the top two figures because they're close to each other and very similar.

    The main things I'm getting from these is how tight the qualifying is (if we ignore HRT, Marussia, Caterham and Toro Rosso), especially from after the European GP.

    I love the top speed chart. Monaco doesn't half stand out.

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  2. @kpfssport Agreed re: colour; do you have any suggestions re: an appropriate palette?

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  3. I assume you're limited to those output colours you've already got. I'd keep Mercedes in silver (because I'm silly like that) and possibly swap the McLaren colour for the Marussia colour and vice versa.

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  4. @kpfssport I can do any colours you want...

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  5. Possibly McLaren as a green, that ought to stand out.

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