35 replies to this topic

[Mat]

Now, most of you will be expecting this to be about the 'incident'. Atleast I got you to click.

What I am talking about was the three identical times produced by the top three on the grid- 1:21.027 i think it was.

Anyway, I still find this extremely hard to grasp. It just seems impossible for this to happen if you ask me. I could understand if two drivers just happened to get the exact time i could possibly get my head around it, but we had the 3 top drivers in the championship, in the final championship deciding race for the year, in the top 3 spots on the grid.Just a little far fetched?

If you ask me, it was more likely a fault with the timing system that would not allow anyone to post a faster time for pole then what had already been set. Therefore it would only recognise as the same time. Or maybe it was all part of Bernies master plan??

Then again, I heard that in case of aa system failure, there is three unrelared setsof timing facilities: 1. the usual TAG timing, 2. the onboard transponders 3. something else i have no idea about.

So what is everyone else's opinion. Coincidence or one big consipracy (Frans?!?).

Mat

[Mickey]

If I remember correctly, Patrick Head confirmed that the telemetry time on JV and HHF's cars was show to be identical.

Of course, this doesn't say anything about MS's time.

[CaptnMark]

131072 = 2^17

131072 - 10000 = 121072 (which is the correct pole time, not 1:21.027)

Coincidence?

That's all I have to say ;)

[Group B]

Anyone know when we last had 2 equal times for 1st and 2nd? Just to help put the odds into perspective.

[100cc]

just as the tag timing boss back then said(or something similar).... "If the timing system shows that three cars recorded the same time, it means that three cars recorded the same time."

[andrewf]

131072 = 2^17

131072 - 10000 = 121072 (which is the correct pole time, not 1:21.027)

Coincidence?

Hmm... Interesting. A question posted through sheer ignorance of lap times: Were there circuits where the pole time was faster than 1:21.027?

This is moot unless we can demonstrate a possible software or hardware fault and it is unlikely that they took a special "Jerez" version of the timing software to the race...

Andrew

[lateralforce]

maybe somebody should embark on the task of calculating the probability of such event happening and from there we can conclude, statistically, whether it was a fluke, or a conspiracy.

[F1 Rox]

It is just like people won lottories...

What I find more amazing is the 4th on the grid by Damon Hill. He would have had the pole if the Minardi didn't spin in front of him?

[Cheetah Kill Deer]

Verdict of 1997 Jerez


- Jacqeus Villenueve tried a T-Bone manouvre that worked to perfection

[Hurricane]

That is an obvious attempt to try and turn this thread into a Jacques Vs Michael thread. The fact that all times were the same for the top three is something that will, barring a miracle, never happen again.

[MuMu]

I've always been of the opinion that the timing system was faulty. The drivers that qualified second and third (I forget the actual grid order ) were both quite a bit faster in the first and second splits, only to inexplicably set the same time.

Does anybody have the actual split times? (too lazy to look it up).

[benrapp]

Originally posted by CaptnMark
131072 = 2^17

131072 - 10000 = 121072 (which is the correct pole time, not 1:21.027)

Coincidence?

That's all I have to say ;)

You think *that's* a coincidence? If you add up the letters in each driver's surname, using A=1 etc, you find that never do more than two of them share the same score and where two do, they've always got something in common. Spooookkyyyy....

047 salo
053 massa
053 heidfeld
055 sato
055 webber
059 panis
066 mcnish
075 delarosa
076 yoong
077 irvine
079 bernoldi
084 fisichella
092 trulli
092 button
099 schumacher
099 schumacher
101 raikonnen
102 coulthard
103 montoya
103 barrichello
108 frentzen
127 villeneuve

Incidentally, Villeneuve's score is 2^7-1 so there's more of your binary conspiracy. And both Schumacher brothers obviously like ice-cream. Raikonnen = Eccelstone (scary thought). Montoya and Barrichello are aspects of the same person (pudgy, Latin American, second best).

Oh, and Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro Schumacher Ecclestone Montezemolo Byrne = 666

See, Frans is right.

[SeanValen]

It was a amazing qualifying session, for the championship showdown, always hard to accept, but its like winning the lottery, in some race in time, it will happen, and happened in Jerez 97, three equal times, which is more impressive as you would think 2 equal times would be enough, but 3 is wow.

[Vagabond]

Originally posted by andrewf
Hmm... Interesting. A question posted through sheer ignorance of lap times: Were there circuits where the pole time was faster than 1:21.027?

Magny-Cours

[TAB666]

Originally posted by SeanValen
It was a amazing qualifying session, for the championship showdown, always hard to accept, but its like winning the lottery, in some race in time, it will happen, and happened in Jerez 97, three equal times, which is more impressive as you would think 2 equal times would be enough, but 3 is wow.

