Tag Archives: Alonso

Post Bahrain Analysis

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I am always cautious to say anything to definitive before the Spain event.  The numbers season on season suggest that that is when the technology and the teams start to settle.  On the assumption that no one is going to mess with qualifying further (who knows?) then it will remain the first analysis point.

However, it is an interesting season already and worthy of some comment.  This short blog will focus on:

  • Mercedes dominance
  • 2 car finishes
  • Haas Value
  • Red Bull’s hidden potential
  • young drivers and the musical chairs to come

Mercedes Dominance

Once again, and despite what various areas of the Press are predicting, Mercedes are dominating and by some margin.  There is a very good blog by JA here which matches my analysis with some interesting retro-analysis of the pre-season testing.  Save some massive engineering disasters in the remains of the season, Mercedes will clean up again.  If we want interest this year we will probably have to look in the 2nd and 3rd places of the Constructors Championship!  And interesting it will be.

2 Car Finishes

One of the reasons the competitive teams are finding it difficult to take the fight to Mercedes is that they have in the main not put 2 car finishes in.  Mercedes have put a lot of effort into reliability maybe even at the expense of performance if the Tifosi blogs are to be believed but it pays off as reliability is rewarded in the sport with huge points differences.

Haas Value

Looking at the Haas Value Analysis at only 2 races into the season shows you the power of their current form.  Minded also that they have only managed to bring one car home in each race too.  Imagine if this was repeated for 2 cars finishes going forwards?  As you can see in the overall Value chart, they are just piping Mercedes to 1st Place in the Value stakes already.

Red Bull Hidden Potential

I am not sure what Red Bull have done over the winter but they are the team to watch for 2nd place, never mind Ferrari!  Clearly with that we need to listen to the mood music for Ricciardo moving to another team maybe?  Again with my assessment head on I would not be surprised to Ricciardo moving to Ferrari next year, it is a predictable casting decision.

Young Drivers and the musical chairs to come

Which nicely moves us into the melee that will hit the sport from the early summer onwards, although there are hints in the press it is already starting.

If you assume that Raikkonen is retiring (not that mad an idea), then a whole cascade of events are possible.  Here is a strawman view after 2 races for comments:

  • Ricciardo to Ferrari?
  • Vestappen to Red Bull to replace Ricciardo?

There are clearly some more permutations to think about outside of these teams:

  • will Button retire?
  • will Alonso?
  • who will replace them? Vandoorne?
  • will Rosberg stay at Mercedes?

 

Something Interesting was said…….

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Something unusual happened this week; somebody said something interesting and nothing much else was said.

Claire Williams said that this season was probably going to be interesting if nothing else because most drivers’ contracts were up for renewal in one shape or other this year.  I tried to do the research on this and amazingly the Internet was not great at delivering a collated set of data on this.  My last blog stated that we would be focusing on this aspect more this year so thank you Claire for the timely reminder.  If nothing else the fact that Nico Rosberg is up for review this year is an interest in itself!

Anyway I found some data which maybe a start so I will capture it here for reference as the season progresses.  The intruige will follow the season as we know until Spa/Monza when teams seems to go firm.  Well, except Wiliams of late, they seem to,have tied their plans down early and who can blame them on their budget!

So as far as Internet research goes the situation seems to be as follows:

Drivers Who Are In Final Year of Contract:

Raikonen

Rosberg

Button

Massa

Ricciardo

Bottas

Drivers Who Are Secure Beyond This Year:

Vettel – in year 2 of 3

Alonso – in year 2 of 3

Hamilton – in year 1 of 3

Hulkenburg- in year 1 of 2

This years main task is to predict who will fill the upcoming slot at:

  • Ferrari
  • Mercedes
  • McLaren
  • Red Bull
  • Williams (2 Slots)

and will Verstappen get an offer he can’t refuse?

So blind without data analysis or models of historic decision making I think the following will happen.  We will adjust it as the season and calculations are completed:

  • Button will retire (sadly)
  • Verstappen will be made an offer he cannot refuse by Ferrari
  • Raikonen will retire
  • Ricciardo to Mercedes
  • Bottas and Mass remain at Williams
  • Rosberg to Red Bull

Some 2014 Retro-Analysis going into 2016…..

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It would be easy in all the excitement this week to have overlooked a curious story in The Mirror.

Blink and you may have missed it in all the squabbling over Qualifying Formats.

It immediately reminded me of the purpose of the data analysis model here at this website, ie. to use the freely available data to better understand F1 Strategic Decision Making.  It is easy to get distracted with the easy tasks of taking the latest data, adding it to the machine learning model an produce some charts which make the model easier to understand whilst at the same time forget that the whole reason we are going to this bother is so we can use it to better understand/preempt F1 Team decisions.

Back in 2014 when this work was at its embryonic state, we wanted to concentrate first on establishing a solid Value model for the teams as a whole.  Without a Value model, it was going to be difficult to understand how the drivers contributed to the Value as a result of their efforts and thus how the Teams would retain/trade them.  Because of the skew of effort, we merely took a punt at the driver trading that was taking place based on experience and the primitive figures the Value model was producing at the time.  The curious thing when I saw this article was it backed up some of the hypotheses we were notionally running at the time.  The data and the observed Performance and thus Value of Alonso suggested he was on the move, the questions was where to?  We were not convinced that Mercedes would do a swap deal, although Hamilton despite being on winning form was not happy with the way things had been managed at times.  When you are an asset like Hamilton who would not be tempted by Ferrari if under that pressure?  It is of course interesting that this story has emerged now and from Alonso!

Focussing back on Team Strategy it was all credit to Totto Wolf and probably Niki Lauder more so that the drivers were mentored back to the Mercedes’ main effort, something other teams should take note of.

It has also given me pointers for this years work behind the scenes on this White Paper.  Building on the solid foundation of the Value model, we will now start looking at historic and current drivers contracts and associated commercial outcomes balanced against the Value model.  More to follow in later blogs.