Three races into the 2016 season; three wins for Nico Rosberg. A maximum 75 points, while stable mate Lewis Hamilton languishes on barely half that number at 39. Must all tell us something, right?
Plenty it seems think so. Plenty it seems are scrabbling for significance and explanations.
Kevin Eason of The Times for one suggested post-round two on Sky’s F1 Report programme that Nico’s two victories from two at that point demonstrated that Lewis “has taken his eye off the ball”.
“I know we do this thing about Lewis and his lifestyle” Eason went on, “he’s quite entitled to do it, and I think in many ways that it's marvellous for Formula 1 – but I do sense just a little bit of distraction in him.
“Maybe Nico’s seen that chink in Lewis’s armour and maybe he thinks he can go for it…he really has had two very easy wins this year and that's because the other fella hasn't stepped up to the plate.”
While to show I’m not singling out those seeking to denigrate Lewis, after the latest race in China I stumbled upon a Tweet that from the happenings thus far drew its inference in the other direction, but still stuck by the maxim that it must somehow all tell us something. “This is a conspiracy. Someone really doesn’t want another Lewis championship”. Ahem.
F1 is a results business of course, ultimately anyway. So the logic of thinking in such a way is irrefutable. Right? Well, maybe not. We’re probably wrong. Or rather, at the very least, we should consider that it’s not quite as simple as that.
On this subject I was a few years back pointed towards the words of former Real Sociedad football manager Juanma Lillo. Words which are apposite, particularly for our current state of play between the two Mercedes drivers.
“No one is looking at the process except through the prism of a result” he said. “In a [running] race you can be first, miles and miles ahead of anyone else, and then, metres from the line, fall over. And? Are you going to write that race off? You ran brilliantly. And it’s far more complex than saying: win, good; don’t win, bad. You can’t validate the process through the results. Human beings tend to venerate what finished well, not what was done well. We attack what ended up badly, not what was done badly.”
It’s far more complex than saying: win, good; don’t win, bad. You can’t validate the process through the results. Human beings tend to venerate what finished well, not what was done well. We attack what ended up badly, not what was done badly – football manager Juanma Lillo
Quite. But it seems in F1 just as in other sports we’re determined to think in binary. If you win it’s an utter vindication of every stage of the process. If not then it’s time to rip everything up and start again. Either way things are explainable. Ultimately happen for a reason. The result is instructive. Definitively so.
But such an outlook can be reductionist to the point of being absurd, and runs the risk of detaching things so far from their context so to become meaningless. And, bottom line, it pays no heed to that some things – plenty of things in fact – that influence outcomes are outside of the competitors’ control. Things like probability; random chance of the various things that can spoil your day hitting you. It strikes me as an obvious point, but judging by what you hear said habitually it seems to elude a few of us.
Perhaps it reflects that F1 an activity wherein everything possible is sought to be measured and accounted for. Murphy’s Law is writ large. Perhaps it’s the most steadfastly rational and empirical sport there is. Therefore accepting that some things are mere dumb luck both metaphorically and literally does not compute.
Plus it’s a game where more broadly expectations and responsibilities given are exacting and sympathy for not delivering is low. Talk of bad luck often sounds like a cop out. And had Eason when on TV sought to explain results so far with that it likely would have sounded mealy-mouthed and uninsightful.
To illustrate, when in the 1985 season Niki Lauda had ten races in a row dented or ended by some form of bad luck, usually mechanical failures, he reflected (as recorded in his autobiography To Hell and Back) in precisely this vein. “Is the fault not mine?” he asked. “I wonder. Ten cases of ‘bad luck’ in a row is something I wouldn’t accept from any other driver in the world: I would tell him that he too had to be at fault somewhere along the line. I have to judge myself by the same criterion.
“Does this funny old car somehow sense that my heart is no longer in it? Do the mechanics think that? Have I lost the vital spark that keeps things running properly?”
Ten cases of ‘bad luck’ in a row is something I wouldn’t accept from any other driver in the world: I would tell him that he too had to be at fault somewhere along the line – Niki Lauda
Not that such assumptions are exclusive to F1. In most sports observers are determined to take significance from every individual outcome, as well as to leap straight to conclusions even with only meagre evidence. Take football, as a low-scoring game it is particularly prone to have its results impacted by random chance, and indeed there has been a study done that concluded it takes a whole seven seasons’ worth of matches for its random chance for each team to even out. But still in arguably its two most prestigious competitions, the World Cup and Champions’ League – in which the winners are venerated and vindicated; the losers sometimes eviscerated – your campaign can be dead after as few as two games. In the last World Cup indeed England were ditched out after that self-same two game span – two games in which they played quite well and were unlucky to lose in either (and as a Scot I have no vested interest in saying that). But it didn’t stop pitiless trashing of the players, the manager, even the whole country’s football system, in response.
Perhaps it says something about human nature, that we seek to find significance in things, no matter how flimsy the basis.
Yet we should consider rowing back on this to some extent at least, as while certainly some things are significant and explainable it’s also the case that lady luck often plays her role, particularly so with the tiny and therefore volatile base size we have right now of just three race weekends. And taking such bad luck as evidence that the driver must be doing something wrong is much more likely to lead us to flawed conclusions than anything else. Really all a driver can do is keep up their end of the bargain as much as they can, play the percentages for good and ill and take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when they come along.
In our current case for all that accusatory fingers have been pointed Lewis’s way lately if you unpack his campaign so far it’s hard to point at much within his control that has contributed directly to his predicament. Really of all of the things that have gone wrong for him the only parts within his authority have been his (not very good) race launches in Australia and Bahrain, and even in both of those the point is dubious.
