Lap times for the 2014 F1 Russian Grand Prix

The first time in the history of Formula One than a race is held in Russia —check this map—, and also the first Constructors’ Championship for Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team. A well deserved championship given the merciless dominance of their cars. Such is that, that Rosberg was able to finish in P2 running on medium tyres the whole race after a first lap lock-up ruined the performance of his tyres, thus pitting for a new set of medium tyres.

A similar strategy was followed by Felipe Massa —started in P18— switching to a soft set of tyres after the first lap hoping for a Safety Car to be released. The Brazilian was closely following the pace of Nico Rosberg but got stuck behind Sergio Perez for several laps. This forced Massa to pit once again ultimately finishing in P11. Similar initial strategy, very different outcome. On the other hand, Vatteri Bottas claimed another podium finish this season after a fantastic race.

Button and Magnussen finished in P4 and P5, making this one of the best race finishes for the team this season. Fernando Alonso could have finished in between the two drivers, and even fight for P4 where it not for a sloppy pit stop in lap 25.

Ricciardo and Vettel also finished one after the other further strengthening Red Bull’s 2nd position in the Constructors’ Championship. Raikkonen managed to grab two points, crucial in keeping alive Ferrari’s duel against Williams for P3 in the Championship.

Also, worth to mention Sergio Perez’s fifth consecutive finish in the points, tied on points with Kimi.

Following, I provide some 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

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