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| The Championship: is it All Over at the Start? | |
| by David Wright, Australia | |
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Another season is about to start and as usual we have everyone trying to predict who will win the first race, who will do well throughout the season and who won't. At the top of these predictions is who will be World Champion driver for the year. This prediction is generally made on a combination of testing form, the ability (or lack of ability!) of the drivers and key personnel changes. However, testing form can sometimes be misleading - slower cars may test with light fuel loads to show speed (generally in an attempt to increase sponsorship), while faster cars may test with a lot of fuel to replicate race conditions and not to show their hands to the other teams. And personnel changes which seem good may turn out to cause trouble rather than improve the situation, while drivers which may have had a good previous season may turn in a lacklustre performance - especially if they have changed teams, as chemistry between a driver and the team can not always be accurately predicted. Hopefully, experienced watchers can see through the lies and make the right guesses, having seen it all before! Even if one gets all these parameters correct, one cannot predict how luck, make that mechanical reliability, will affect the season. In 1997, Mika Hakkinen was leading in Britain, Austria and at the Nurburgring, only to each in case suffer an engine failure - a possible 30 points down the drain. On the other hand, Jacques Villeneuve only suffered one mechanical failure throughout the year, as well as gaining four points from Hakkinen's engine failure in Britain, another four from Damon Hill's malfunctioning throttle in Hungary (not to mention another two which he would not have scored had Frentzen not had cruel luck when his fuel filler fell off) and six points when both McLarens went bang at the Nurburgring. Guess which driver won the Championship and which one didn't have a hope? But back to the story of predicting the winner of the Championship - how long into the season do we have to go before we know the winner of the Championship? One race? Two races? The last race? For the purposes of this article, I'll only consider recent history, the era of naturally-aspirated engines over the last ten years as the rules have remained (fairly) constant. The first race of the year
As you can see, over the last decade of naturally-aspirated engines, the winner of the Championship has won the first race of the season eight times! Only in 1989, when Mansell took the first win of the new era in an unusually reliable semi-automatic gearbox equipped Ferrari 640, and in 1997 when Jacques Villeneuve was involved in a collision at the first corner of the first lap (after qualifying on pole by 1.754 seconds) has the World Champion not won the first race. Anyway, Jacques made up for this "poor" start by winning the next two races, so straight after Melbourne, get your money on whoever wins! What is just as interesting is that without Hill's suspension failure in 1995, Jacques' leaky engine in 1996 and Coulthard's "after you" in 1998, there wouldn't be a strong correlation between winning the first race and the Championship - of course, these things did happen, so it's probably better not to speculate any further... On the other hand, the results of the first race don't predict the other positions in the championship quite as well. In the early years, it was no guide at all as many teams suffered early poor reliability, but since 1992 when it was very close to being spot-on, the good teams have tended to show their form early with accompanying good reliability. OK, so the World Champion generally wins the first race of the year - well, they'd probably win the last race of the year too if they're that good? Or would they? Read on and see if you're right... The final race of the year
Yikes! The results of the final race seem to almost oppose the trend of the first race of the year, with it being a good predictor of Championship positions to begin with, but more recently there have been some surprising or freak results - only 1996 and 1998 seem to defy this trend. Three times the World Champion has won the final race, the last two of these times clinching the title with the win (with their main rival out of the race due to a tyre/wheel problem, with a poor start seeing them driving flat out through the field to catch the leading World Champion elect - maybe history DOES repeat!) In fact the World Champion has failed to finish the final race five times, four times due to crashes - apparently the World Champion has a final race which is literally either boom or bust! A truly freak result occurred in 1995, when only Damon Hill finished (and won) out of the top six in the championship, after Jean Alesi decided he couldn't wait until 1996 to swap cars with Michael Schumacher, and David Coulthard parked against the pit wall - well, parked isn't really the right word, but... So we've looked at the first race, and the last race. How about the race when the title is actually won - do the drivers take no chances, as the commentators always seem to suggest, or do they go out after the win? The deciding race of the Championship
Please note the * indicates that the driver was a Championship contender that year (I know the chances of Michael Schumacher winning the last six races of 1992 while Nigel Mansell scored six points or less seem unlikely, but it could've happened - really - well, theoretically!) Well, if you thought the other tables showed some correlation between individual race form and overall championship positions, here's one that is of almost no help at all! Apart from seven podium finishes by the World Champion (including three wins, not forgetting Senna's gift to Berger in 1991 and Jacques Villeneuve's gift to McLaren in 1997), which seems to show that although they might not go all out for a win, a good haul of points for a podium is generally achieved suggesting some fighting spirit, the only other points of note are the driver who finishes third in the Championship has scored eight podium finishes and only one DNF, while the driver who finishes sixth in the Championship has finished all of the last ten years, for nine points finishes including one win and a 4th position finish for the last five years! Make sense out of that one! Aida in 1995 is unusual as it has all six in the points, neatly divided up into top three and then the next three - this is the only race in these tables where all six have finished in the points, although a few other races were close.
Of the last 10 deciders, one was held at the Hungaroring in Hungary (1992), at Estoril in Portugal (1993), at Adelaide in Australia (1994), at Aida in Japan (1995), at Jerez in Spain (1997), while the other 5 were in Japan at Suzuka. Even in those years where it was not the decider, Suzuka served it up, with the Senna/Irvine fight (on AND off the track!) in 1993, the rain-soaked 1994 race, Alesi's brave but ultimately in vain fight in 1995 and Villeneuve's yellow flag breach-> disqualification-> appeal-> holding up of the field and Ferrari "team tactics" in 1997. However, despite the correlation between first race winners and World Champions, many of these years have seen a battle for the Championship. The seemingly ultimate result of the title still being decided at the final race, which everyone seems to complain about if it doesn't happen, has occurred four of the last five years. In fact, the only time a Championship has been closed out early is Nigel Mansell in 1992 who tied up the title in Hungary, the 11th round of that year's Championship. And although there have ultimately been only two contenders apart from three in 1992 and 1993, this has generally been a three-way fight to begin with which then narrows down to the best two - generally from different teams apart from the 1989 and 1996 seasons, although 1992 was also really the same despite Michael Schumacher's theoretical chance at the title. This is quite surprising considering how many years there has supposedly been a dominant team and car! On the subject of domination, several of the championships have ended up with drivers who have scored early wins - Senna won the first four races (out of a total of seven wins) in 1991; Mansell won the first five races and seven out of the first nine races (out of a total of nine wins) in 1992; Prost won seven out of the first ten races in 1993; Schumacher won the first four races and six out of the first seven races (out of a total of eight wins) in 1994; and Hill won the first four races and six out of the first nine races (out of a total of eight wins) in 1996. Other points of note include Hakkinen winning his 1998 title with pairs of race wins, while Michael Schumacher scored a hat-trick of late-season wins which saw him almost seal his World Championship (Nurburgring), confirm his World Championship (Aida) and secure the Constructors' title (Suzuka). However, you shouldn't read too much into these occurrences and patterns that seem to have occurred. I can't see a good reason why they should occur again - but then again, I would've said the same last year, and you can see what happened... Note: For the purposes of this article, I have Michael Schumacher finishing 2nd in the 1997 World Championship. I know what happened at and after Jerez, but that cannot deny the fact that he did actually compete in all the races that year and was the driver fighting with Jacques Villeneuve for the title - factually it may be different to the official F.I.A. results but to suggest Villeneuve was fighting with Frentzen for the title would be even more incorrect in my opinion.
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| David Wright | © 1999 Atlas Formula One Journal. |
| Send comments to: davew@smug.adelaide.edu.au | Terms & Conditions |