28 replies to this topic

[RB213]

Obviously for the top half of the field, ie the obviously faster cars - RBR, Fezza, Macca, Renault, Mercedes - finishing in front of your teammate is key to your 'perceived' quality in the field because of the points comparison at the end of the day

I'm not so sure that is the case for the lower half of the field...they usually have a poorer finishing record - thanks to the lack of funds and the incapability of constant development, and thus their finishing and starting positions can vastly differ

In your opinion what is the more important for a lower half driver given that most drivers debut in a team that is not in the top of the field; that he qualifies in front of his teammate or that he finishes in front of them?

For this season i draw on the example of the Force India team - as of right now Adrian Sutil is sitting on 4 times the points of his teammate Paul Di Resta (8 plays 2)....yet Paul has outqualified Adrian 86% of the time (6 to 1)...so who is the better long term driver?

In contrast - Sergio Perez has outqualified his teammate (Kamuiiiiiiiiiiiii) 4 to 2 yet has only scored 2 points in those races...he obviously only raced in 5 of those races, as he did not compete in Monaco - however in the five that he did race in, he only scored 25% of the points of his teammate (2 to 8) so which driver is the 'better' driver?

To throw into this discussion are these facts:

Ayrton Senna had 65 poles in his 162 career starts - a pole 40% of the time and 41 wins from those starts - a win 25% of the time

Michael Schumacher had 68 poles from 250 starts (before his highly forgettable comeback) for a pole 27% of the time - yet a win 36% of the time (91).....Autosport concluded that Ayrton was the number 1 driver of all time according to a survery of 217 current and former drivers

So what is more important for the lower half drivers of the grid? To outqualify or out-point your teammate?

Edited by RB213, 24 June 2011 - 15:43.

[Alfisti]

I have said it for years, judging drivers based on points outside of the top 2 or 3 cars on the grid is utterly useless. You can luck into one result and the other bloke has no ****ing chance of matching you. A fine example is Webber and Heidfeld in 05 where all the Heidfeld fans still claim he "beat" webber, Mark was clearly the faster guy and if not for a mix up from Williams in the pits at Monaco mark would have finished in front.

[D.M.N.]

Out Qualifying, as it shows raw speed if you outqualify someone consistently. Out Pointing someone, not really to be honest as lower teams can get points through fluke-like circumstances, for instance weather or lucky safety car.

I'm also not sure why you've proven your point about lower teams by giving Senna and Schumacher - neither were in lower teams for long periods of time.

Edited by D.M.N., 24 June 2011 - 15:48.

[MPea3]

I agree. While it's easy to try and come up with a simple solution, the teams have a broad enough batch of information to know who is better. I can't see their making that determination from one set of facts.

[Dunder]

The teams earn money based on WCC points and position.
Quali for show, points for dough!

[marcoferrari]

I have said it for years, judging drivers based on points outside of the top 2 or 3 cars on the grid is utterly useless. You can luck into one result and the other bloke has no ****ing chance of matching you. A fine example is Webber and Heidfeld in 05 where all the Heidfeld fans still claim he "beat" webber, Mark was clearly the faster guy and if not for a mix up from Williams in the pits at Monaco mark would have finished in front.

First time I agree with you...
I see the Webber-Heidfeld thing same as you... And the same goes for Kubica/Heidfeld rivalry - I consider Robert as the better driver and the interest of Renault only confirmed that... If we should count only results, then Tarso Marques was a "better" driver then Fernando Alonso in 2001, which is an absolute nonsense...

[Clatter]

I'll go with out-performing in the races. The scorecard doesn't tell the full story for the back of the grid, but you can still tell who is performing better by watching the race. I really don't care whois fastest over one lap in Q, as the race lasts 60 something laps and there is no point being a Trulli putting in good Q performances and then going backwards in the race.

Edited by Clatter, 24 June 2011 - 15:57.

[Andrew Hope]

I'll twist this a bit - I'd say that race performance is more important, but that it shouldn't be. It's like anything else that on the face of it seems important, but isn't relative to other factors, but as everyone pretends that it is, you've got to go with the crowd. In the older days when we'd see a backmarker survive a race of attrition to wander home for a point in sixth place, or a slow car on top of qualifying after a weird session (think Hulkenberg in Brazil or Verstappen in France) - we all know it doesn't really mean anything, just that it's a good story, so we get sucked up into the charm of it all. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's part of why we love racing, that's just how it is.

Good finishes from interchangeable midfield teams work the same way to my mind - if Buemi outqualifies Alguersuari 8-2 in the first ten races of a season, and both only score occasionally 9ths and 10ths before Alguersuari gets a 5th in Monaco, say, you could hardly say he's the better driver because he's got more points.

