F1 Stats

[Rich Reibel]

As the author of the 10-Tenths F1 helpfile I strive to keep accurate stats on race results, but I am seeing some inconsistency among the different sources as to when a car is "classified" as a race finisher. I watch the race live here in the US on Speedvision and use their results to update the helpfile every week. Often they report drivers who broke near the end of a race as finishers, while others count them as DNF's (not classified).

It appears that the top 10 finishers are all classified, but on occasion I see obvious DNF's still classified even though they are out of the top 10.

Does anyone know the rule on this?

[Gerard]

Rich, this is what the Sporting Regulations of the FIA say about this subject:

CLASSIFICATION.

166. The car placed first will be the one having covered the scheduled distance in the shortest time, or, where appropriate, passed the Line in the lead at the end of two hours. All cars will be classified taking into account the number of complete laps they have covered, and for those which have completed the same number of laps, the order in which they crossed the Line.

167. If a car takes more than twice the time of the winner's fastest lap to cover its last lap this last lap will not be taken into account when calculating the total distance covered by such car.


168. Cars having covered less than 90% of the number of laps covered by the winner (rounded down to the nearest whole number of laps), will not be classified.


169. The official classification will be published after the race. It will be the only valid result subject to any amendments which may be made under the Code and these Sporting Regulations.

[Rich Reibel]

I'm glad to see that it's not a complicated rule (not!). I guess I'll either have to check with the official FIA results, or hire Bernie's lawyer...

Thanks

[Ed-f1]

It's not that complicated really. Anyone who completes 90% of the laps covered by the winner is classified. So for the Hungarian GP if someone retired on the 70th lap they would not be classified (having only completed 69 laps out of 77) but if they retired on the 71st lap they would be classified. Sometimes a driver might spend a long time in the pits or something and finish the race but without being classified if they haven't completed more than 90% of the laps.

What I'm not sure of is whether a driver can score points if they are not classified? For example if fewer than 6 drivers are classified?