Driver vs Car: An Analysis of Formula 1 Champions
Cy Ellis
Prof. Bobbie Whitehead
Eng 110C
18Feb2024
Amongst Formula 1(F1) fans there has always been a debate about whether great cars produce great drivers, or great drivers create great cars. Last year Max Verstappen and the Red Bull Racing team dominated F1 in a manner never before seen winning 22 of 23 races as a team with Verstappen winning an unheard of 20 races. This dominance led to Max Verstappen winning his third straight World Drivers’ Championship and Red Bull’s second straight Constructors’ Championship. Prior to Red Bull’s recent dominance, it was Mercedes-AMG winning a record seven straight Drivers’ Championships matched with eight straight Constructors’ championships. For each of these dominant periods, and all the other streaks that came before them, the same debate has raged: Is it the drivers or the car? While both the driver and car play a major factor, previously conducted research proves that year-to-year success is mostly dependent on the car.
Formula 1 is widely considered the pinnacle of motorsport, and most drivers follow a similar path. It starts with kart racing in their adolescent years to Formula 3, Formula 2 and then Formula 1. Once drivers get to Formula 1, they rarely start at a top team. Mercedes drivers usually drive for Williams, Red Bull drivers usually start at Alpha Tuari, Ferrari drivers have been known to race for Sauber before donning the famous red fire suits of Ferrari. These “back marker” teams compete for points rather than wins. The expectations for drivers at these teams are much lower than at the top and this provides a training ground for promising young drivers to learn the cars and strengthen race craft without the pressure of competing for a championship. These cars are overall slower than the cars at the top of the constructor’s podium, and because of this rarely fight for podiums much less wins. Drivers who provide desirable results get contracts for open seats at the larger teams. The drivers who don’t find their way out of F1.
Unlike NASCAR and INDYCAR, the two prominent American series, Formula 1 is not a “spec” series where each driver is running a similar car. Formula 1 constructors are given a budget and a set of requirements and have free reign to design the car however they choose within the constraints. The budgets are decided by the previous year’s constructor standings. The best constructor wins the most money, the worst constructor wins the least. Within these budgets, teams must craft 2 cars for the season. Every year constructors attempt to push the boundaries of the technology at their hands to make their cars quicker than before (Young 4). The teams who create new and successful innovations rise to the top while those who fail struggle.
In the last few years, researchers have tried to quantify the effect that cars have had on the careers of great drivers. Ayrton Senna, considered one of the greatest drivers of all time, had his record-breaking season in the legendary McLaren MP-4/4. Michael Schumacher had the Ferrari SF-2000 and SF-2004 cars that dominated the field. Lewis Hamilton, arguably the greatest driver of all time, had the Mercedes W11 that may be the fastest car F1 has ever seen. And as stated earlier, Max Verstappen’s record-breaking season was powered by Red Bull’s juggernaut RB19. These drivers are highly regarded as some of the greatest to ever grace the sport, but they all have driven some of the greatest cars in the history of the sport.
In 2016, a study was done by the Sheffield Methods Institute to answer 3 important questions: who the best drivers of all time are, how much does the car matter when compared to the driver and how do these change across different weather conditions and types of tracks (Bell et al. 9). To do this, they re-scored every race from 1950-2014 using a singular standard point scoring format. This was to allow unity despite F1 changing the scoring format through the years. After allowing variables to include weather, year, track type and number of participants, they created an equation to quantify driver value. This created surprising results. As of 2014, Michael Schumacher was the winningest driver in the sport’s history by a wide margin with 91 wins and 7 championships. This equation ranked him as the eighth best driver of all time. This was in part due to his abysmal post-retirement stint for Mercedes from 2012-2014. When analyzing Schumacher as 2 different drivers, pre-retirement and post-retirement, he ranks 3rd all time. Conversely, the value of Mercedes increases when qualifying post-retirement Schumacher as a separate driver. This creates evidence that poor form is a detriment to maximizing the potential of a car. The authors of this study concluded that when analyzing consistency between teams and drivers, teams are more consistent on a year over year basis, showing us that the car plays the larger role. (Bell et al. 24).
In 2022 2 researchers conducted a follow up report analyzing drivers and teams from 2015-2021. They believed that the scoring system used by Bell was inadequate as the chosen scoring system gave zero points outside of sixth place. Focusing on the hybrid era (2014-2021), they analyzed performance based of finishing positions creating a rating comparable to Chess’s ELO ratings with a credibility rating of 89% (van Kesteren and Bergkamp, 274). The adjusted equation was accurate enough to account for Ferrari’s drop in form after being penalized for an engine that exceeded regulations. Based on these results, they concluded that race by race the teams had a larger impact on the race than the drivers (van Kesteren and Bergkamp, 284). The best example of the effect a car has is demonstrated by Kimi Räikkönen’s 2019 move from Ferrari to Alfa Romero. In 2018, his last season at Ferrari Räikkönen never finished worse than sixth. In his first season for Alfa Romero, he only had one finish better than seventh (van Kesteren and Bergkamp 275). This shows a strong correlation between the strength of the car and finishing position.
The obvious counterpoint is that the fastest cars still need fast drivers to win. In 2023 Max Verstappen’s teammate struggled to maximize performance in the same car. While Verstappen won a record 20 races, his teammate Sergio Perez won 2 of the first 4 races then was unable to challenge his teammate and spent most of the season struggling in the middle of the field. Lewis Hamilton has won 82 races and six championships at Mercedes while his teammates won a combined 30 races and a singular driver’s championship. It’s worth noting that 20 of those wins and the Driver’s Championship were won by Nico Rosberg was a driver of equal caliber as Hamilton (Results). These examples provide evidence that the driver still plays a major part in a team’s success.
At its core, Formula 1 is about technological innovation. The teams able to innovate their cars’ designs with the most success find themselves on the podium often. The teams who find podiums and wins often finish at the top of the standings and with that find themselves making the most money. While the importance of driver skill cannot be ignored, the evidence suggests that the car is the most crucial part of sustained success in Formula 1.
Works Cited
Young, Stephanie. “Formula One racing: Driver vs. technology.” Intersect: The Stanford Journal of Science, Technology, and Society 5 (2012).
Bell, Andrew, et al. “Formula for success Multilevel modelling of Formula One Driver and Constructor performance.”
van Kesteren, Erik-Jan, and Tom Bergkamp. “Bayesian analysis of Formula One race results: disentangling driver skill and constructor advantage.” Journal of quantitative analysis in sports 19.4 (2023): 273-293.
“Results.” Formula 1® – The Official F1® Website, 26 Nov. 2023 www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2023/races.html.