195 replies to this topic

[BiggestBuddyLazierFan]

You're saying there was no luck involved in Damon Hill's engine failure, from a massive lead, his only engine failure of the season on the least stressful track for engines? No luck involved when rainmaster Michael Schumacher crashed out of 2nd place in a rare mistake? What about Alesi's mechanical problem late in the race?

It's what I said earlier in the thread. Good luck and a driver's day of days aren't mutually exclusive. Panis drove amazingly that day, fully deseved that win, but without a bit of good luck he wouldn't have got near the podium. It doesn't make his win less special, but he wasn't in sole control of his destiny that day.

Why are you constantly mistaking rival's incompetence with luck?

[ensign14]

If that was a calculated move, good on him and his team. Those kinds of calls are made fairly often, but seldom pay off.
 

The calculated move was from Andretti, who read the rule book and saw that Indycar could call the race at half-distance on lap 36.  As conditions were not due to improve, they therefore refuelled their cars to reach lap 37 and the expected end.

 

Indycar more or less looked at that and thought "we can't have Andretti win" and kept the show car out for longer.  Dominguez won because Herdez were too stupid to work for that target and Dominguez ended up in the lead because everyone else followed the Andretti lead - so all had to pit on lap 38.  Indycar called the race on lap 40.  Two laps before Dominguez would have had to pit again.

 

It was an absolute farce.  Anyone sensible would have run the race on the Saturday given the forecast for the Sunday, or booked a contingency day to run it on the Monday.

[KWSN - DSM]

You're saying there was no luck involved in Damon Hill's engine failure, from a massive lead, his only engine failure of the season on the least stressful track for engines? No luck involved when rainmaster Michael Schumacher crashed out of 2nd place in a rare mistake? What about Alesi's mechanical problem late in the race?

 

It's what I said earlier in the thread. Good luck and a driver's day of days aren't mutually exclusive. Panis drove amazingly that day, fully deseved that win, but without a bit of good luck he wouldn't have got near the podium. It doesn't make his win less special, but he wasn't in sole control of his destiny that day.

 

Edit since was said much better by others than what I clobed together.

 

https://forums.autos...opic/?p=9374226

 

I think we might be mixing up two different concepts here.

 

A fluke win is one where someone gets a win thanks to circumstances that have little to do with the vagaries of racing.  A genuine lottery.  Like the Dominguez win at Surfers or the Winkelhock/Surer win at Monza.

 

The other concept is a freak win.  When an outsider wins thanks to things going wrong for those you would expect to win.  Or because for once everything falls in the way of the outsider.  So Panis at Monaco is a freak win; he and Ligier caught lightning in a bottle that weekend and took fullest advantage.

 

There are luck and bad luck in every single race, Panis win was a consequence of a regular race at Monaco, drivers who raced and kept it of the the walls did well, scored points. Hill losing an oil pump was unlucky for Hill, Alesi breaking down were unlucky for Alesi.

 

Panis finished where he finished through him racing from lap one onwards, after Hills demise at times the fastest driver on track - I still place a negative connotation to 'fluke', Panis winning were not a fluke, it was lucky in the same way hundreds of races have been won, through the adventure and racing by the winner, coupled with the misadventure of others.

 

Words have a meaning, over time take on another, to defined meaning often no longer hold - Fluke is one of those words, we can see it means luck, yet in every day life it is heard and understood as undeserved luck - And that is the understanding I have my personal issue with.

 

So in closing

 

There may be fluke wins - There we nothing fluke about that, he had his days of days and raced to that win.

Edited by KWSN - DSM, 23 February 2021 - 12:01.

[Anderis]

Why are you constantly mistaking rival's incompetence with luck?

Because it's luck when your rivals show more incompetence than they usually do all at the same time exactly at the moment when it benefits you and not someone else if you're in position to be the first one to benefit only once in a blue moon.

 

If it was just pure incompetence, you would be beating them most of the time.

[DeKnyff]

Why are you constantly mistaking rival's incompetence with luck?

 

Because a DNF is many times inevitable, not a proof of incompetence. For example, Pérez' engine broke at Abu Dhabi, but I think most people will agree that Mercedes engineers are not 'incompetent' in making F1 hybrid engines, are they? Not to speak about DNFs caused by other drivers mistakes taking a rival against the wall.