Ultimately, I dislike the teammate comparison - people talk about it like it's a stunning achievement to have beaten your teammate in a race, or outqualified him, and I always feel as though I'm missing something here - one of them has to beat the other every race, yet people assign way, way too much weight to such performances, as though putting your car 14th on the grid when your teammate's 16th is the sort of brilliant drive we only see once or twice a season. I understand why people make the comparions, obviously, but I think it needs to be calmed down a bit. There are genuinely hundreds of variables that go in to every statistic of an F1 driver, and it's all or nothing - you either ignore them all and say that stats are all that matters, or you look at every little variable, and you can't look at every little variable, because it does not take much imagination to see how many variables go into every session of every GP of every season of every career.

[Sausage]

As a boss I'd rather have a faster guy. Drivers can always get better at races with more experience but you can't learn speed (well you can to a degree, but if one outqualifies the other constantly it's a bet that won't change soon).

[ClubmanGT]

Personal sponsorship is more important.

[marcoferrari]

As a boss I'd rather have a faster guy. Drivers can always get better at races with more experience but you can't learn speed (well you can to a degree, but if one outqualifies the other constantly it's a bet that won't change soon).

[olliek88]

What is more important, well i'd say points is the more important of the two as thats where you influence your final WDC ranking but i'd say the more relevant (especially the midfield teams) is qualifying, as the races are far more likely to get distorted by traffic or bad strategy or just a bad pit stop, and as they say the stop watching never lies. (well the stop watch doesn't lie most of the time to be more accurate.)

Edited by olliek88, 24 June 2011 - 18:46.

[Starish]

As a boss I'd rather have a faster guy. Drivers can always get better at races with more experience but you can't learn speed (well you can to a degree, but if one outqualifies the other constantly it's a bet that won't change soon).

Tell Jarno Trulli that. I'd take a guy that can be 5th on the grid and finish first over a guy that gets pole and finishes 3rd.

[TFLB]

I have said it for years, judging drivers based on points outside of the top 2 or 3 cars on the grid is utterly useless. You can luck into one result and the other bloke has no ****ing chance of matching you. A fine example is Webber and Heidfeld in 05 where all the Heidfeld fans still claim he "beat" webber, Mark was clearly the faster guy and if not for a mix up from Williams in the pits at Monaco mark would have finished in front.

Webber might have helped himself if he hadn't kept crashing. And Webber was only faster in qualifying. If anything Heidfeld was quicker in the races. And Heidfeld had worse luck.

[Skinnyguy]

Webber might have helped himself if he hadn't kept crashing. And Webber was only faster in qualifying. If anything Heidfeld was quicker in the races. And Heidfeld had worse luck.

Heidfeld managed to look like a match for Mclaren/Renault in some races, and that´s quite significat. It was very good year for him.

But don´t bother, he´ll never get credit for anything.

On topic, I´d go for the guy with the best race pace. Teams know who´s faster on long runs, that´s the most important thing for me.

[Alfisti]

The most costly accident was the one with Fisichella in malaysia and it was pretty clearly Fisi's fault. mark was passing with Heidfeld behind, as usual.

[MrAerodynamicist]

The whole purpose of the weekend is Sunday, so that's the more important one. However, the perception you out-raced your team-mate is more important than absolute pointism.

[rommel]

It is a combination. Points often depend on circumstances that have little to do with speed or ability. Race craft can be taught but raw speed cannot, so the most important thing for a new driver is to establish his speed to the paddock. No top team is interested in a slow driver no matter how many points he is scoring.

[pingu666]

perseption is better than reality
the new teams only really seem to get qualy coverage, so for them its more important to outqualy the other guy. for midfield teams its abit of a mix

[Supersleeper]

So what is more important for the lower half drivers of the grid? To outqualify or out-point your teammate?

Points - always. A single point can make several million dollars difference to the payout to a team at the bottom of the grid - even a higher non-points finish can do that.
Qualifying well is nice, but has never paid the bills. Higher qualifying position probably appeals to statisticians who follow the sport.....

[marcoferrari]

Points - always. A single point can make several million dollars difference to the payout to a team at the bottom of the grid - even a higher non-points finish can do that.
Qualifying well is nice, but has never paid the bills. Higher qualifying position probably appeals to statisticians who follow the sport.....

I think the most important thing is driver's potential, his natural speed and his ability to improve... That's why for example Heidfeld had most of his time in Formula One problems to get some credit, because he just doesn't have the raw pace and seems stagnating for a while...
Will be criticised here for it again as usual, but I expect also some trouble for Kobayashi, who was pacewise only equal with De La Rosa and is now in qualifyings worser then rookie Perez (4:2)... When Sergio get more experience, he will sort out very quickly also his race speed, I am sure...
The teamchefs are looking very often at circumstances of races, not just at results... Again, good example is Kubica, who had a great race in Australia 2009, but collided with Vettel... Possibility of 2nd or 3rd place was suddenly gone, but the good feeling from the performance was there... He didn t get any points for it to the championship and there was a lost of 6-8 points... So that year, he was definitely not a worser driver in terms of performances then Heidfeld... And what underlines this theory is that Robert got soon a place in Renault, but Nick was out of job (til the De La Rosa story)... Sorry, that I can t explain it so good in English, as it is not my native language...;)

Edited by marcoferrari, 25 June 2011 - 10:29.

