Lap times for the 2015 F1 British Grand Prix

Since 2008 the British Grand Prix has not seen a British manufacturer —McLaren Mercedes— win the race. This year, Williams Mercedes had the chance to amend the situation but, somehow, they messed it up. The race start was superb, with Massa overtaking both Mercedes and Bottas following close behind taking P2 from Hamilton after the Safety Car went out in lap 3. But what could’ve been a 1-2 for the Grove team ended up being a 4-5 finish.

Mercedes pace has no match; but I keep thinking that Williams could have done better to protect at least one of the drivers from Hamilton’s undercut. At least while the track was dry, because Williams’s wet pace was significantly inferior. They at least had the chance to make it to the podium, but decided to stop for intermediate rain tyres a little bit too late. Vettel opted to change tyres a lap earlier on lap 43, the same as Hamilton, which turned out to be the sweet spot, allowing the German to undercut Massa.

Kimi opted to pit in too early, during the first light shower. This decision cost him the 5th place as he was the only driver in the top 5 to do so. Kvyat and Hulkenberg both delayed the move into intermediates to lap 44. The cost of pitting on lap 44 was, in the best case, about 7 seconds. A huge difference, and the key for Vettel climbing to the podium. Perez could have also posed a thread to Kimi’s position, but stopping late for intermediates and a poor performance in the wet gave him 2 points.

And 1 point for Alonso in the Driver’s Championship. The first one this season for the Spaniard. This was unexpected as McLaren Honda seemed to have taken a step back in terms of performance. Not to forget the huge impact against Button’s car during the first lap mêlée, which sent the Briton to watch the race from the Paddock.

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

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