[Spillage]

Ticktum at the 2017 Macau GP.

See, I'd argue this wasn't a fluke at all. He was the fastest driver who didn't bury their car into the wall.The circumstances were highly unusual of course, but is it a fluke if the guys in front of you crash out? If they have mechanical failures you could say they were unlucky, but they both made driving errors.

[messy]

I think there’s a big difference between a lucky win, and a genuine fluke one. That’s why I’d still say Fisichella’s 2003 Brazilian GP was pure fluke. Yeah, he drove well. But in a car that was barely points worthy, he relied on safety cars, retirements ahead of him, big accidents and disruptions, the timing of Coulthard’s stop and then the timing of the red flag to all align and ensure he was the guy in front when the race was stopped. That would never happen again. It was a thousand to one freak situation. Same with Johnny Herbert’s European GP win. It was a brilliant, but lucky, tyre call and a lot of other drivers throwing it away that saw him come through the middle of them all to win. Again, a true one-off result made possible by a roll of a dice, really, rather than driving faster than everyone.

Looking at Panis at Monaco and races like that, I think there was a big element of luck sure. But fluke? Nah, Panis was genuinely quick all weekend except qualifying, for some reason. If there was a failure at the front opening the door for one of the upper midfield to take their chance, Panis was always among the drivers who could have grabbed that chance, and he did. And there were other occasions in that era where the Panis/Ligier/Prost combination were good for a circumstantial win - Argentina and Spain 1997 cone to mind - if things went their way. At Monaco it did, in those others it didn’t, but enough of that result was about pure performance to get into position to benefit from the luck for it not to be a total fluke. Same with Maldonado in Spain 2012, or even Vettel at Monza in 2008 (could have done similar at Fuji)

[BiggestBuddyLazierFan]

Because it's luck when your rivals show more incompetence than they usually do all at the same time exactly at the moment when it benefits you and not someone else if you're in position to be the first one to benefit only once in a blue moon.

If it was just pure incompetence, you would be beating them most of the time.

What?!

Now you want to quantify incompetence in order to determine whether it occurs more than usual or less than usual to be able to tell weather its luck or what!?

You can not define luck by statistical data

[Bleu]

CART Surfers wasn't really that they were running out of fuel. That year there was a rule that drivers can drive a maximum of X laps between the pit stops, with X varying from race to race. Usually it forced three stops. I think it was 20 in Surfers for 71-lap-race. The rulebook said that official result can be given at 50% of the race. Most teams knew that and thus pitted on lap 16, so they can run into lap 36 where race was going to be halted. The officials decided however that race would be halted on lap 41, effectively forcing everyone to two stops.  

[ensign14]

And Herdez did not know that so pitted Dominguez on about lap 22.  It was as close to a rigged race as you can get outside The Call.

[Dmitriy_Guller]

And Herdez did not know that so pitted Dominguez on about lap 22.  It was as close to a rigged race as you can get outside The Call.

Yeah, that race was probably the one that marked the death of CART.  The body lived on for a while, but you couldn't set up a display of moral bankruptcy better than the 2002 Surfers race.  Putting on a farce parade for 30 laps to satisfy contractual obligations, having CART officials choose the winner, and also recklessly starting the race and somehow not killing anyone once the cars started flying and t-boning all over the place.  The race should've been cancelled.

[Ross Stonefeld]

I think there’s a big difference between a lucky win, and a genuine fluke one. That’s why I’d still say Fisichella’s 2003 Brazilian GP was pure fluke. Yeah, he drove well. But in a car that was barely points worthy, he relied on safety cars, retirements ahead of him, big accidents and disruptions, the timing of Coulthard’s stop and then the timing of the red flag to all align and ensure he was the guy in front when the race was stopped. That would never happen again. It was a thousand to one freak situation. Same with Johnny Herbert’s European GP win. It was a brilliant, but lucky, tyre call and a lot of other drivers throwing it away that saw him come through the middle of them all to win. Again, a true one-off result made possible by a roll of a dice, really, rather than driving faster than everyone.

