2019 F1 season: ALL THE LAPS! (Part 3)

The third and (perhaps) final post of the ALL THE LAPS series is here. I’ve decided to take a look at all the laps that teammates had in common in order to determine who was the fastest throughout the season. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Methodology

I once again used the dataset that was the base of the previous two posts. All the laps were filtered to remove the outliers, including laps done when the safety car was out, pit stops, among other abnormal laps.

Only the laps in which both drivers were on the track at the same time were considered for this analysis. This means that laps when a driver was in the pits, while the other was on track, were filtered out. The same process was done for laps when one driver retired while the other continued. Basically, only laps in common for both drivers were considered for the analysis.

When I talk about laps I do mean individual laps. Lap 5 doesn’t mean that all the fifth laps were aggregated into a single group. In fact, there is no real lap 5. What we actually have is a lap 5 – Australia, lap 5 – Bahrain, lap 5 – China, etc. If both drivers were racing on lap 5 in Australia, then a winner was determined for that group. If only one driver was racing during that lap 5 in Australia, then the lap was removed from the analysis. The process was repeated for every lap done throughout the season.

The analysis is quite simple. The data is split into 10 groups, one group per each team. Laps in which only one driver was on track were removed, leaving only the laps when both drivers were on the track at the same time. The driver who was the fastest during each one of those laps was considered the winner. All the “winning” laps were aggregated and the delta between his lap and the loser’s driver lap was calculated. The laps were then summarized in the plot that you see above (and below).

Take for example Alfa Romeo. The big 583 number represent the number of laps when Kimi Raikkonen was faster than Giovinazzi during a lap in common. The dots represent each one of those laps, while the position of those dots represent the margin of victory over each one of those laps. The further the dot is to the left, the faster Kimi was than Giovinazzi in that particular lap.

The same process is repeated for every driver who participated in the 2019 Formula 1 season.

Number of “winning” laps

The drivers from the following three teams were fairly even in this first analysis: Ferrari, Haas, McLaren and Renault. Regarding the Scuderia, Sebastian Vettel was faster on 51 laps more than Charles Leclerc. At Haas, Romain Grosjean beat Kevin Magnussen by 60 laps. At Renault, Daniel Ricciardo beat Nico Hulkenberg by 61 laps, while at McLaren Carlos Sainz got the advantage over Lando Norris by 63 laps.

The highest difference between teammates was found, as you expected, at Williams. George Russell beat Robert Kubica 580 to 265 laps, a difference of a staggering 315 laps. The second’highest difference was found at Racing Point, with Sergio Perez having a 196 laps advantage over the Canadian Lance Stroll. The difference between drivers at Alfa Romeo was quite big as well, with Kimi Raikkonen beating Antonio Giovinazzi by a delta of 194 laps.

What about Red Bull and Toro Rosso? Those two teams are special cases. For Red Bull, we can only compare Verstappen’s performance with the sum of Albon plus Gasly’s performance. For Toro Rosso, the total of Daniil Kvyat’s laps would be compared to the sum of Albon and Gasly’s laps. Regarding the Austrian team, Max Verstappen was in total control against both of his teammates. In total, Max was faster than his teammate in 729 laps and was slower in only 227 laps. The difference? A massive 502 laps.

At Toro Rosso, the fight was much closer. Kvyat beat his teammate on 527 laps but was slower in 441 laps. This means that the overall delta was of 86 laps.

“Winning” laps summary

We already know which driver won more laps than his teammate, but how much was the time difference between them? We can aggregate the accumulated time in a simple bar chart in order to see the results.

Clearly, winning more laps has an effect on the accumulated time advantage. There is a single exception though, Ricciardo vs Hulkenberg. The Aussie was faster than Nico by a margin of 61 laps, but the accumulated time advantage is in the German’s favour. How could this be? Hulkenberg was faster than Ricciardo in those laps, managing to get a slight but significant time advantage.

Another way of looking at the results is by obtaining the difference between the accumulated time of both drivers. The resulting chart shows only the time advantage gained throughout the season for the driver who came out on top.

The driver who gained the most advantage was Max Verstappen, accumulating over 600 seconds over his teammates in laps in common. George Russell comes in second place, outpacing Kubica by over 400 seconds, with Kimi Raikkonen taking third place with an advantage of almost 300 seconds over Antonio Giovinazzi.

Lewis Hamilton and Checo Perez both also had healthy leads over their respective teammates, with Daniil Kvyat also managing to separate himself from Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly

I believe the total time advantage in laps in common is the most important result, but what about the advantage on a per lap basis?

First, let’s talk about the correct way of interpreting the results. Once again, we’ll use Alfa Romeo as an example. The chart shows that Kimi had a 1-second advantage per lap on average after considering the 583 laps in which he was faster than Antonio. The Italian on the other hand, had, on average, a 0.8 second per lap lead over Kimi, that after considering only the 389 laps in which he was faster than the Finn. Overall, Kimi was still faster on a per lap analysis than Giovinazzi, by a margin of 0.2 seconds per lap.

The results are mostly consistent with the total accumulated advantage previously shown, but once again, we have a couple of exceptions. First, we have KMag and Romain Grosjean. While Grosjean had an advantage in total winning laps, and an advantage in total accumulated time, he was outpaced by the Dane on a per lap basis. Meaning? On a per common lap basis, KMag was faster than Grosjean, but over the season, Grosjean accumulated a higher time advantage since he outpaced KMag on more laps.

Something similar happens with the McLaren drivers. Lando Norris was slightly faster than Carlos Sainz on a lap per lap basis, but  was outpaced in 63 laps in common by the Spaniard driver.

Final remarks

Sorry for taking too long to write again. With the end of the year I took the time to think about the future and plan some new ideas for the site. I have been working on a project that I think you guys will like.

In any case, I hope that you have enjoyed this article. If you did, let me know. Thank you for taking the time to read this article, and please, help me out by sharing my site with your friends and people who may enjoy this type of content.