About Formula 1 Rankings

This project is an attempt at creating a ranking system for Formula One drivers according to their race performances as a whole, rather than simply whether or not they finish in the points.

The ratings are based purely on race finishes, the cars must have been both running at the end of the race, be classified and be within 10% of the laps completed by the race winner.

Therefore any race where the driver has been classified but has retired, is discounted, as is any occasion where the driver is still running at the end but has not completed enough laps to be classified. There is also a record of all the races which a driver has started (non-qualifiers are not included).

There is not an even distribution of points for the relative positions, instead a greater weighting is applied for the top positions.

The score a driver receives also depends upon how many starters there are for a particular race, therefore a driver will score higher for second place in a race where there are 33 starters, compared to a race where there are only 6 starters.

All of the results are collated and a score out of 10 is awarded for the driver's performance across the season.

Finally, to be included in the final rankings for the year, all drivers must have finished at least 2 races/meetings. This rules is designed to exclude one-off drives such as Indy 500 when it was included in the World Championship.

You will probably see that the results do not differ too greatly from those achieved from the points system, but it does throw up some interesting anomolies, allowing there to be a greater recognition of the efforts of drivers who were hampered by mechanical unreliability or who were not given a proper chance.

I am the first to admit that no system is perfect, after all a very great part of how well a driver does is down to the machinery he has available to him, but it does go some way towards evening the playing field and showing the relative performance of drivers.

p_daniels@yahoo.com