Looking at Panis at Monaco and races like that, I think there was a big element of luck sure. But fluke? Nah, Panis was genuinely quick all weekend except qualifying, for some reason. If there was a failure at the front opening the door for one of the upper midfield to take their chance, Panis was always among the drivers who could have grabbed that chance, and he did. And there were other occasions in that era where the Panis/Ligier/Prost combination were good for a circumstantial win - Argentina and Spain 1997 cone to mind - if things went their way. At Monaco it did, in those others it didn’t, but enough of that result was about pure performance to get into position to benefit from the luck for it not to be a total fluke. Same with Maldonado in Spain 2012, or even Vettel at Monza in 2008 (could have done similar at Fuji)

 

Gary Anderson said that was their strategy from the start of the race so....

[PayasYouRace]

Yeah, that race was probably the one that marked the death of CART.  The body lived on for a while, but you couldn't set up a display of moral bankruptcy better than the 2002 Surfers race.  Putting on a farce parade for 30 laps to satisfy contractual obligations, having CART officials choose the winner, and also recklessly starting the race and somehow not killing anyone once the cars started flying and t-boning all over the place.  The race should've been cancelled.

 

CART was already well in its death throws by that point. The 2001 Firestone Firehawk 600 would be that one race.

 

Things were a farce in Surfers 2002, but everyone was already in the process of leaving the series by then.

[Anderis]

What?!

Now you want to quantify incompetence in order to determine whether it occurs more than usual or less than usual to be able to tell weather its luck or what!?

You can not define luck by statistical data

No, I don't want to quantify it, where did you get that from, it would be too much work.

 

Being aware that a random factor plays a big role whether some of the big guys screw up in a race in which you're the best of the rest or the one you DNF is good enough for me.

 

And actually- yes, you can define luck by statistical data. It's been done with things like airplane crashes to determine if having an unusually high number of crashes of the same model of airplane in a short period of time can be attributed to bad luck or if there must be something wrong with the plane/procedures.

Edited by Anderis, 23 February 2021 - 17:44.

[KWSN - DSM]

Gary Anderson said that was their strategy from the start of the race so....

 

Gary Anderson is the occasional revisionist.

[Dmitriy_Guller]

And actually- yes, you can define luck by statistical data. It's been done with things like airplane crashes to determine if having an unusually high number of crashes of the same model of airplane in a short period of time can be attributed to bad luck or if there must be something wrong with the plane/procedures.

Not only that, luck is literally the difference between statistics and arithmetic.  Without luck, there is no need for probability and statistics, arithmetic will suffice.

[BiggestBuddyLazierFan]

No, I don't want to quantify it, where did you get that from, it would be too much work.

Being aware that a random factor plays a big role whether some of the big guys screw up in a race in which you're the best of the rest or the one you DNF is good enough for me.

And actually- yes, you can define luck by statistical data. It's been done with things like airplane crashes to determine if having an unusually high number of crashes of the same model of airplane in a short period of time can be attributed to bad luck or if there must be something wrong with the plane/procedures.

Yes, tell that to the family members of the ones that died in plane crashes

"mrs, we are sorry, jour husband died moments ago, because bad luck struck his airplane"

[DeKnyff]

Yes, tell that to the family members of the ones that died in plane crashes

"mrs, we are sorry, jour husband died moments ago, because bad luck struck his airplane"

 

That people under emotional stress don't want to hear it doesn't mean it's not true, though. There can be some exceptions, but a plane crash is rarely the consequence of one single mistake, but rather of an extremely unfortunate chain of events.

 

Just like some fans don't want to hear their driver won a race thanks to an extremely fortunate chain of events (aka 'fluke').

[Dmitriy_Guller]

That people under emotional stress don't want to hear it doesn't mean it's not true, though. There can be some exceptions, but a plane crash is rarely the consequence of one single mistake, but rather of an extremely unfortunate chain of events.

 

Just like some fans don't want to hear their driver won a race thanks to an extremely fortunate chain of events (aka 'fluke').

Yeah, I never understood the appeal of such arguments.  If you're saying that my point won't make sense to a person expected to be irrational, then that's not really a strong logical rebuttal.  It almost seems like an own goal, because you make it look like only an irrational person won't see the logic in what I'm saying.

