How many points will win the 2012 WDC?

Apologies if the format is dodgy, I'm not used to setting polls!

In light of the obvious 'Who will win it threads' and many fans supporting many of the lead drivers giving their own predictions and number crunching, I have a simple question:

How many points do you think will be needed to win the title?
I'm thinking in the region of 260-280, as in 2010 under 19 races 256 was enough, so you extend that to 20 races and its almost 270. Being a Vettel supporter, I see Alonso as the target now and if he scores at about 12pts/race (1 poor result to come and 5 pretty good ones i think) its another 72 points, taking him to 266, so Vettel would then need 102 from 6 races at 17pts/race

Just keen to see what everyone else thinks.

Apologies if the format is dodgy, I'm not used to setting polls!

In light of the obvious 'Who will win it threads' and many fans supporting many of the lead drivers giving their own predictions and number crunching, I have a simple question:

How many points do you think will be needed to win the title?
I'm thinking in the region of 260-280, as in 2010 under 19 races 256 was enough, so you extend that to 20 races and its almost 270. Being a Vettel supporter, I see Alonso as the target now and if he scores at about 12pts/race (1 poor result to come and 5 pretty good ones i think) its another 72 points, taking him to 266, so Vettel would then need 102 from 6 races at 17pts/race

Just keen to see what everyone else thinks.

I can see Alonso scoring between 80 and 90 and get away with it.


So between 270 and 280.

Hamilton will have to clean to beat such a number, but Vettel will beat him once and Button too.

I don't think Vettel will have any machinery advantage except for maybe at Abu Dhabi or Brazil - he'll win once but finish around 270. Hamilton too.

I think 268 will be enough.

I prognose:

FA 260
LH 240
SV 225
KR 200
JB 195
MW 180

Is the question:

a. how many points will the eventual WDC have? or

b. how many points will be enough to win the WDC (ie 2nd place driver points + 1)?

(with apologies if this is pedantic! I just figured you could interpret it either way and different people voting on different approaches would skew the results)

My prediction;

FA 300 plus
SV 0 Banned following a second investigation into his heinous actions at Monza
LH 0 Disqualified for crimes against fashion
KR 0 Banned for being an Ex Ferrari driver
JB 0 Banned for whining about, well, everything
MW 0 Disqualified for following of Lance Armstrong on Twitter
MSC 0 Drummed out of F1 for not being young anymore

What do I win?

My prediction:

Vettel 250
Alonso 249
Hamilton 248

I say 260 to 269.

If Alonso has a steady but unspectacular end to the season (if, as seems possible, the Ferrari is slower than the McLaren but able to be on a par with Red Bull and Lotus on a good day) then he should comfortably average 10 to 12 points per race without needing to take any big risks. This would see him finish on 254 to 266 points.

Hamilton would need an absolutely dream end to the season to match this points finish. Even if McLaren can maintain the advantage they seem to have had over the past four races and his reliability is perfect, three wins, a second place and two third places would see him finish on 268.

There's been nothing to suggest that Red Bull are about to dominate the final stretch of the season, so I think Vettel's best case scenario might be something like 100 points (a win, two seconds, two thirds and a fourth would give him 103) to leave him on 265.

Raikkonen won't be troubling these kind of numbers unless the Lotus suddenly looks even better than it did at the most impressive moments of this season and I don't think anyone's seriously questioning whether Button and Webber are in the hunt for the title.

In other words, anything over 250 for Alonso should leave him within grabbing distance of the title, anything over 265 would pretty much guarantee him his third WDC.

270 - 279

Last year Alonso finished with 257 points, after 14th race situation was like:
Fernando Alonso 184
after that he scored following positions 2nd, 5th, 3rd, 2nd, 4th.
This year after 14th round:
Fernando Alonso 194
so 10 points advantage, one more race to go, and also expect he will win one maybe two races.
Finally prediction: WDC around 260-280, voted 260-269.

Edited by ArkZ, 25 September 2012 - 17:12.

This is the part where it starts to get stressful: it's like your favorite driver having a quota to complete.

This will kill me, probably.

I say 260 to 269.

If Alonso has a steady but unspectacular end to the season (if, as seems possible, the Ferrari is slower than the McLaren but able to be on a par with Red Bull and Lotus on a good day) then he should comfortably average 10 to 12 points per race without needing to take any big risks. This would see him finish on 254 to 266 points.

Hamilton would need an absolutely dream end to the season to match this points finish. Even if McLaren can maintain the advantage they seem to have had over the past four races and his reliability is perfect, three wins, a second place and two third places would see him finish on 268.

There's been nothing to suggest that Red Bull are about to dominate the final stretch of the season, so I think Vettel's best case scenario might be something like 100 points (a win, two seconds, two thirds and a fourth would give him 103) to leave him on 265.

Raikkonen won't be troubling these kind of numbers unless the Lotus suddenly looks even better than it did at the most impressive moments of this season and I don't think anyone's seriously questioning whether Button and Webber are in the hunt for the title.

In other words, anything over 250 for Alonso should leave him within grabbing distance of the title, anything over 265 would pretty much guarantee him his third WDC.

I agree with this.

