Greatest F1 Drivers of All Time because Science

[GrussGott]

Researchers created a “multilevel” statistical model taking into account team and driver performance between 1950 and 2014, along with the weather conditions in which the drivers competed and the tracks they drove on. Because drivers switch teams, it allowed the researchers to separate out team performance from driver performance.

Greatest F1 Drivers:

1. Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentina)
2. Alain Prost (France)
3. Jim Clark (UK)
4. Aryton Senna (Brazil)
5. Fernando Alonso (Spain)
6. Nelson Piquet (Brazil)
7. Jackie Stewart (UK)
8. Michael Schumacher (Germany)
9. Emerson Fittipaldi (Brazil)
10. Sebastian Vettel (Germany)

Here's the methodology:

[gthal]

Originally Posted by StatenEye 535i

If the superhuman Senna is 4th the model needs to be fixed to account for corruption and politics. Good post either way, just tough seeing Schumi ant Ayrton so low on a list, although Alonso is a severely underrated driver.

I hear you but the purpose of the model is to take out the car/team advantage. For those of us who are Senna fans (like me), it is difficult to separate the driver and his results from the team/car advantages (if any). When a driver appears to be great, how much is really because of what we don't see behind the scenes that isn't directly related to their personal ability?

I'm not necessarily suggesting the authors got the model correct but it is interesting, and logical, that being on the best team (with the best engineering, funding, etc, etc) has a big impact on driver performance

[///M Power-Belgium]

They lost "Niki-Lauda" probably in time...

[AriuSen]

for me SENNA would be number 1!
who ever passed 5 of the BEST driver of the moment with a worse car in the rain in 1 lap!
Not 5 HPDE driver like me, kaiv, redprist, m3number86, etc....prost, hill, shummy....that is not human

[The Wind Breezes]

This is actually an interesting chart. I don't know about the ranking of the drivers overall, but I'd definitely agree with their assessment of the relative weighting of driver vs team.

Also, many people claim Senna as their FAVORITE driver but nobody will tell you Senna, even though he was all around exceptional, was the best all around racer or fastest in the dry if they have ANY idea what they're talking about. Senna was the greatest RAIN driver of all time in F1, and frankly that is a lot more interesting.

[gthal]

Originally Posted by The Wind Breezes

This is actually an interesting chart. I don't know about the ranking of the drivers overall, but I'd definitely agree with their assessment of the relative weighting of driver vs team.

Also, many people claim Senna as their FAVORITE driver but nobody will tell you Senna, even though he was all around exceptional, was the best all around racer or fastest in the dry if they have ANY idea what they're talking about. Senna was the greatest RAIN driver of all time in F1, and frankly that is a lot more interesting.

That's why I loved him... I am scared out of my wits driving on a wet track. I hate it... yes, I know it develops skill, etc but it is also nerve wracking for me and always has been. The fact he was so skilled, confident and accomplished in the rain is what I loved because it was so easy to admire.

[solstice]

Seeing Senna drive was incredible, don't care what models or statistics say. He's number 1.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by solstice

Seeing Senna drive was incredible, don't care what models or statistics say. He's number 1.

Which is an interesting and different question ... i.e., judging not by "results" but by best driver, i.e., a driver may win less but be more skilled in more conditions (in more cars)

[bmw1racer]

Originally Posted by The Wind Breezes

Senna was the greatest RAIN driver of all time in F1, and frankly that is a lot more interesting.

Donington in 1993 was clear proof of that... Arguably the greatest drive ever in F1 history.

[overcoil]

Senna was my favorite but Prost had more fastest laps during their 88, 89, 90 rivalries and won a world championship in 89 as a teammate to Senna. Prost was very fast and intense and if you were his teammate and had a weakness he would exploit it. As for pole positions. Senna just knew how to pull a fastest pole with the least time remaining in qualifying and certainly that has to be acknowledged.
Also Jim Clark might have been a rain master. Clark and Stewart, those cars of the 1960's were crazy/dangerous/small and very fast. To win multiple championships on that era and live as Stewart had and Clark succumbed does in different ways reveal their braveness and brilliance.
It is an interesting list, and I do think Senna took cars like Toleman, Lotus and Ford powered Mclaren and drove them over a season like probably no one else could.

[EdM5]

Originally Posted by solstice

Seeing Senna drive was incredible, don't care what models or statistics say. He's number 1.

^^
exactly.

