When it comes to overall Value in the 2014 season an interesting picture has developed through the season. With all the scores in and my model perfected (for this year at least) the following story emerges.
2014 Value Chart
What we are looking at here is the seasons data for each team that has been crunched into a bespoke Value Coefficient. The green bars show the minimum and maximum figures for the season, the lower the figure the better for a team. This coefficient reflects team performance for budget spent.
The Red Line levels off the best value Mercedes put in for the year as the winning team. As you can see despite winning they did not produce the best value but it was close.
In addition to the hard figures the green bars also show the range/spread of Value over the season. It follows that the smaller the spread the better the Value is for the team overall.
I have put 3 blue circles on the chart to draw you to the following:
- Red Bull did not put in the best Value across the season, but their spread was the narrowest by some margin. This suggests that the team was performing as best it could. The higher figure could be accounted for by their lack of power in the PU?
- Mercedes and Williams had the same impressive (not as small as Red Bull) spread, but Mercedes just edged ahead of Williams. This just does not feel right. It makes William’s result all the more impressive and the Mercedes result can only be due to the odd team behaviour through the season. It is all credit to Toto Wolf and Nikki Lauder that it was not worse.
- McLaren and Force India were out in front at 1 and 2 in terms of Value, but they had much bigger spreads which feels about right.