If Alonso has a great end of the season, he's going to go beyond 270, but I'm almost sure nobody else is going to do that and I don't really think he's going to have such a great end to the season either. I feel like Vettel and Hamilton are heading towards something close to 260. In any case, I feel like 268 points is definitely going to be enough - in other words, the second placed guy is going to have 267 points at best.

A single point will do.

Vettel by 1.

Edited by Sakae, 25 September 2012 - 20:01.

A single point will do.

Vettel by 1.

Actually, a tie in points will do, if you have more wins.

Actually, a tie in points will do, if you have more wins.;)

Of course, but with Seb's luck, Alonso will protest, Button will request clarification, and Seb will get drive-through. One point is more clearly defined.

Alonso with 256 points for his 3rd world championship.

I thought that before Spa, Alonso would be WDC if he had 3rd place finishes in all the remaining races (including Spa). Unfortunately, I don't have the time today to translate this into numbers.

250 to 260, assuming Vettel wins 2 races with a thrird places plus couple of top 6 finishes. I dont see Vettel winning all the races, I dont see him on podium on every race.
Mclaren will be taking points away from Seb.

Edited by ViMaMo, 26 September 2012 - 06:36.

Is the question:

a. how many points will the eventual WDC have? or

b. how many points will be enough to win the WDC (ie 2nd place driver points + 1)?

(with apologies if this is pedantic! I just figured you could interpret it either way and different people voting on different approaches would skew the results)

I was going to ask the same question. I don't think there will necessarily be much difference between the two, though. Certainly not as big as the current lead in the WDC.

260-269.

Going by a couple of basic calculations. The extremely unlikely result of Button winning every race would give him 269 points. If Alonso keeps scoring at the rate he has so far this year, he'll have about 277. So it seems reasonable to guess that the eventual champion will have something in the region of 270-279 points.

i said in the other thread that if Alonso repeats his results of 2011 then he would gain 88 points in the final 6 races.

now, that would take him to 282 points. He has got a better car this year, which is being constantly developed. I don't think the winner, whoever they be will need that many points, but I would day that should be the target.

My prediction;

FA 300 plus
SV 0 Banned following a second investigation into his heinous actions at Monza
LH 0 Disqualified for crimes against fashion
KR 0 Banned for being an Ex Ferrari driver
JB 0 Banned for whining about, well, everything
MW 0 Disqualified for following of Lance Armstrong on Twitter
MSC 0 Drummed out of F1 for not being young anymore

What do I win?

Alonso also follow Lance Armstrong on twitter, he should be disqualified by your own rules too

Edited by kosmos, 26 September 2012 - 13:21.

El_Abuelo on a Spanish forum has done some calculations:

This season..
Point per race sin Australia 2012
Average since Australia
1 ALONSO 13.86
2 VETTEL 11.79
3 RAIKKONEN 10.64
4 HAMILTON 10.14
5 WEBBER 9.43
6 BUTTON 8.50

This average includes a lot of DNF´s of Alonso´s rivals, and it´s unlikely to happen so often from now on, so...
What would be the average points per race for each driver if don´t include races in which any of the main title contenders did abandon the race?

This would be the result:
Ham 103 14,7
Alo 93 13,3
Vet 75 10,7
Web 71 10,1
Kim 63 9,0
But 54 7,7


If we keep this average until the end of the season..

F. ALONSO would sum up 80pts total 274
L. HAMILTON would sum up 88 total 230
S. VETTEL would sum up 64 total 229
K. RAIKKONEN would sum up 54 total 203
M. WEBBER would sum up 61 total 193
J. BUTTON would sum up 46 total 165

I think it´s interesting in this thread

Original calculation...

One thing though, the closer we get to the end of the season, higher are the chances of an engine failure, for any team.

Edited by Ravenak, 26 September 2012 - 13:32.

Original calculation...

One thing though, the closer we get to the end of the season, higher are the chances of an engine failure, for any team.

Exactly. Ferrari have only used 6 engines, as has Lotus. Mclaren have used 7 engines. Red bull have also used 6 engines. http://www.vivaf1.com/reliability.php

I'll go for 260-269.

My prediction:

Vettel 250
Alonso 249
Hamilton 248

Nice one

My prediction:

Alonso 277
Vettel 271
Hamilton 211
Raikkonen 199

Edited by aditya-now, 26 September 2012 - 16:45.

It totally depends if the bad luck continues for some drivers or not. Alonso, Vettel and Hamiton have all had a heathy dose of bad luck this season so far. I still think that it is a three horse race.

Exactly. Ferrari have only used 6 engines, as has Lotus. Mclaren have used 7 engines. Red bull have also used 6 engines. http://www.vivaf1.com/reliability.php

One interesting fact I got from engine usage:

Not only Alonso and Massa, but also Perez, Riccardo and JEV are on the same engine cycle - the lowest engine consumption on the grid. Of the Ferrari-powered cars, only Koba-san has used 1 extra engine. I guess Ferrari is probably better than Merc and Renault for engine power loss over multiple GPs. None of the 5 actually took a new engine in Canada, which usually is a engine-killer, almost at par with Spa and Monza.