Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Scorin' in the Rain -- Alabama 2014

Hello Internet! It's Guido, back with another Scoring Indy update. This week, I've got the scores from the Grand Prix of Alabama; an update on the Chase for My Heart; and some tools for us to look at the season so far. Let's get too it!


Alabama 2014

Here are the scores:

FinishDriverGridLedCompletedA.R.PRace ScoreRSWC Points
1Hunter-Reay340691.5588.0910
2Andretti91694.5161.608
3Dixon51694.3254.816
4Pagenaud100697.6553.824
5Power115693.3050.352
6Wilson161699.0054.155
7Hinchcliffe20695.9439.15
8Newgarden40698.2636.23
9Kanaan2306910.9651.793
10Kimball1706915.4137.62
11Briscoe2006913.6840.311
12Hawksworth2206913.7139.94
13Sato1406916.5425.35
14Conway2106916.6830.40
15Bourdais1206911.9723.08
16Huertas1506915.9719.40
17Rahal1806915.7020.48
18Saavedra13116915.7015.49
19Castroneves606913.834.11
20Servia1906819.0110.16
21Montoya806815.63-0.72
22Aleshin1106317.00-1.16
23Munoz702913.86-1.29


Observations

- First of all, because of the rain delay, this wound up being a timed race. I won't spill virtual ink on debating the merits or not of such events. This throws a little bit of a wrench in my normal scoring practice, since a lot of that is based on percentage of race distance completed. So, what I've done here is just to pretend that it was a 69 lap race, since the leader completed 69 laps. Simple enough.

- Rain, it seems, is the great equalizer. Three Top 10 finishers started the race outside those Top 10 positions. That's not rare for IndyCar Series races, but it's rare for Barber. I'm pretty sure that the reason this 2014 race seems to get the "boring" tag is because the last green flag stint looked more like 2010 at Barber Motorsports Park than 2012 or '13. But, the box score looks very little like the starting grid.

- Because you have driver moving up (see Kanaan, Tony and Wilson, Justin) and some substantial backward movement within the Top 10 (see Newgarden, Josef and Hinchcliffe, James) you have some shuffling in the distribution of scores. I'm certainly not used to seeing P9 score in the 50s, of course I'm not used to seeing the P9 driver start back in P23 either.


RSWC Update

DriverPointsDifference
Power20--
Hunter-Reay16-4
Conway10-10
Dixon10-10
Pagenaud9-11
Castroneves8-12
Andretti8-12
Wilson8-12
Montoya6-14
Munoz5-15
Aleshin4-16
Kanaan3-17
Saavedra3-17
Huertas2-18
Newgarden2-18
Servia1-19
Sato1-19
Briscoe1-19


- So, this has tightened up a little. RHR's win and Dixon's points performance pull them within a race of Power, joining Mike Conway (Destroyer of (Dry) Worlds) in the double-digits. These point totals will be more descriptive as we continue throughout the season, but for now, they simply give us a start on our little fake championship.

- From time to time, I like to compare these to the IndyCar Series points standings. Here are the Top 8 in each side by side:

                RSWC                                    IndyCar

1              Power                                       Power
2              Hunter-Reay                           Hunter-Reay
3              Conway                                   Pagenaud
4              Dixon                                       Dixon
5              Pagenaud                                Conway
6              Castroneves                           Andretti
7              Andretti                                  Wilson
8              Wilson                                     Castroneves

- You'll see that it's the same drivers in a different order. This is because they're based on different things. Series points are based on where drivers finish races (as they should be), whereas RSWC points are based on a driver's Race Score, which is a measure of relative performance based on both a driver's starting position and the rest of the field. For instance, at the Grand Prix of Alabama this weekend, Tony Kanaan had a Race Score of 51.79 finishing P9, whereas Will Power scored 50.35 finishing P5. This indicates that they had fairly similarly strong drives, with Tony's charge to the lead pack being slightly more impressive than Will's holding on to the Top 5.


Hall of Averages

Here are the updated Average Scores for each driver:

DriverAverage Score
Power71.95
Hunter-Reay58.64
Pagenaud54.69
Dixon51.16
Wison43.43
Conway39.49
Castroneves37.05
Kanaan37.03
Newgarden34.72
Saavedra33.87
Rahal32.88
Andretti32.67
Montoya31.11
Briscoe30.94
Servia*30.19
Aleshin29.44
Huertas27.93
Sato27.49
Munoz24.59
Bourdais22.30
Hawksworth19.60
Hinchcliffe18.15
Kimball17.91

* Denotes an Incomplete Schedule

- Here we see that everyone is regressing back to the middle a little bit. And, "the middle" seems to be somewhere in the mid-30s.

- This, also, will tell us more as the season goes along, but for now let's notice what it's doing. As, I said above the top seems to be moving into the middle. There are fewer drivers with averages in the 40s than there were just last race. The bottom of the table is also moving into the middle, however. After Long Beach, three drivers had single-digit average scores. Now, zero drivers have such averages. I'm not saying that a 19.60 average is necessarily good, but I'm sure that Jack Hawksworth would be much more happy about that than the 9.44 that he averaged after two races.


Chase for My Heart

ChaserLBH (Race Finish)ALA (A.R.P.)
Power23.30
Dixon124.32
Andretti84.51
Pagenaud57.65
Newgarden198.26
Wilson169.00
Kanaan1810.96
Bourdais1411.97
Briscoe1713.68
Castroneves1113.83
Munoz313.86
Rahal1315.70
Hunter-Reay20OUT
Hinchcliffe21OUT
Sato22OUT
Kimball23OUT
Key:BEST
SAFE
ELIMINATED

- Overall, we saw a much better performance by the Chasers this time out. While practically every driver in the Chase for My Heart finished in the back half of the race in Long Beach, most of the Chasers had superb Average Running Positions in the Grand Prix of Alabama.

- As you can see by the delightfully color-coded chart above, this week we say goodbye to: Ryan Briscoe, Helio Castroneves, Carlos Munoz, and Graham Rahal. You gave it a good shot, gentlemen, but none of you will be my new (and entirely arbitrary) favorite driver.

- This leaves us with the following eight, going into the Grand Prix of Indianapolis:

Will Power
Scott Dixon
Marco Andretti
Simon Pagenaud
Josef Newgarden
Justin Wilson
Tony Kanaan
Sebastien Bourdais

- At the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, I'll make the cut from eight down to four. The determining factor for this cut will be Race Score. I haven't made a cut based on Race Score yet, and since that's what I do, I feel that it's high time!


Prediction Review

I'm not looking forward to this part. Let's get it over with...

#HIGPA Prediction 1) Sebastien Bourdais rides that P12 start all the way into the RSWC Points.

- VERDICT -- Nope. Could have. Got penalized. Didn't. 0 for 1.

#HIGPA Prediction 2) I'll take Power and Newgarden to win. You get the field.

- VERDICT -- False. These predictions are hard. Even taking two drivers against the field is hard. I still like this pick. I think I'd have liked it better in the dry, but Power could still have done it if he hadn't taken the scenic route around the hairpin on lap 16 there. Alas, he did and RHR won. 0 for 2.

#HIGPA Prediction 3) Montoya is not the lowest-finishing Penske.

- VERDICT -- No. He was not. Again, he could have been, but went off-tracking there. Not my day... 0 for 3.

#HIGPA Prediction 4) Will Power puts more than one race (ie 10 points) between himself and the rest of the RSWC Field.

- VERDICT -- He actually came close to this. Hunter-Reay's race win (and full RSWC points), however pulled him within 4 points of Power. So I'm wrong again. 0 for 4. Let's move on.


Stay Tuned

Well, that's the Grand Prix of Alabama in an nutshell. Weird race with weird rain. Some solid performances, and some performances that I'm sure were done just to throw a wrench in my predictions. In any event, it's almost May, and I'm ready! Be sure to follow @ScoringIndy on Twitter for blog updates and my truly terrible race predictions.

-- Guido

Friday, April 25, 2014

Previewing Alabama 2014

Hello Internet! This is Guido, back in the saddle with another Scoring Indy update. This week, I'll take a look at last year at Barber Motorsports Park, and look forward to this year. I'll also give a quick update on my quest for a new (and completely arbitrary) favorite IndyCar driver: the Chase for my Heart. Let's get to it!


Alabama 2013

Here's how things looked last year there at Barber:

FinishDriverGridLedCompletedScore
1Hunter-Reay1539085.57
2Dixon409063.50
3Castroneves6259072.38
4Kimball539061.81
5Power299055.85
6Pagenaud1309058.87
7Andretti709051.00
8Wilson809036.54
9Newgarden2209059.62
10Vautier309019.23
11Tagliani1509038.46
12Viso1609036.54
13Kanaan1909038.46
14Sato1209021.15
15Servia1809028.85
16Bourdais2309034.62
17Hildebrand2409032.69
18de Silvestro140909.62
19Allmendinger10090-1.92
20Saavadra9090-7.69
21Rahal2109011.54
22Carpenter2608917.22
23Jakes11086-14.36
24Beatriz250657.16
25Franchitti17042-3.33
26Hinchcliffe25031.86


Observations

- For all the improvements that the IR/DW-12 chassis has made to the racing at Barber, it is still a racer's racetrack, and it is still dang hard to make up positions on that circuit. Only two of the Top 10 finishers started outside those Top 10 grid spots in 2013, and those were occupied by two drivers in Pagenaud and Newgarden that no one would say got there by chance over skill. (2012 was similar, with only 3 of the Top 10, starting outside the first 5 rows.)

- Based on that, if you're looking for top finishers at this year's Alabama race, look at the top qualifiers. And, if there's anyone who can make up spots I'd suggest the two gentlemen above. If both of them start high in the field, I'd suggest Tony Kanaan or Sebastien Bourdais based on last year's performance. (Bourdais also looked good at Barber in 2012, and that was with a Lotus engine.)

- The seeds of Kimball's Mid-Ohio win were sown on the undulating hills of Barber Motorsports Park. Maybe (and I feel like I'm way out on a limb here) this race can turn around Kimball's unsatisfactory start to the 2014 campaign.


The Chase for my Heart

Here's where we stand with the Chase for my Heart going into the Grand Prix of Alabama:

ChaserLBH (Race Finish)ALA (A.R.P.)
Power2
Munoz3
Pagenaud5
Andretti8
Castroneves11
Dixon12
Rahal13
Bourdais14
Wilson16
Briscoe17
Kanaan18
Newgarden19
Hunter-Reay20
Hinchcliffe21
Sato22
Kimball23
Key:BEST
SAFE
ELIMINATED


This leaves us with a Chase field of the following 12 drivers:

- Will Power
- Carlos Munoz
- Simon Pagenaud
- Marco Andretti
- Helio Castroneves
- Scott Dixon
- Graham Rahal
- Sebastien Bourdais
- Justin Wilson
- Ryan Briscoe
- Tony Kanaan
- Josef Newgarden

And, this weekend I will make the cut from 12 drivers down to 8. That determination will be made based on Average Running Position (regardless of laps completed). So, if one of these 12 drivers grabs the pole; finishes Lap 1 in the lead; and then parks it in the grass citing something "mechanical" I'll know that it's done out of love for me.


Stay Tuned

As always, follow @ScoringIndy on Twitter to receive my truly terrible race predictions, which will be up sometime after qualifying. If you follow me there, you'll also get blog updates. And, I can promise you that those are WAY better than my race predictions.

Let's go racing!

-- Guido