2019 French GP: Race pace (Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull)
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Mercedes dominated with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas taking the top two positions in France. How did Charles Leclerc, Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen, and especially Pierre Gasly, did in the Circuit Paul Ricard? Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Lewis was untouchable during the race. He had the best average lap time time of all the drivers, a 1:35.101, and did the second best lap of the race, a 1:32.764. Is that second fastest lap not that impressive? Think again. Sebastian managed to do a 1:32.740 in lap 53 with a new set of soft tires, while Lewis was only 24 thousands of a second slower with a 29 laps old used set of hard tires. Incredible race from the Britishman.
Valtteri Bottas was surprisingly under pressure at the end of the race. It seems like Charles managed to save the tires better for the last laps, but still, the Finn took home a second place position. His average lap time of 1:35.392 was almost 3 tenths slower than Lewis’ time, and he was only faster on average than Charles by 3 thousands of a second.
Charles Leclerc had an average of 1:35.395 per lap. The Monegasque was faster than Sebastian for most of the weekend, and with a an extra lap or two, he would have most likely taken second place in France. His best lap time, a 1:33.828 was over a second slower than the fastest lap of the race, but the truth is that he never tried to challenge for the extra point award.
Sebastian Vettel had a difficult start, and lost an important amount of time fighting the McLarens. You can clearly see in the plot above which laps were slower due to his fight for position. His average lap time of 1:35.662 was 267 thousands of a second slower than his teammate’s time, and 561 thousands of a second slower than Lewis’ time.
Max Verstappen had a troublesome race. He struggled with car issues, and while he never had the opportunity to challenge for the podium positions, his 4th place was never in real danger. Max’s average lap time of 1:35.678 was only slower than Vettel’s by 16 thousands of a second. The Red Bull driver keeps showing his incredible consistency, while the Austrian team demonstrated once again that they are experts in building strong race cars.
Pierre Gasly continues a miserable streak with his new team. His average lap time of 1:37.104 was slower than Max’s time by 1.426 seconds. How far was his time from the best average lap time you say? An incredible 2.003 seconds per lap slower. The Frenchman has demonstrated no pace whatsoever with Red Bull, and his performances continue to be unacceptable for a driver in his position.
Final remarks
Mercedes was great, yes, but Lewis was supreme in France. Bottas did a great job, but Ferrari has reasons to smile. Charles Leclerc was a couple of laps away from a second position, and will take a minor moral victory home.
Sebastian Vettel never found the rhythm at the Circuit Paul Ricard, and will be looking to forget the last couple of weekends quite soon.
Red Bull is in a difficult position. Max keeps getting better and better. His consistency is second to none, and his increasing maturity has turned him into a driver to be feared. Gasly, however, is nowhere to be seen. His one lap pace, as well as his race pace, are not acceptable, and it seems increasingly likely that he will be a part of the Red Bull rejects fairly soon.
If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends, and please, let me know what you think about it in the comments below.
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Nice data!
I get that the data points are coded first tyre set/second set – mihgt be good to add the data of what the tyres actually were (hard/med/soft)
Thanks Brad. I had it like that, but removed it to increase the vertical space of the plot. I do some experimentation and will see how to better implement that legend next time.
This is a great site. Your data visualization and analysis are on point, eye-opening, and easy to follow. I haven’t read all the articles yet but I urge you to keep up the good work.
Thank you Danny, I appreciate the nice comment.
I love these plots, and, in general, what you’re doing with this site! If you don’t mind sharing, what software are you using to generate these? Proprietary? matplotlib? Something else?
As a separate comment: I wonder if it might be possible to tell the story of the evolution of the lap times, e.g., by connecting the lap numbers by a line. In other words, imagine connecting the dots for Lap 1 and Lap 2 with a line, and then a line from Lap 2 to Lap 3, etc. (It could become really busy, I understand…)
Another idea: turn this into a short animation (an animated GIF?) that adds the dots for one lap at a time, i.e., start with the dot for Lap 1, then add the dot for Lap 2, etc. Maybe also show the current average lap time, i.e., update that number lap by lap…
Finally: I wonder if it would make sense to calculate average lap times per stint, i.e., “Lewis’s average lap time on medium tires was X, and it then became Y on the hard tires, for an overall of Z.” (but don’t say that in words — include it in the graphic somehow).
Finally (and I realize this is probably a bit ambitious), I wonder if it would be possible to update this stuff live during the race, and to live stream it?!?
I know, it sounds a little over-the-top difficult, but is it really? You’d need to figure out a way to get the data live, and then just render it live into an H.264 video stream (there are lots of open source libraries for this), and then feed that to a streaming service like YouTube.
This is something that while it could be technically feasible, I would not consider it appropriate. The main reason is that I am quite sure that Liberty Media would send me a copyright strike right away. Formula 1 already has a streaming service, which is not free, and I have no doubts that they would just take down the stream pretty quickly.
The idea is good, and I am sure that it could be a fun project, but copyright laws are pretty strict, and YouTube terms of service are even worse.
Thanks for taking the time to check my website, have a nice day.
Thanks for the nice comments. I will answer your questions more or less in order.
1. I use R to make my graphs.
2. Connecting the dots would just make a big mess. There’s so much information you can pack in a plot before it starts getting too overwhelming to see. I am planning on adding something else to the next race pace chart that will be coming after this weekend. I think that it will help to accomplish what you are saying.
3. Animations are possible, but there is not much to gain from doing it, at least not for this particular analysis. The reason is that as laps go on, times will go down. For 99% of the laps, you would just see dots appearing very close to the previous ones.
4. Average laps per stint is something that I think makes sense, and that I have considered doing. The reason behind not implementing that particular metric so far is that it can be misleading. When I think about doing a certain analysis, I first have to decide what is the purpose of it, and then if the purpose is fulfilled by whatever I am doing with the actual graphics. The main purpose of this particular analysis, is to compare the race pace between all drivers, all while showing the distribution of the lap times. In a particular race, as long as all drivers have done the same amount of laps, you can compare the race pace between all drivers. Getting the average time for let’s say, stint 1 (soft tires) and stint 2 (hard tires), would be informative, but you would not be able to really compare the average stint time between drivers. Why not? Well, a driver may go for a soft-hard strategy, and another one go for a hard-soft strategy. You cannot compare their numbers, even if they are using the same tires. Same thing happens if the drivers stop in different laps. A driver who stopped for new tires in lap 10, and then went until the end of the race with them, would have to manage tires a lot differently than a driver who stopped in lap 30.