[BiggestBuddyLazierFan]

That people under emotional stress don't want to hear it doesn't mean it's not true, though. There can be some exceptions, but a plane crash is rarely the consequence of one single mistake, but rather of an extremely unfortunate chain of events.

Just like some fans don't want to hear their driver won a race thanks to an extremely fortunate chain of events (aka 'fluke').

So, you are telling that plane crashed due to bad luck and not a mistake/mistakes a person or multiple persons did?

[PayasYouRace]

So, you are telling that plane crashed due to bad luck and not a mistake/mistakes a person or multiple persons did?

 

Yes. As someone who works in that industry, sometimes that's the case. At least, as long as there is a just culture in flight safety, rather than a blame culture. Sometimes accidents happen that are nobody's fault, where everyone did everything properly as they were supposed to do, and things still went wrong.

[Kalmake]

Just like some fans don't want to hear their driver won a race thanks to an extremely fortunate chain of events (aka 'fluke').

Page 4 and we are not clear on what the word means. Fluke in the context of competing/sport means luck instead of skill.

 

In pool if you miss a shot you were trying to make, but the ball goes into some other pocket anyway, it's a fluke. Making a pot from the break requires luck, but is not a fluke.

 

If we accept this meaning of the word, it's clear that Perez's win wasn't a fluke.

 

https://dictionary.c...y/english/fluke

https://www.merriam-...ictionary/fluke

[MikeTekRacing]

Page 4 and we are not clear on what the word means. Fluke in the context of competing/sport means luck instead of skill.

 

In pool if you miss a shot you were trying to make, but the ball goes into some other pocket anyway, it's a fluke. Making a pot from the break requires luck, but is not a fluke.

 

If we accept this meaning of the word, it's clear that Perez's win wasn't a fluke.

 

https://dictionary.c...y/english/fluke

https://www.merriam-...ictionary/fluke

 

If people don't agree and just wanna stick with luck,  you could argue even Russel would have been a fluke since Hamilton was out

[BiggestBuddyLazierFan]

Yes. As someone who works in that industry, sometimes that's the case. At least, as long as there is a just culture in flight safety, rather than a blame culture. Sometimes accidents happen that are nobody's fault, where everyone did everything properly as they were supposed to do, and things still went wrong.

Thanks for the comfort.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Do you want thoughts and prayers or a proper investigation. The FAA and NTSB are really on top of these things. 

[DeKnyff]

Page 4 and we are not clear on what the word means. Fluke in the context of competing/sport means luck instead of skill.

 

In pool if you miss a shot you were trying to make, but the ball goes into some other pocket anyway, it's a fluke. Making a pot from the break requires luck, but is not a fluke.

 

If we accept this meaning of the word, it's clear that Perez's win wasn't a fluke.

 

https://dictionary.c...y/english/fluke

https://www.merriam-...ictionary/fluke

 

Virtually all unexpected wins are a blend of good driving and the alignment of favourable events. I'm not a native English speaker and I could be wrong, but (beyond the dictionary definition), I understand that most people understand that a fluke is when the 'alignment of favourable events' weighs above, say, 75% of the mix. Of course, this is not a fixed figure and it's debatable what are 'favourable events' and what are not, but I think that's more or less the idea of 'fluke win'.

 

I'm open to discuss which specific unexpected wins are more 'flukes' and which are more the result of a brilliant drive. But what I don't accept is that any unexpected win from a midfield driver or a backmarker is a great accomplishment and more valuable than a Hamilton win from pole to flag, which was the starting point of this thread when it was split from the Statistics thread.

[messy]

Gary Anderson is the occasional revisionist.

No doubt if you’re running an uncompetitive car on an afternoon where the weather looks terrible you’ll fuel it to the absolute brim and sin to stay out at all costs to get track position as Jordan did - but the chances of it all playing out the way it did were tiny.

That said, one thing jumps out at me that I’d forgotten looking at the race results - Fisichella started eighth, only three tenths off pole. So maybe there is an argument that the Jordan was actually quite competitive that weekend. It must have been the only time it was.

[Dmitriy_Guller]

Do you want thoughts and prayers or a proper investigation. The FAA and NTSB are really on top of these things. 

Human errors have a huge luck component as well.  Humans are not machines, so occasionally they're going to misfire, but when and how is not completely predictable.  The consequences also have a huge luck component.  Two people can make the same mistake, but one can get away with it through no actions of their own, and the other person could pay the full price.  Robert Wickens made a mistake in Pocono, but lots of drivers made the same kind of mistake over the years.  The fact that he was one of the very few to be so badly injured from that kind of a mistake was just bad luck.

 

This is also why all intelligently-designed systems account for the fact that humans will make errors, and thus there have to be other systems to catch them.  Unfortunately, no system can catch everything, so when you combine bad luck from multiple systems at the same time is when you have a disaster.

Edited by Dmitriy_Guller, 23 February 2021 - 20:23.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Is it bad luck though? When you race Indycars on high speed ovals with fence issues? It seems like you're asking for a serious injury and you're just lucky you haven't had one yet. 

 

Just like racing went for a while and then suddenly it seemed like every other wreck was a basalar skull fracture. NASCAR had 3 in 12 months and the funerals to match. Had they had really good luck until then or did they nudge into some weird triangulation of various factors that suddenly made it really dangerous? 

[Dmitriy_Guller]

Is it bad luck though? When you race Indycars on high speed ovals with fence issues? It seems like you're asking for a serious injury and you're just lucky you haven't had one yet. 

Just because you're doing something dangerous doesn't mean that a very bad outcome is still not mostly bad luck.  Crashes at Pocono probably had the highest likelihood of injuring a driver, but even there the probability of a severe injury in a crash was pretty low, so the outcome for Wickens was way worse than statistical expectation. 

 

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't care about safety, I'm just saying that there has to be a more complete understanding of the difference between expectation and luck.  The safer you make everything, the more distance there is for bad luck to cover between average outcome and bad outcome.  Making things safer is in a way adding empty chambers to the revolver in the game of Russian Roulette; the more empty chambers you have, the more unlucky you have to get to find the live round.

[BiggestBuddyLazierFan]

Is it bad luck though? When you race Indycars on high speed ovals with fence issues? It seems like you're asking for a serious injury and you're just lucky you haven't had one yet.

Just like racing went for a while and then suddenly it seemed like every other wreck was a basalar skull fracture. NASCAR had 3 in 12 months and the funerals to match. Had they had really good luck until then or did they nudge into some weird triangulation of various factors that suddenly made it really dangerous?

Sad truth is nodoby did anything after Kenny Irvin and Adam Petty it was only after Dale died that they mandated hans etc... Had it been another low profile driver in third accident we would have fourth too

[Ross Stonefeld]

100pct. And they still threw Bill Simpson under the bus, dragged their feet on the investigation, etc

[PlatenGlass]

Looking at Panis at Monaco and races like that, I think there was a big element of luck sure. But fluke? Nah, Panis was genuinely quick all weekend except qualifying, for some reason. If there was a failure at the front opening the door for one of the upper midfield to take their chance, Panis was always among the drivers who could have grabbed that chance, and he did. And there were other occasions in that era where the Panis/Ligier/Prost combination were good for a circumstantial win - Argentina and Spain 1997 cone to mind - if things went their way. At Monaco it did, in those others it didn’t, but enough of that result was about pure performance to get into position to benefit from the luck for it not to be a total fluke. Same with Maldonado in Spain 2012, or even Vettel at Monza in 2008 (could have done similar at Fuji)

 

I think there are different typres of fluke, and I'd actually call Maldonado's win at Spain in 2012 a fluke. Though it wasn't so much down to others' misfortunes (well, Hamilton lost his pole) it still required the moons to align and a driver who wasn't normally remotely in contention for wins (though he did have several competitive showings that year) pulled off a win never to be repeated. I think a result that comes out of nowhere is a class of fluke.

[Ross Stonefeld]

He had a front running car briefly and absolutely made the most of the opportunity. That's the opposite of a fluke.

[KWSN - DSM]

Page 4 and we are not clear on what the word means. Fluke in the context of competing/sport means luck instead of skill.

 

In pool if you miss a shot you were trying to make, but the ball goes into some other pocket anyway, it's a fluke. Making a pot from the break requires luck, but is not a fluke.

 

If we accept this meaning of the word, it's clear that Perez's win wasn't a fluke.

