Lap times for the 2015 F1 Canadian Grand Prix

Vettel and Verstappen did both carry penalties into the Grand Prix. Vettel for a red flag infraction in FP3 and Verstappen two separate infractions for a total of 15 grid places. Button meanwhile was granted permission to start the race directly behind Vettel and Verstappen.

At the front, both Mercedes cars would lead the race from start to end. Although far superior to the rest, Nico Rosberg was still a step behind Hamilton and had no chance to challenge him despite every effort to save some electronic hybrid power for an eventual surprise attack at the end.

Ferrari were second in terms of pace this race despite Räikkönen —with the fastest lap of the race— being unable to keep P3 against Bottas, who secured Williams’s first podium of the season. Räikkönen’s mistake, a spin at turn 10 hairpin.

The spin is exactly the same story than last year. No problems in practice and for some reason both out-laps there’s something odd happening. It just gives a massive kind of throttle release and you cannot control it. So it’s not ideal but it is what it is.

On the other hand, Vettel was able to climb from 18th to fifth, despite the difficulty to progress in the early laps. Fortunately Ferrari were able to solve the problems in the F15T which showed an impressive pace; enough to grant Vettel a podium if he had made it into Q3.

Another driver who had to recover several positions was Massa. The Brazilian started the race 15th after problems in qualifying and ended up in P6 followed by an exultant Maldonado. Pastor Maldonado’s seventh place finish in the Canadian Grand Prix marks his best finish in F1 for 46 races and gives the Venezuelan his first points of the year. Hulkenberg, Kvyat, and Grosjean also made it into the points.

Following, I provide some plots so you may draw your own conclusions. You can also compare with last year’s Canadian Grand Prix.

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 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.

Team championship points

This plot shows us the teams’s progress during the season in terms of points towards the championship. Mercedes is a large step ahead of the rest.

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