Lap times for the 2014 F1 Japanese Grand Prix

Typhoon Phanfone made a threat to ruin this 26th edition of the F1 Japanese Grand Prix at the Suzuka Circuit. Fortunately, there was enough time for a very difficult race to take place, although cars had to start after the Safety Car.

Mercedes’s Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg recorded the eight one-two finish of the season —McLaren set a record of 10 in 1988—. It is also the eight race win of 2014 for Lewis Hamilton, who gap with Rosberg to ten points.

Third podium for Vettel after having confirmed this weekend his move to Ferrari next season. On the other hand, team mate Dani Ricciardo finished fourth after overtaking Button with a pair of decisive moves.

Fourteen points were distributed among Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa, who finished sixth and seventh respectively, consolidating Williams in third place. Nico Hulkenberg took home four points, while Vergne, who finished between two Sahara Force India’s, grabbed two points, leaving the remaining one to Sergio Perez.

But this was a wet difficult race, and Adrian Sutil lost control of his car hitting the barrier in lap 43. Nothing serious happened. Sutil was able to leave the Sauber on its own. But while the crane was lifting his car, Jules Bianchi spun hitting the rescue vehicle from the back; an unfortunate incident which required immediate medical attention.

http://youtu.be/yCAt1muj-t4

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 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