 

https://dictionary.c...y/english/fluke

https://www.merriam-...ictionary/fluke

 

[KWSN - DSM]

Which is more the crux of the matter than what Webster tell us it mean.

[Anuity]

Williams had pace in 2012 in certain races, if anything it could be argued that the drivers did not extract everything from the car across the whole season.
Maldonado looked strong in Barcelona and in the race itself did not require any “luck” to gain his victory. I think it was deserved.

Perhaps races won in the last couple of laps due to leaders’ retirements could be classified as flukes, especially when it came out of nothing.
Michael in Barcelona 2001, Kovalainen in 2008, etc.

I would not brand Austria 2002, Hockenheim 2010 and Sochi 2018 as fluke wins. They were orchestrated by the team orders, it’s a bit different in my books.

I tend to agree that Fisichella’s win in 2003 is more of a fluke one. Because it took a lot of things to happen at the right time to put him there. And if race lasted some laps longer he would be out of contention.
It’s like if race at Nurburgring would be stopped when Spyker was leading it, almost.

[absinthedude]

Gary Anderson said that was their strategy from the start of the race so....

 

It's still a fluke. That strategy might reasonably have been expected to result in a couple of points but it took unusually fortuitous circumstances for Fisichella to actually take the win. 

 

 

I don't count Maldonado in 2012 because that car was fast....it was never a surprise to see Pastor running in the top 5 all year, and he'd got pole for the Spanish GP. The car was the best that weekend. And Pastor drove the race of his life. He didn't bin it, drove almost flawlessly. The only reason that car didn't take more podiums in 2012 was due to the drivers. Maldonado had a tendency to crash and Senna just wasn't fast enough to achieve more than regular, solid but unspectacular points. 

 

You could see Pastor's win coming, or at least could have said "On a good day, that car could take a win if Maldonado doesn't bin it". With the 2003 Jordan, or 1996 Ligier those wins came out of the blue. Herbert in the Stewart too. For similar reasons, Perez in Bahrain 2 was not a fluke because it had been clear all season long that given a little luck that car could win. It wasn't Checo's only chance at a win and Lance had a chance at one too. 

Edited by absinthedude, 24 February 2021 - 11:55.

[Bleu]

Regarding Stewart 1999 it was surprising that Herbert was the guy winning while he had been consistently outpaced by Barrichello. Interestingly, Nürburgring saw the worst qualifying result of the team that year.

[messy]

If I remember rightly Herbert followed that win up with easily his best performance of the season at Sepang, the only time he really beat Barrichello on merit all year. Then did it again in the finale.

Edited by messy, 24 February 2021 - 14:06.

[CrossComparisonOracle]

I don’t understand how Maldonado’s win at Spain 2012 can possibly be considered a fluke. He has a fast package that weekend and won on merit. How is that a fluke?

As far as single GP winners go, Kovalainen at Hungary 2008 is the most mediocre drive to be awarded with a win.

[Baddoer]

If I remember rightly Herbert followed that win up with easily his best performance of the season at Sepang, the only time he really beat Barrichello on merit all year. Then did it again in the finale.

Coincidentally, that was the time of contract negotiation.

[PlatenGlass]

I don’t understand how Maldonado’s win at Spain 2012 can possibly be considered a fluke. He has a fast package that weekend and won on merit. How is that a fluke?

The circumstances that made it the best package that weekend were arguably a fluke, which is why it never came close to being repeated. Not the drive itself.

[CrossComparisonOracle]

The circumstances that made it the best package that weekend were arguably a fluke, which is why it never came close to being repeated. Not the drive itself.

From my memory of 2012, I remember Maldonado qualifying high up the grid or driving near the front at Australia, Valencia, Spa, Singapore and Abu Dhabi

That Williams in the hands of Maldonado was just a quick car that season. It all came together in Spain, but a cooler head would have seen him score several more podiums that year.

[Anuity]

Another one for consideration is Alonso winning in Suzuka 2006. I think even he himself never thought he would be winning that race anytime during that weekend.
Also that win completely changed the landscape of the championship.

[Risil]

Coincidentally, that was the time of contract negotiation.

 

For Herbert -- Rubens had signed for Ferrari in early September 1999.