[korzeniow]

Points - always. A single point can make several million dollars difference to the payout to a team at the bottom of the grid - even a higher non-points finish can do that.
Qualifying well is nice, but has never paid the bills. Higher qualifying position probably appeals to statisticians who follow the sport.....

So for who you would opted? For faster driver but with many engine, wheels failures, etc. or the slower driver that was higher in the championshipt table some particular year only due to one lucky SC?

[MortenF1]

It's a bit funny, how some, reviews the '05-season reaching the conclusion that somehow Heidfeld performed better than Webber!

...as to the topic-question; yes, it easily tells you more about a drivers worth than looking at the points table, which is only going to picture who got a lucky break.
Of course, in addition to looking at gaps in qualifying, one should also look at race-pace.

[Seanspeed]

I have said it for years, judging drivers based on points outside of the top 2 or 3 cars on the grid is utterly useless. You can luck into one result and the other bloke has no ****ing chance of matching you. A fine example is Webber and Heidfeld in 05 where all the Heidfeld fans still claim he "beat" webber, Mark was clearly the faster guy and if not for a mix up from Williams in the pits at Monaco mark would have finished in front.

Came in here to post pretty much the same thing. Spot-on.

But to the drivers themselves, I think that the teams will know who did a better job, despite the points situation. Qualifying is a great time to make a big impression to everyone, but even if the race doesn't go well and nobody else notices, the team will know the truth.

Edited by Seanspeed, 25 June 2011 - 11:30.

[Supersleeper]

So for who you would opted? For faster driver but with many engine, wheels failures, etc. or the slower driver that was higher in the championshipt table some particular year only due to one lucky SC?

I'd say if there was only 1 lucky safety car between them, then there really wasn't anything between them at all. For me - bring the car home in the highest position possible, pure speed or conservative and practical - doesn't matter - we've seen examples of both mentalities between drivers, and some very interesting teammate battles when those different frames of mind have fought it out in the same garage.
Ultimately- qualifying is about 1 lap pace. Races are about race craft and setup.

To be honest, I'd suggest that drivers always want to out qualify their teammate, team principals always want them to finish the race as high as possible and fans will choose either one or the other to suit their point of view.

[george1981]

Out pointing definitely. Even for teams such as Virgin and HRT who are unlikely to score points soon, they still need the best finish possible even 13th/14th/15ths etc. not to be last in the WCC rankings.
Drivers want to beat their team mates at every opportunity, but would take a race result over a qualifying result.

[Zeroninety]

Man, Trulli's getting a slagging in this thread, isn't he? Vettel should have a look at the career Jarno's had and say to himself "There, but for the grace of Newey, go I"!

I'd definitely take the guy who can score points. I'm sure part of that is because I grew up watching Indycar racing in the late-80's and early 90's. During that era, Al Unser, Jr. was usually slower in qualifying than most of his main competitors (which in that period included Mario and Michael Andretti, Bobby Rahal, Rick Mears, Emerson Fittipaldi, Danny Sullivan, and, toward the end, Nigel and JV. Oh, and his own father). Nevertheless, more often than not, he'd make his way to the front by the end of the race--he just seemed faster in race conditions, and, though you wouldn't guess it by hearing him talk, or by his later personal problems, he was a smart, tactical racer. Of his 31 CART wins, 9 were from lower than 6th on the grid, and he won two CART titles. Now, you could argue that if he'd been a faster driver, he'd have won more races and more championships. I look at it the other way--he was a driver who used canny racecraft to win far more often than he "should have" based on his single-lap speed. (And I should note, this was before booze and drugs wrecked his career).

I suspect Kobayashi would do a similar job at a top team--he'd have some shocker Q3's where he'd end up 8th or 9th, but at least some of the time, he'd finish on the top step anyway, leaving us to wonder "How'd he *do* that?"

[TTim]

1 lap speed might be useful for supersprints / hillclimbs or similar but this year in f1 it doesn't seem as relevant to put in massively quick 1 lap pace, much easier to make up positions with strategy / DRS.

I think points and good finishes bring in the $$ more so. I think race pace and tyre maintenance are probably better characteristics to have.

[wattoroos]

i would say they are both equally important because you need to be up there in quali and out race your team mate if you want to get recognised but of the two race position finishes and championship points is what i would think would be better