Exactly, but that 2 team mates are one the same time is possible because of equal cars. But to see 3 drivers in 2 different cars , just amazing.
I would realy like to have the split times from the 3 laps , and maybe a video.

[mtl'78]

I seem to remember that they managed to break it down further than 0.001 and discover who had the fastest lap.

Using the photo finish, you could discover who crossed the line first. At 300 KPH a car travels 0.8 meters in 0.001 secs, if I'm not mistaken...

I remember that they didn't use this to decide, I guess the rule was/is the 1st driver to set that time gets the best position...

[Vagabond]

Originally posted by mtl'78
At 300 KPH a car travels 0.8 meters in 0.001 secs, if I'm not mistaken...

Yes, you are ;) It's 0.08 m

[SalutGilles]

don't forget that TAG actually record the time down to 6 decimal places, but they only display the first three... I don't know what the last three places were, but if 1:21.072 (x3) is improbable, how much more so is 1:21.072xxx?

Now that's really, really improbable...but not impossible.

Also, there would have been pole times under 1:21 that year, probably @ austria, or monaco, or maybe argentina, or possibly hungaroring... I'm sure they got under 1:21 somewhere...

[SalutGilles]

Oh yeah, they were under 1:21 for 8 races that year: brazil, monaco, spain, canada, france, hungary, austria, and luxembourg.

I bet it really happened.

[DOHC]

That was of course hard to believe, and it's fair enough to assume that there was something wrong with the timing system.

However, someone suggested that one should try to calculate the probability. That can't be done strictly because we don't have sufficient information at hand. But I'll attempt to have a look at a somewhat simpler problem, the probability that two cars end up with exactly the same time.

There are some amazing things about probailities that you might not have guessed. The problem we have here is similar to another famous problem: suppose you have a number of people, N, in a room. How many people do you need before it becomes "probable" (i.e. the chance is greater than 50%) that two persons were born on the same day? The surprising answer is 22. If N>21 the chance that two persons have the same birthday exceeds 50%. Of course the F1 drivers on the grid aren't chosen at random, but if they were, it is more likely that (at least) two of them share the same birthday than all being born on different days. Think of it---would you have guessed that 22 is enough?

Ok, so you can modify this type problem to deal with the timing. We'll make some assumptions. First, let's assume that all drivers always qualify within 3 seconds, and that the time resolution is 1 ms. What is the chance that 22 drivers have different qualifying times in one race? This is

3000*(3000-1)*(3000-2)*...*(3000-21)/3000^22 = 92.5%

Now consider 17 races in a full season. If the 17 qualifyings are independent, then the chance that there is no race where any two times coincide, is

(0.925)^17 = 27%

That means that it is more likely that in a whole season there is a race where at least two cars have exactly the same qualifying time than not! A season with no two times coinciding should happen about once every four seasons. And if you take the approx 700 races there's been to date since 1950 (I forgot the exact number, but it is unimportant as you will see), it becomes almost a certainty that two times will coincide, because the chance of never having two cars with the same time is

(0.925)^700 = 3*10^(-24)

which is so small that you can forget it! It is bound to happen. Not once, but over and over again.

Ok, this was a simple exercise. Trying to estimate chances for three cars having the same time can be done too, but it will be rare that it happens. But in the perspective of 700 races, well, it's not at all impossible. I'm too lazy to work out the number though. BTW, they're just estimates, because we need a lot of assumptions as you saw above, and they may not be entirely realistic.

Gaps can be small also over a race distance, with Monza 1971 as the most famous example: four cars finished within 0.18 seconds. Of course, that didn't quite happen by chance but depended on the slipstreaming in the pre-chicane days.

If you have a look at sector times and speeds, you may have noticed that it often happens that different cars record the same speeds. Also that you can't record just any speeds, but just a few different values. Why is that? It's because the speed trap also measures time just to down to a certain resolution, presumably 1 ms. If the speed trap measures how fast you travel say 10 m, and measures that time in ms, then the follwing happens: Let's say the speed is about 50 m/s (180 km/h), then it will take 0.2 seconds, or 200 ms to travel the 10 m distance at the speed trap. If you do it in 200 ms the speed is 50 m/s, if you do it in 201 ms the speed is 49.7512 m/s, if you do it in 199 ms, the speed is 50.2513 m/s, and there are no speeds between these values. That's why many cars end up with the same trap speeds. There just aren't enough different speeds to record. Let's say the slowest car might need 215 ms, the fastest 195. It's just 20 ms between those readings. (Which is nevertheless a lot, because it corresponds to a 10% speed difference between the fastest and slowest cars.) But you have 22 cars, so at least two recorded speeds will be the same. It doesn't mean the cars/drivers went through the speed trap in identical ways.