[Blksnowflake]

Lol, seeing the threaded title I knew this would bring out the butthurt parade, particularly from the Senna crowd.
People are emotionally attached to him due to how he passed on, but he was like many of the greats. They all have to be compared, equally, and the results always show him in 3rd place or higher, and the butthurted come out in droves like, similar to saying something bad about Jobs in front of an obsessed Apple fan....

[ijnoj09]

Originally Posted by AriuSen

for me SENNA would be number 1!
who ever passed 5 of the BEST driver of the moment with a worse car in the rain in 1 lap!
Not 5 HPDE driver like me, kaiv, redprist, m3number86, etc....prost, hill, shummy....that is not human

That donington race was one of the greatest driving I've seen when he passed them all up on lap 1.

[gunnersfan10]

Would love to see one of these charts for IRL or Endurance drivers. How about some love for the guys who could switch series and be competitive. Andretti, Gurney, etc. And let's not forget Mark Webber has done pretty darn well at Porsche(in arguably the best car). I also remember watching a special on SPEED channel years ago about JP Montoya and Jeff Gordon switching cars at Indianapolis and the Williams guys being seriously impressed with his times. But for real Mario Andretti could win a F1 race on Sunday and a lawnmower race on Monday, guy was amazing.

Still a neat way to look at F1 talent, because I agree that having the right car is a bigger part of winning than the driver. Thanks for posting!

[MKSixer]

I find this to be an interesting exercise but a list that doesn't include Niki Lauda and Lewis Hamilton is extremely suspect.

Hamilton is the only driver of the current crop and possibly the only driver ever, thus far, to win a race in EVERY season that he has been active in F1. I know that some people will say that he has had rocket ships his entire career but this cannot be further from the truth.

MP4-24...UGH. It still has fleas. Thought it was developed a bit he won it that rat-trap.

Similarly, with rare exception, he has had the measure on each and every one of his team mates. And no one please chime in on the fact that Button (Whom I love) has more points in aggregate than HAM during the shared time at Macca.

Alonso, 1-0, run off. Button, beat 2-1. KOV, 2-0. Rosberg, 3-0.

The only real measure of F1 drivers it to beat your team mate. HAM is 8-1 with KOV being the only relative duffer. (KOV is still a fantastic driver, they all are.)

Cheers-mk

[EdM5]

Originally Posted by MKSixer

I find this to be an interesting exercise but a list that doesn't include Niki Lauda and Lewis Hamilton is extremely suspect.

Hamilton is the only driver of the current crop and possibly the only driver ever, thus far, to win a race in EVERY season that he has been active in F1. I know that some people will say that he has had rocket ships his entire career but this cannot be further from the truth.

MP4-24...UGH. It still has fleas. Thought it was developed a bit he won it that rat-trap.

Similarly, with rare exception, he has had the measure on each and every one of his team mates. And no one please chime in on the fact that Button (Whom I love) has more points in aggregate than HAM during the shared time at Macca.

Alonso, 1-0, run off. Button, beat 2-1. KOV, 2-0. Rosberg, 3-0.

The only real measure of F1 drivers it to beat your team mate. HAM is 8-1 with KOV being the only relative duffer. (KOV is still a fantastic driver, they all are.)

Cheers-mk

Agreed. The crazy thing is that Hamilton beat the highly respected Alonso...in his rookie F1 year
Hamilton outperformed Rosberg as well. The same Rosberg destroyed his teammate M. Schumacher for 3 consecutive years.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by MKSixer

I find this to be an interesting exercise but a list that doesn't include Niki Lauda and Lewis Hamilton is extremely suspect.

This is just one view of a complex thing, but when you look at the data ... well ... Lauda just doesn't make the cut. If you have stomach (and head) for analytics, I've attached the full paper ... they didn't cut corners

On Lauda ...

Other surprises are the low ranking of champion drivers such as Niki Lauda (142nd) and Alberto Ascari (76th). Lauda only performed notably well when racing for Ferrari (1974-1977) and his results dropped when racing for other, lower achieving teams.

On Hamilton...

We were additionally able to produce rankings specific to certain weather conditions and track types(not shown). In general, these showed similar results – Fangio remained top in all but one of the categories and the top drivers still populate the top positions. However there are some interesting points to note. In particular, whilst the reputations of Ayton Senna and Michael Schumacher for being very good wet weather drivers are justified by the data (pre-2006 Schumacher is estimated to 21 be the second best wet weather driver of all time, whilst Senna is the third best and ahead of his rival Alain Prost), the similar reputation of Lewis Hamilton is not born out statistically (his ranking does not differ between wet and dry conditions).

