I've been wondering if there's a better way to evaluate how drivers have done throughout their careers against their teammates. Points are obviously very misleading, as reliability has a huge bearing, and points are often meaningless for the drivers in the low to mid-field teams. So in an attempt to make a better comparison, I've put together the following statistic for the 2007 drivers: Number of times each current driver has beaten his teammate when they have both finished the race.
I'm hoping that by making the comparison this way, it will help to limit the effect of reliability and of driver accidents/collisions. If two teammates both finished a race, then there's a reasonable chance that the driver who crossed the line first had a legitimately better race pace. Of course, there could be still many other factors at play, which I wasn't even going to mention due to their obviousness, but I'm sure if I don't then there'll be at least a few of you who will get on my case. The statistic obviously doesn't cater for reliability problems when drivers are still able to complete the race (eg in qualifying), nor does it eliminate the influence of differences in the talent of teammates, team strategies, team orders, or other factors. The fact of the matter is that no statistic is perfect - but for now, this is as good as I know how to calculate, in a reasonable amount of time.
The table below has the following columns: Driver, "Wins" against teammates when both have finished a race, "Losses" against teammates when both have finished a race, percentage of "Wins". The table is sorted by percentage.
The results are from races from the beginning of the 2000 season up to and including Turkey of this year. If there's interest in me going back further then I can do so, but I've only started the comparison at 2000 as I haven't yet had time to calculate for years in the 20th century.
So, for example, since 2000, Alonso has had 54 races where both he and his teammate have finished. Of these 54, he has beaten his teammate 40 times and been beaten by his teammate 14 times. Hope that helps to make the numbers a bit clear.
In addition to the 2007 drivers, I've also calculated the stat for Michael Schumacher and for Montoya, just because I was curious what the numbers would look like for them.
Again, take these numbers for what they're worth. The intention isn't to fairly rank all drivers on the grid against each other - there's simply no fair way to do that, until all drivers are driving the same car. The intention is only to rank how drivers have fared against their teammates over the years.
It's taken me a while to put these numbers together, so hopefully at least some of you find them interesting. Enjoy!
[B]Driver W L %[/B] Mark Webber 31 4 88.6% Michael Schumacher 68 18 79.1% Fernando Alonso 40 14 74.1% Kimi Räikkonen 32 16 66.7% Nick Heidfeld 33 18 64.7% Jarno Trulli 42 24 63.6% Juan Pablo Montoya 32 19 62.7% Jenson Button 41 27 60.3% Vitantonio Liuzzi 9 6 60.0% Christijan Albers 10 8 55.6% Heikki Kovalainen 6 5 54.5% Lewis Hamilton 6 6 50.0% Scott Speed 6 6 50.0% Adrian Sutil 2 2 50.0% Giancarlo Fisichella 38 38 50.0% Ralf Schumacher 33 35 48.5% Felipe Massa 27 31 46.6% Robert Kubica 6 8 42.9% Jacques Villeneuve 19 26 42.2% Nico Rosberg 5 7 41.7% David Coulthard 17 28 37.8% Alexander Wurz 6 10 37.5% Sakon Yamamoto 1 2 33.3% Takuma Sato 11 26 29.7% Rubens Barrichello 21 69 23.3% Anthony Davidson 1 5 16.7%
Edit: Fixed slight error in stats. Added Villeneuve.