Lap times for the 2014 F1 German Grand Prix

Not a good race start for Massa who didn’t complete his first lap after another incident in the first stages of a race, this time with Magnussen. Other than that, it was a good weekend for Williams as Bottas secured his third straight podium finish, with Hamilton close behind in P3 but with almost worn out tyres. After a start from P20 following an accident during Q1 and a gearbox change, securing 15 points is a clear indicator of the superiority of Mercedes this year. Even without the FRIC.

Further back, Alonso’s ability to score points race after race and to battle on equal terms with Red Bull’s apparently superior cars shows us why he is one of the greatest drivers in F1 history.

Following, I provide the plots so you may draw your own conclusions.

Contents

Average pace

This plot shows the difference to the average pace of the race winner. That is, the difference to the average lap time, including pit stops. The steeper the curve, the faster the lap; and as the curves are generated from cumulative sums of lap times, a negative slope implies a lap time which is quicker that the average.

Position

This one is straightforward; it shows the position of the driver each lap.

Lap time statistics

This is a box-and-whiskers plot. It depicts each driver’s laps through their quartiles. The whiskers represent the lowest datum still within 1.5 IQR of the lower quartile, and the highest datum still within 1.5 IQR of the upper quartile. Suspected outliers are more than 1.5 IQR but less than 3 IQR above Q3 or below Q1 and are represented by an open circle. Anything 3 IQR above Q3 or below Q1 is represented by a filled circle.

Driver championship points

This plot is lets us see a drivers progress during the season in terms of points towards the championship. Both Hamilton and Rosberg are alarmingly increasing their gap with the rest of the drivers.

Finish status

Here we have a bar chart showing each drivers finish status, i.e., whether the car finished the race or what was the cause of the retirement. Source: Ergast Developer API