And more discussion ...

The first point to note is that in most respects, our results match those of others: nine of our top ten – Fangio, Prost, Schumacher, Alonso, Clark, Senna, Stewart, Fittipaldi and Vettel – are considered by most models and experts of be among the best drivers of all time. Our model agrees with previous statistical models (Phillips 2014, Eichenberger and Stadelmann 2009) in ranking Prost above Senna (in contrast to many subjective rankings), and in viewing drivers such as Nigel Mansell, Mario Andretti, Gilles Villeneuve and Mika Hakkinen as rather overrated by experts.

Our model differs from previous statistical attempts in not throwing up any particular surprises in the top 10, in comparison to Eichenberger and Stadelmann (who placed Mike Hawthorn in 5th) and Phillips (who placed James Hunt in 6th). Whilst they argue each has been underrated by experts, our model suggests otherwise (with Hawthorn and Hunt in 34th and 95th place respectively). Part of the reason for our low positioning of Hunt compared to both Phillips and Eichenberger and Stadelman is his high rate of retirement, and the relatively high penalty that we place on not finishing (compared to Phillips, for example, who does not include non-driver failures in his analysis). The high performance (7th place) of Nico Rosberg in Phillips 2014 was, as Phillips suggests, a result of his partnership with an out-of-form world champion (Michael Schumacher), which artificially improved his results. In our analysis, when Schumacher is separated into two drivers, pre- and postretirement, Rosberg’s performance against the latter appears less impressive and he is placed 46th.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in our results is the high ranking of Christian Fittipaldi at number 11, despite only competing in three seasons and never making a podium finish. This ranking occurs because C. Fittipaldi consistently outperformed his team-mates, and because he never raced for a ‘good’ team, the standard required to get a high ranking is lower. More specifically, C. Fittipaldi’s teammates had relatively high rates of retirement: he gains his high ranking by being able to successfully keep a relatively poor car on the track. Of course, this model cannot say that C. Fittipaldi would have won championships had he raced for a better team, and his confidence intervals are wider than most of the other highly ranked drivers, but the results suggest that in one aspect of good race driving at least – that is, keeping a relatively unreliable car on the road – he should be highly regarded.

Other surprises are the low ranking of champion drivers such as Niki Lauda (142nd) and Alberto Ascari (76th). Lauda only performed notably well when racing for Ferrari (1974-1977) and his results dropped when racing for other, lower achieving teams. Ascari’s performances can also be at least in part attributed to his team (Ferrari); he also had a high performing team mate, and his result will be shrunk back to the mean because he raced in relatively few (31) F1 races (see section 3.3).

Full dork view of the top 20:

[MKSixer]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

This is just one view of a complex thing, but when you look at the data ... well ... Lauda just doesn't make the cut. If you have stomach (and head) for analytics, I've attached the full paper ... they didn't cut corners

And more discussion ...

I read the abstract and through section 3.1. Their method of apportionment of failure skews the results. Now keep in mind that their paper is their paper and while I am versed at statistics due to the necessity of my profession, I am no statistician. Further, I'm need to dig deeper into the remaining methodology

I just happen to know that if a man who has finished in the top 5 of the WDC for each season that he has been in F1, has won the WDC 3x's, has incredible rain wins, and the 3rd highest hit-rate for pole positions in the history of the sport and is in the top 5 of all winning drivers isn't on the list, then the methodology must be flawed. Think Bumble Bee and aerodynamics.

Cheers-mk

[JohnnyCanuck]

It makes you wonder about careers cut short. Would Senna be even higher on this list?

The F1 drive I can never forget watching was the Gilles Villeneuve vs. Rene Arnoux battle for second place in the 1979 French Grand Prix

.

[MKSixer]

Originally Posted by JohnnyCanuck

It makes you wonder about careers cut short. Would Senna be even higher on this list?

The F1 drive I can never forget watching was the Gilles Villeneuve vs. Rene Arnoux battle for second place in the 1979 French Grand Prix (

).

One of my all-time favs!!

[M3Bimmer77]

Senna is the best, period.

[sirantsE90]

Have to leave this here. Your title reminded me of the scene in rush.


Niki Lauda: You English, you're such assholes. You know my position. Twenty percent risk.
James Hunt: No, no, no, Niki, don't bring the percentages into this. Don't be a pro. The minute you do that, you kill what's good about this. You kill the sport.

And btw, senna is the greatest.: