The secret of a good race

When is a Formula 1 race a good race? A lot of overtaking and a nice battle for the lead are generally appreciated, but what other factors do play a role?

Although qualitative labels like “good” or “bad” are highly subjective, they can be made a lot more objective if they are collected in a large-scale survey. For this I’ve used the rate-the-race results from F1 Fanatic. This wonderful site allows readers to give their verdict on the races from 2008 onwards and with about 600 votes per race the average ratings should be quite accurate. The ratings vary strongly from race to race, but the season averages show that some seasons were rated higher than others. The average rating of the best season was more than one point higher than the average rating of the worst season (7.37 to 6.32 on a scale from 1 to 10).

Average race ratings from 2008 to now.

It’s interesting to determine the root cause of these per-season differences and therefore I’ve analyzed the ratings of the individual races. There are many factors that will affect the race ratings. I came up with these factors:

• Number of overtakes

• Number of retirements

• Track

• Weather conditions

• World Championship situation

• Whether or not there is a battle for the lead

• Whether or not the winner is the same as the previous race

Most of this data is easy to obtain, except for the overtaking data. The per-season averages can be found at Clip the Apex, while the figures per race are only available for members. So let’s first focus on the season averages.

Average number of overtakes per race per season from 2008 to now.

Clip the Apex shows the average number of overtakes per season for all races (blue) and the dry races only (orange). The number of overtakes increased substantially with the introduction of DRS and Pirelli tires in 2011, but since then the number of overtakes has decreased again. Indeed there is some correlation between the per-season number of overtakes and the average race ratings, but it’s clear that more factors play a role.

Retirements per race per season from 2008 to now.

Retirements add unpredictability and are therefore likely to raise the race rating. The reliability of the cars shows, however, a fairly predictable pattern: the number of retirements generally decreases, except for 2010 (3 new and inexperienced teams) and 2014 (complex hybrid turbo engines).

Frequency of races on Tilke tracks from 2008 to now.

The so-called “Tilkedromes” are not really liked by the fans, as they share common traits like long straights and a lot of boring constant-radius corners. However, the frequency of Tilkedromes races per season has remained more or less constant during the test period.

Frequency of wet and variable weather races from 2008 to now.

Although the weather should be pretty much random (this timescale is not long enough for climate change to play a role), the graph shows a clear trend. 2008 had by far the most wet (dark blue) races and a substantial amount of partly wet races (blue), while the fateful 2014 Japanese Grand Prix was the only wet race of the last 5 seasons. As wet races induce more unpredictability, they are usually rated higher.

Average championship lead in wins from 2008 to now.

If one driver dominates the championship, viewers may lose interest in the race. In the recent years, 2011 saw the biggest dominance by one driver, when Vettel led the championship from the first race. In 2008 (with Hamilton only winning the title in the last corner), 2010 (four title contenders in the last race) and 2012 (where Vettel won the title from a seemingly hopeless position) the championship was much tighter and more interesting, which may have led to higher race ratings.

Frequency of back-to-back wins from 2008 to now.

A bit correlated to the championship lead is the back-to-back wins frequency. However, there is a difference between seasons when only one driver dominates the season (Vettel in 2011 and 2013) or when one team dominates the season (2014 and 2015). While both cases result in many back-to-back wins, the championship lead is of course much bigger in the former case. The frequency of back-to-back wins shows how predictable the championship is. Indeed, the unpredictable 2012 season (with 7 different winners in the first 7 races) has the lowest percentage (15%) of back-to-back wins.

Frequency of races with a battle for the lead from 2008 to now.

Another important factor is whether or not there was a fight for the lead, which I define as whether or not there was a pass for the lead. Fights for the lead have always been rare in modern Formula 1, but the introduction of DRS has increased this frequency. This year, however, only in the US Grand Prix there was a genuine fight for the lead, as in Malaysia and Bahrain there was a pass for the lead because of different strategies.