Conclusion? Jerez 97 could happen. But it was not likely. It could also have been a timing equipment error. We'll never know. But it's fine with me to take those times to the record books as the correct times. It was by no means impossible. 1 ms on the start/finish line translates to some 70 mm distance between the cars. Clearly they could have crossed the line within such a margin.

[West Mclaren]

Anyone know when we last had 2 equal times for 1st and 2nd? Just to help put the odds into perspective.

Hakkinen and Schumacher each clocked identical times at the 1999 San Marino Grandprix, i just cant remember the times right now. I remember Schumacher kept his pole because he was the first to set that time but Hakkinen did actually beat Schumie to pole in the end.

[Menace]

Originally posted by benrapp


You think *that's* a coincidence? If you add up the letters in each driver's surname, using A=1 etc, you find that never do more than two of them share the same score and where two do, they've always got something in common. Spooookkyyyy....

047 salo
053 massa
053 heidfeld
055 sato
055 webber
059 panis
066 mcnish
075 delarosa
076 yoong
077 irvine
079 bernoldi
084 fisichella
092 trulli
092 button
099 schumacher
099 schumacher
101 raikonnen
102 coulthard
103 montoya
103 barrichello
108 frentzen
127 villeneuve

Incidentally, Villeneuve's score is 2^7-1 so there's more of your binary conspiracy. And both Schumacher brothers obviously like ice-cream. Raikonnen = Eccelstone (scary thought). Montoya and Barrichello are aspects of the same person (pudgy, Latin American, second best).

Oh, and Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro Schumacher Ecclestone Montezemolo Byrne = 666

See, Frans is right.

..Truly intresting!?

[Mat]

good post DOHC

..couldnt find any info on the split times. But i did find this quote in the Atlas Review for the GP.

"Obviously, the 1997 European Grand Prix will go down in history at least partly because of the 3-way tie for fastest qualifying lap. Despite it being pure Hollywood in terms of an exciting qualifying session, statistically there is no reason why it couldn't happen. Many have said that TAG-Heuer and FOCA fixed the timings so that they could set the scene for the race. Williams actually shared their telemetry for Jacques Villeneuve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen and proved that they did do exactly the same time."

[Kris Sim Roy]

Good thread Mat!

Indeed, it looked too much like a "Hollywood scenario", but I still think it wasn't a "fix", or a timing mistake.
Although I'm impressed with some of the "mathematical posts" here , or the suspicions about this event, I believe we were simply privileged to witness an extraordinary Championship ending drama.
I'm especially convinced of it for having witnessed the procedures of the timing system.
As mentioned already, they had 3 ways to verify the lap times of each cars.
They also have a camera at the S/F line, that records the cars crossing the line @ 100 frames/seconds, so they can visually prove a time to any Teams questioning the validity of the lap times.
So, with the high stake of this event, and the extreme pressure of a possible first turn incident, I'm sure Ferrari would have check to see if Michael could benefit of the Pole, and also, Williams would have double check to see if HHF could have moved on the first row and "protect" JV better from there.

Also, let's not forget that in 97', despite many false claims about this season, it was one of the most competitive fields ever.
Half the field(and sometimes more) were within 1 seconds in about 10-11 events...
So a thigh field offers more probabilities of such a circumstance, than dominant Championships like the 84', 88', 89'(?), 92', 96', 01', 02' seasons.....

BTW "Cheetah Kill Deer" you've just lost a good opportunity to show some credibility with your non-sense post... :

[DOHC]

Good points, Kris, and I think those are convincing arguments why there really was a three-way tie.

When I watched the qualifying, my first thoughts were that it was unbelievable. See, it doesn't help your intuition much that you know some math , we all find it rather incredible when something like that happens. You really have to have a look at the timing technology, and perhaps some probabilistics too, to see that even the less likely things will happen sooner or later.

[Frans]

well, at 1st I thought about the clash what was actually an act of God.... but you were refering at the qualifying where indeed was NO coincidence.

This is explained in short: Coincidence does not excist.

well, now to the facts, top 3 qualifyers were all just as fast, what was an sign to the world to show us there are other forces at play in the sport, what could influence the outcome of the qualifying, as well as the races.

I once had an article on this very event, what pointed to the Elite Group inside what rules the cirucus some call still a sport.

whether it's to be known, I think not. therefore in a conspiracy the question is always much more important than the answer. while no one has an answer. cool ...

back in those day's the qualifications were the greatest. [drooldrool] wonder how come/?.. wierd.

