Algorithm to find fastest driver of recent decades provokes debate over age-old talking point
Wednesday 19 August 2020 12:30, UK
The perennial debate over the fastest driver over the eras has attempted to be settled by a data study conducted by F1, which ranks legendary Brazilian Ayrton Senna at the top of the list.
Using an algorithm taking data from all qualifying sessions since 1983, in which performance between team-mates was compared with various rules factored in and car performance discounted, Senna came out as the 'fastest' ahead of seven-time champion Michael Schumacher and F1's current dominant star, Lewis Hamilton.
The research, using AWS's machine learning software, put Senna 0.114s ahead of Schumacher on a theoretical qualifying 'lap', with six-time champion Hamilton 0.275s back in third.
The trio are the most successful F1 qualifiers of all time. Senna set a record of 65 pole positions before his death in 1994, having started at the front of the grid for an amazing 40 per cent of his grands prix appearances.
Schumacher went past that mark in 2006 and Hamilton then took the record over in 2017 and has cantered clear since, with the Englishman securing his 92nd pole at last weekend's Spanish GP with a career ratio of 36 per cent.
But behind the Senna-Schumacher-Hamilton top three, there were certainly surprises.
Four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, fourth on the list of F1 polesitters with 52, was only 10th and ranked behind young team-mate Charles Leclerc and two former F1 drivers - Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli, who each only claimed one pole and one win apiece in F1.
Trulli, in particular, was regarded as a one-lap specialist during his long career for six teams with his qualifying performances often his best of a race weekend. Kovalainen was Hamilton's team-mate at McLaren in 2008-2009, while he also drove next to Trulli at Lotus, so the study's algorithm would have compared him next to both.
However, absent from the top 20 of those eligible included former champions Mika Hakkinen, Nigel Mansell and Kimi Raikkonen. Raikkonen was not one of the seven of the 2020 grid to make the top 20.
Max Verstappen was fourth ahead of Fernando Alonso, who returns to F1 next year with Renault, and Nico Rosberg. McLaren's Lando Norris, in his second season of F1 only, was 15th ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and 2009 former champion Jenson Button.
With data only going back 27 years, it meant the sport's first 16 world champions such as Juan-Manuel Fangio and Jim Clark were not featured in the research.
Rob Smedley, the former Ferrari and Williams engineer turned F1 director of data systems, said: "Fastest Driver enables us to build up a picture of how the drivers compare, by analysing the purest indication of raw speed, the qualifying lap - and it's important to note this pure speed is the only element of the vast driver armoury we are analysing here, to showcase the quickest drivers ever, which is very exciting."
