Numbers, numbers! So many of them and yet they are critical to good decision making least of all in F1 as Mercedes found out In Monaco. However despite the personal disappointment for Hamilton, this was still a 1,3 for Mercedes. As we will see later in the Performance and Value analysis, the result further reinforces their position in the 2015 competition.
Another story that has been bubbling in the wake of Monaco were some Ferrari comments around Raikonnen and his qualifying record. As you can see in the view below I am not sure the final analysis is either that complicated or that serious for him. The chart clearly shows that the balance of points between the two Ferrari drivers is not that great and should current form prevail into the season then parity would be achieved. What is clear from the chart is that the drivers collectively needs get more points!
Finally, you may notice that within this blog there are two charts adjacent to each other for Performance and Value that look similar. The second of which is my new experimental one which is database in construction rather than a static graphic and there is currently some interaction (you can hover over the chart and a tooltip reads out the values race by race). I will be phasing out the old style charts over the next few weeks and replacing them with the new design thus saving enormous amounts of time after every race.
Performance
In many ways, despite the Monaco headlines it changed very little for the teams in terms of the overall competition. What was interesting the see were some small signs of teams in the middle order starting their own level of competition. We have to be careful to read too much into the race results themselves and what they feed into the overall picture for the season though.
As you can see from the charts you could be forgiven for thinking that were Red Bull and Williams to continue the trend then they could be fighting it out for 3rd very soon. This needs to be tempered by knowledge that Williams have a car that was known to be weak on a slow track and future penalties for Red Bull on engines. What was clear though was that Red Bull as a team are still strong and will seize and capitalise on initiative when it is presented. Canada will confirm the strategic position for these two teams. Finally it was great to see Button break the seal on McLaren’s season. This had some interesting effects on Value as you will see in the next section.
Value
The big headline here is that Button’s performance for McLaren has lifted them out of last place to be replaced by Marrusia, and just look at the effect that one result had! I hope all are taking note!
Red Bull can now be seen cutting through the middle field only held up by their huge budget! And there are signs that Williams may be fading in favour of Ferrari for 2nd spot.
Conclusion
It’s all about Canada now to determine how 3rd place in the constructors competition is going to play out:
- Is Red Bull going to continue its internal struggle with its engine supplier and will they produce a car that can compete on a fast circuit?
- Can Williams as a team place their fast cars in the points?
- Will Button continue to put some points on the board for McLaren?