538 did their numerical analysis to rank the best F1 drivers of all time. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/formula-one-racing/ Haven't seen this posted yet, so I'm just going to leave it here without comment.
Yawn . . . Senna followed by Schuey. I think Schuey was better. And I think Hakkinen was better than both.
I did not read the explanation but the list itself looks odd... Lewis and Seb in front of Fangio? Damon, DC and Nico in front of Clark??? Webber in front of Ascari and Stewart????? Seriously? But give them numbers and all of the sudden fiction becomes facts The Hamilton fans certainly will like it and see another "proof".... Gesendet von meinem SM-G930F mit Tapatalk
Stupid. Gilles Villeneuve doesn't make the top 30. And if that's not bad enough,... Jacques Villeneuve does.
Nate Silver has really built that webpage into a real business. I thought 538 (named for the # of electoral college votes) was just for politics. Guess he does F1 (and after peaking at their webpage, a whole bunch of other stuff) too.
Their rating system isn't complex enough to give a result based in reality. It misses a lot of variables and gets skewed because of the zero sum basis of Elo. If a driver doesn't finish a race it doesn't count that race in the stat at all.... come on. They obviously aren't F1 fans, maybe on the surface, but not knowledgeable enough to use as good source.
Nate Silver pretty much lost his mojo in 2016. I think this ranking is ridiculous as noted in Peter's and Simon's posts. One cannot make valid comparisons across eras because changes in the cars, tracks, rules, points systems, career longevities, etc., simply cannot be adequately adjusted for. Just look at some of the names above Andretti and Moss. Silly.
The F1 rankings are based on the best 5 seasons of each racer's career. Way too many variables to be really valuable, but I would have guessed that any 5 time champion would be at the top, in other words, Schumacher, Prost, Fangio 1-3 in whatever order you like.
Any listing based on a formula is going to be faulty. For Jim Clark to be ranked that low is a farce. Similarly, the current issue of ESPN The Magazine has ratings, also done to a formula, of the world's "most famous" athletes, and it is similarly a joke. The only racing driver on the top 100 is Lewis Hamilton in 68th, while it has NBA players like James Harden and Dwayne Wade in the top 35. Are you going to tell me that the average man on the street in Europe or the Far East is more likely to have heard of those basketball players than Hamilton (or Vettel, Alonso, Raikkonen)? I don't think so!
BREAKING!!!! It took me 16 years to develop my own system to rank the Greatest FerrariChat Members of All Time. Here are the results (top ten): 1) Jeronimo GTO 2) Jeronimo GTO 3) Jeronimo GTO 4) Jeronimo GTO 5) Jeronimo GTO 6) Jeronimo GTO 7) Jeronimo GTO 8) Jeronimo GTO 9) Jeronimo GTO 10) Jeronimo GTO
So, a 3 times WDC and the only driver to win in his OWN car doesn't make the list but Webber does ??!! There are so many on that list in the wrong position that it's a waste of bandwidth
Justin Moore is a computer scientist who occasionally dabbles in college football and Formula One analytics. He runs the Tempo-Free Gridiron and can be found at @TFGridiron. Rachael Dottle is an associate visual journalist for FiveThirtyEight. @rachaeldottle Neil Paine is a senior sportswriter for FiveThirtyEight. Yeh ok ... load of old tosh.