[Vagabond]

Bernie the King of Time

[Garagiste]

I'd say it actually happened, however improbable - If I was going to try and fix the timing, I wouldn't consider doing it this way and immediately arousing suspicion!
Or is that the double bluff?
Glad I looked at this thread after all!

[jonpollak]

I WAS THERE...and
I have to say, it was one of the most cosmic weekends of my life

At the time(Sat) I thought...whoa...too spooky...

But by the end of Sunday night it had fallen in line with all the bizzare happenings.

however...
Here is the infamous Brundle /Bernie talk about computer times

http://www.wf1g.com/bernie2.wav

Jp

[CaptnMark]

I believe it was real too.

Mostly, because it was unoficially said that (I believe) Frentzen had the fastest time on 4th decimal.

I gave my formula above (2^17-10000) just as an easy way to remember one of the most important pole times in F1 (it was the last pole on slicks after all, too), and the last pole of the great Renault era of F1 (started with Renault's introduction of turbo engines and ended in 1997 taking WCC and WDC).

[DNF]

Originally posted by benrapp


You think *that's* a coincidence? If you add up the letters in each driver's surname, using A=1 etc, you find that never do more than two of them share the same score and where two do, they've always got something in common. Spooookkyyyy....

101 raikonnen

Is it still spooky if you spell it right? Raikkonen.

[DOHC]

Uhmm, Räikkönen.

[BuzzingHornet]

It was an FIA conspiracy to keep Hill's Arrows off the front row

[DOHC]

Friday first free practice in Austria this morning, and Michael Schumacher records exactly the same best-time-in-session twice.

Not really another Jerez 97, but these things happen. With some regularity.

[The Fazz]

There have been instances since when 2 drivers have identical qualifying times - though not for pole position. I can't name them, but I remember witnessing them. Having 3 drivers on the same pole lap time is not impossible, only mathematically a long shot. But mathematical long shots have a habit of occurring in our world whether we like it or not... so F1 is no different.

Anyway, would like to take up on the point that Kris raised about 1997 being a very tight year. I'll just pull some statistics (I know you guys love stats) from 1997:

First numbers is the number of drivers within the 1 sec gap from pole; the second number is the time gap for the whole grid - in brackets is the driver on pole.
1. Aus = 1 & 6.603 (JV)
2. Brz = 8 & 3.270 (JV)
3. Arg = 2 & 4.496 (JV)
4. Imo = 5 & 5.424 (JV)
5. Mon = 8 & 3.074 (HHF)
6. Spn = 3 & 4.535 (JV)
7. Cnd = 10 & 2.939 (MS)
8. Fra = 11 & 3.732 (MS)
9. Bri = 11 & 3.927 (JV)
10. Ger = 8 & 4.626 (GB)
11. Hun = 6 & 3.348 (MS)
12. Bel = 3 & 5.055 (JV)
13. Ita = 10 & 4.687 (JA)
14. Aut = 14 & 3.942 (JV) - - worth pointing out that 21 drivers qualified, and the 20th was ONLY 1.926 secs from pole!
15. Lux = 8 & 4.013 (MH)
16. Jpn = 9 & 4.458 (JV)
17. Por = 10 & 3.229 (JV)

So I wouldn't say half the field was within 1 sec of pole in 10 races.... but impressive nevertheless that in 11 races, there were 8 or more drivers within 1 sec of pole. Forix gives a better visual representation of the grid with the drivers in the top teams (excluding Tyrell - which was **** - and Minardi) being so bunched up together.

What is perhaps more interesting is the number of drivers achieving podium finishes in 1997 (15!!

1 M.Schumacher = 8
2 J.Villeneuve = 8
3 H-H.Frentzen = 7
4 Jean Alesi = 5
5 Eddie Irvine = 5
6 David Coulthard = 4
7 Mika Hakkinen = 3
8 Gerhard Berger = 2
9 Olivier Panis = 2
10 G.Fisichella = 2
11 Johnny Herbert = 1
12 Damon Hill = 1
13 R.Barrichello = 1
14 Ralf Schumacher = 1
15 Alexander Wurz = 1

Nowadays, unless you're driving a Ferrari, BMW.Williams or McLaren - don't hope for a podium finish.

My verdict is 1997 was a VERY competitive season. Most don't realise this because of Jacques stupendous pole position in Melbourne when he basically hit the ground running, whilst everyone else was just starting to warm up. What is your verdict??

[Frans]

It was an FIA conspiracy to keep Hill's Arrows off the front row

didn't take much, must have been! :lol: