[Official] Singapore Grand Prix 2024

[S griffin]

Verstappen back on form at Singapore, but not enough to beat Norris. Lando just needs to keep winning and hope Verstappen has a bit of bad luck. Could easily happen

Colapinto is really impressing. Surprising choice to begin with, but now looking inspired. Shame we won’t see Ricciardo anymore though. At least he leaves with his head held high

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Greem

I'll stand back now while crmalcolm does the number crunching

Crunched:

Just on main races only, with the assumption that 20 cars were entered for each round.
I also realised that, despite my last post, there might be a difference depending on how you treat retirees in the inverse scoring.

On raw results alone, scoring 20-1, the WDC would read:
Max Verstappen - 311
Lando Norris - 304
Oscar Piastri - 296
Charles Leclerc - 285
Lewis Hamilton - 260
Carlos Sainz Jr. - 251
George Russell - 238
Sergio Pérez - 223
Fernando Alonso - 206
Nico Hülkenberg - 166
Lance Stroll - 147
Yuki Tsunoda - 133
Daniel Ricciardo - 132
Esteban Ocon - 129
Pierre Gasly - 123
Alexander Albon - 120
Kevin Magnussen - 117
Valtteri Bottas - 88
Zhou Guanyu - 84
Logan Sargeant - 52
Franco Colapinto - 32
Oliver Bearman - 25
Liam Lawson - 0

[crmalcolm]

The next way to look at it was based on inverse scoring.
The challenge here is how do you score Lawson for the rounds he hasn't competed in. If 1 point is the best score, then 0 is even better!

Because it was posed as an aggregate, then the worst score has to be equal to the total number of competitors in the overall championship.

What does this mean? As more drivers enter, the high scores from early rounds are pushed up.

Before any 'manipulation', the standing would be:
Max Verstappen - 69
Lando Norris - 74
Oscar Piastri - 82
Charles Leclerc - 95
Lewis Hamilton - 120
Carlos Sainz Jr. - 131
George Russell - 144
Sergio Pérez - 159
Fernando Alonso - 172
Nico Hülkenberg - 214
Lance Stroll - 233
Daniel Ricciardo - 250
Yuki Tsunoda - 251
Esteban Ocon - 251
Pierre Gasly - 261
Kevin Magnussen - 265
Alexander Albon - 266
Valtteri Bottas - 292
Zhou Guanyu - 298
Logan Sargeant - 338
Franco Colapinto - 376
Oliver Bearman - 385
Liam Lawson - 414

[crmalcolm]

The initial post raised the question of how a team could 'manipulate' the system.

Assuming it was Red Bull, looking to use either Perez or the VCARB drivers to manipulate Verstappen's scores in relation to Norris, the first scenario is based on the 20-1 scoring.
In this scoring method, they need to be able to drop one of those three drivers behind Verstappen, but remain ahead of Norris.
As far as I can tell - there have been no races this season where that was an option.


So, onto the inverse scoring. The nuance here comes in being able to push up the score of non-finishes by adding drivers to the championship.

In this case, it actually would work in Red Bull's favour to keep Ricciardo in the car for the rest of the season due to the retirement of Verstappen in R3.
Conversely, Norris would benefit if McLaren could run a new driver every race between now and the end of the season.
Increasing the entrants to the WDC by 6 would push up Verstappen's score by 6 points - giving Norris a 1 point lead in the championship.

[Richard C]

Interesting analysis. Thanks for spending the time to do that and share results.

Richard