Analysis

So now it’s time to estimate the combined effect of the different factors on the race rating. I’ve done several analyses in order to obtain robust results. First, I’ve tested the influence of overtaking on the race rating. As overtaking has become much easier because of DRS, it makes sense to distinguish between the number of overtakes between non-DRS and DRS years. It appears that every overtake in the non-DRS years added 0.030 points to the race rating, while in the DRS years this value was “only” 0.021 points. However, this reduction may well be caused by the higher number of overtakes in the DRS years, which may decrease the additional value of one extra overtake. In order to circumvent this problem, I’ve used the logarithm of the number of overtakes. In this case, the coefficient for the DRS years in actually higher than for the non-DRS years, which suggests that overtaking actually has become more important.

The estimated effect of the number of overtakes on the race rating with and without DRS.

The difference between the estimated coefficients is, however, not statistically significant and as there is no good reason why the DRS coefficient should be higher, I chose not to distinguish between the non-DRS and DRS years. The average effect of the logarithm of the number of overtakes on the race rating is 0.810, which means that an increase from 1 to 10 overtakes increases the race rating by almost 1.9 points (races with no overtakes cannot be analyzed in this way, but there is only one race without overtakes in the dataset), while 40 overtakes boost the rating by about 3 points.

Other factors

The analysis clearly shows that unpredictability and uncertainty in appreciated. A battle for the lead is rewarded with 0.7-0.8 points, while the ratings drop by about half a point when the championship is decided. The championship decider is generally awarded with half a point, though. Back-to-back wins cost about 0.3 points, but every car that retires boosts the race rating by 0.14 points.

The tracks are a bit difficult to control for. Firstly, I distinguished between Tilke and non-Tilke tracks. Tilke tracks do 0.3 points worse on average. When controlling for all individual tracks, the results are similar. The most notable change is that overtaking becomes more important (the coefficient increases to 0.9), which probably means that tracks where overtaking is difficult have intrinsically higher ratings than overtaking-friendly tracks.

Wet races are usually rated quite highly. Variable weather increases the race rating by 0.8-0.9 points on average and wet races add 0.6-0.8 points.

Improving the sport?

Since 2009, Formula 1 has tried to improve the show. The return of slick tires in 2009 was one step, but the most important changes where the introduction of DRS and rapidly-degrading tires in 2011. Did they improve the show? According to the race ratings, they did, but how would every season be rated if all factors (number of overtakes, championship situation, reliability, weather…) had been equal? Interestingly, it seems that 2009, the season with the lowest actual ratings, is the clear winner, followed by 2008.

Average race ratings per year the individual contributions of the most important factors.

Due to a lack of overtakes (yellow), a relatively boring championship (grey) and relatively few wet races (light blue) 2009 was not rated very highly, but apparently its structural rating was quite high. This may have to do with the extreme competitiveness of the field (as Luca Badoer found out when he replaced Massa at Ferrari). Also, compared to 2008, there were fewer weird green-table decisions. The structural values also suggest that 2010 was not as good as many people make out, possibly because the refueling ban tended to make the races more predictable, or because the reduced competitiveness of the field. The drop of the structural value was compensated by an increase in the number of overtakes and the number of retirements, though. Since 2010 the structural rating has been quite low, but interestingly, the introduction of DRS in 2011 (easy overtakes) and the change to hybrid turbo engines in 2014 (lack of noise) have not influenced the structural value a lot, even though many fans didn’t like those changes. Interestingly, the championship situation, battles for the lead and weather conditions only explain a small part of the race ratings. Tilke tracks (grey), teamorders, prematurely red flagged races and races started from behind the safety car (red) had a negative influence on the race rating.

So it seems that the secret of a good race is a nice track, a battle for the lead, variable weather, a lot of overtakes, retirements, no back-to-back winners, and, if possible, the race should also be a championship decider. This sums up the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix.