Alabama 2014
Here are the scores:
| Finish | Driver | Grid | Led | Completed | A.R.P | Race Score | RSWC Points |
| 1 | Hunter-Reay | 3 | 40 | 69 | 1.55 | 88.09 | 10 |
| 2 | Andretti | 9 | 1 | 69 | 4.51 | 61.60 | 8 |
| 3 | Dixon | 5 | 1 | 69 | 4.32 | 54.81 | 6 |
| 4 | Pagenaud | 10 | 0 | 69 | 7.65 | 53.82 | 4 |
| 5 | Power | 1 | 15 | 69 | 3.30 | 50.35 | 2 |
| 6 | Wilson | 16 | 1 | 69 | 9.00 | 54.15 | 5 |
| 7 | Hinchcliffe | 2 | 0 | 69 | 5.94 | 39.15 | |
| 8 | Newgarden | 4 | 0 | 69 | 8.26 | 36.23 | |
| 9 | Kanaan | 23 | 0 | 69 | 10.96 | 51.79 | 3 |
| 10 | Kimball | 17 | 0 | 69 | 15.41 | 37.62 | |
| 11 | Briscoe | 20 | 0 | 69 | 13.68 | 40.31 | 1 |
| 12 | Hawksworth | 22 | 0 | 69 | 13.71 | 39.94 | |
| 13 | Sato | 14 | 0 | 69 | 16.54 | 25.35 | |
| 14 | Conway | 21 | 0 | 69 | 16.68 | 30.40 | |
| 15 | Bourdais | 12 | 0 | 69 | 11.97 | 23.08 | |
| 16 | Huertas | 15 | 0 | 69 | 15.97 | 19.40 | |
| 17 | Rahal | 18 | 0 | 69 | 15.70 | 20.48 | |
| 18 | Saavedra | 13 | 11 | 69 | 15.70 | 15.49 | |
| 19 | Castroneves | 6 | 0 | 69 | 13.83 | 4.11 | |
| 20 | Servia | 19 | 0 | 68 | 19.01 | 10.16 | |
| 21 | Montoya | 8 | 0 | 68 | 15.63 | -0.72 | |
| 22 | Aleshin | 11 | 0 | 63 | 17.00 | -1.16 | |
| 23 | Munoz | 7 | 0 | 29 | 13.86 | -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
| Driver | Points | Difference |
| Power | 20 | -- |
| Hunter-Reay | 16 | -4 |
| Conway | 10 | -10 |
| Dixon | 10 | -10 |
| Pagenaud | 9 | -11 |
| Castroneves | 8 | -12 |
| Andretti | 8 | -12 |
| Wilson | 8 | -12 |
| Montoya | 6 | -14 |
| Munoz | 5 | -15 |
| Aleshin | 4 | -16 |
| Kanaan | 3 | -17 |
| Saavedra | 3 | -17 |
| Huertas | 2 | -18 |
| Newgarden | 2 | -18 |
| Servia | 1 | -19 |
| Sato | 1 | -19 |
| Briscoe | 1 | -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:
| Driver | Average Score |
| Power | 71.95 |
| Hunter-Reay | 58.64 |
| Pagenaud | 54.69 |
| Dixon | 51.16 |
| Wison | 43.43 |
| Conway | 39.49 |
| Castroneves | 37.05 |
| Kanaan | 37.03 |
| Newgarden | 34.72 |
| Saavedra | 33.87 |
| Rahal | 32.88 |
| Andretti | 32.67 |
| Montoya | 31.11 |
| Briscoe | 30.94 |
| Servia* | 30.19 |
| Aleshin | 29.44 |
| Huertas | 27.93 |
| Sato | 27.49 |
| Munoz | 24.59 |
| Bourdais | 22.30 |
| Hawksworth | 19.60 |
| Hinchcliffe | 18.15 |
| Kimball | 17.91 |
* 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
| Chaser | LBH (Race Finish) | ALA (A.R.P.) |
| Power | 2 | 3.30 |
| Dixon | 12 | 4.32 |
| Andretti | 8 | 4.51 |
| Pagenaud | 5 | 7.65 |
| Newgarden | 19 | 8.26 |
| Wilson | 16 | 9.00 |
| Kanaan | 18 | 10.96 |
| Bourdais | 14 | 11.97 |
| Briscoe | 17 | 13.68 |
| Castroneves | 11 | 13.83 |
| Munoz | 3 | 13.86 |
| Rahal | 13 | 15.70 |
| Hunter-Reay | 20 | OUT |
| Hinchcliffe | 21 | OUT |
| Sato | 22 | OUT |
| Kimball | 23 | OUT |
| 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
- 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.
#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
-- Guido
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