In Melbourne while Nico got the better start the two Mercs still were wheel to wheel at turn one, and then it was actually Nico’s error that diddled Hamilton most, him getting too keen on the brakes which forced Lewis wide and cost the Englishman places, from third at worst down to sixth, his day already largely framed.
Then in Bahrain Nico again got the better launch, but – watch it again – given where the two silver cars were entering turn one was there really that big a difference in probability between the errant Valtteri Bottas collecting Lewis rather than Nico instead? Not really.
While as has been explained elsewhere both of Lewis’s apparently poor starts actually have rational and peculiar explanations. Beyond them, it’s been almost exclusively mere dumb luck counting against him.
He was quickest just about all weekend in Melbourne, in Bahrain admittedly Nico looked the quicker in practice and for most of qualifying, but Lewis did pull something out at the last on Saturday to bag pole. But then we had the start and first turn already described, and resultant damage on Lewis’s car meant not even subsequent comparison of lap times told us a great deal.
For all that accusatory fingers have been pointed Lewis’s way lately if you unpack his campaign so far it’s hard to point at much within his control that has contributed directly to his predicament.
Then the China weekend was quite the mare for Lewis, with a five-place penalty in advance for a gearbox change, then engine problems in qualifying that consigned him to start at the back in any case, then at the first corner he was hit by an opponent (again no way his fault), and then just as in Bahrain a damaged car made any subsequent comparisons impossible. For what it’s worth too, in this latest round he actually got a good launch finally… But whatever, almost nothing that China weekend told us anything about the lay of the competitive land between Lewis and Nico.
It’s not my intention to take too much away from Nico, who has been brilliant and largely flawless so far in 2016 of course. But it’s undeniable that he’s had a charmed existence with it, and it’s hard to attribute all that much of it to him beyond that he’s done nearly nothing wrong in taking advantage. Certainly his main strokes of luck – the red flag in Australia then the shenanigans behind him up to and including the first turns in Bahrain and China – were not down to anything he was doing. Even in China Nico noted after the race that in the same first turn Kimi Raikkonen came very close to collecting him. And had he indeed do so, would we be chastising Nico now, for his gamble in starting on soft tyres, resulting in his tardy start? Possibly.
What too if Nico’s veer wide at Melbourne first turn hadn’t taken Lewis with him? What if Lewis had vaulted him at that moment and Nico had been the one to lose places, and that had set Lewis up for an eventual win? Would again by contrast we be castigating Rosberg for wilting under pressure, perhaps not for the first time? Probably. But none of these things happened while at the same time it all went wrong for his yardstick across the Merc garage, so instead most of the talk is of Nico finding a new level.
And to return to Eason’s view as if to prove our hypothesis that people start with outcomes then work backwards from them, when Lewis was sweeping all before him in 2015, while adopting the same lifestyle that Eason derided, the chat was if anything all this was aiding him. Here’s Allan McNish at the time: “His outside interests make him smile and if you’re smiling you enjoy your job. And if you enjoy your job you do it 100% better than if you don’t”.
It’s too early to make any summaries, you know? It would not make sense to make any premature conclusions on whether the start was good or bad. Let’s wait and see – Nico Rosberg
It’s ironic too that one person in F1 not kidding himself that the results so far tell us something definitive about the where the power sits between Lewis and Nico is…Nico. Judging by his words after his latest win anyway.
“It’s too early to make any summaries, you know?” Nico said then. “It’s three races now and they’ve gone really well for me but it’s the longest season in F1 history with 21 races so that’s 18 to go.
“It would not make sense to make any premature conclusions on whether the start was good or bad. Let’s wait and see.”
Indeed. And Lewis too from his words is not letting all of this get him down, while Merc boss Toto Wolff warned in China that Lewis despite everything is not likely to let it get him down either.
“He is in a great place” said Wolff. “The development I have seen with him as a personality over the last three years is mind-blowing. He has won two championships and found himself as a person.
“You can imagine how much pressure he is under with people who criticise him, but he follows his instinct, he follows his way, and it seems to be functioning.
“The Lewis I have seen today, coming back straight into the garage after such a situation [his technical problems in China’s qualifying] and shaking everyone’s hand and giving a little clap of support just leaves me with my mouth open.”
And no, there’s no reason either to believe as many do audibly that such outrageous fortune will even out over a season. That is the flipside of the same consideration. Yet in contrast to the ultra-rationalism described above F1 folk instead in this one make claims with little more basis than hocus pocus – ‘he’s had his problems for the year now’, ‘he’s due a retirement/some bad luck’ and the like are set firmly in the sport’s lexicon. Indeed Andrew Benson veered rather close to this when he wrote post-China that “statistically it is inevitable that some bad luck has to afflict Rosberg sooner or later”.
But it’s fallacious. There is no necessity that fortune has to be doled out roughly equitably even over the course of a record 21 race season, it’s simply too small a base. The view also commits the fallacy of relating unrelated things. It’s not impossible to experience ill luck in every round of a year, nor indeed in none. It’s a sobering thought indeed for Lewis and his fans that he could just as easily turn up to Russia next time out and have a similarly excruciating weekend as he had in China. That it happened before doesn’t make the probability of it happening to him in subsequent rounds lower (indeed if anything the opposite is true, on the premise that something that’s happened before is more likely to happen again), nor does it make the probability of it happening to Nico greater.
Instead, yet again, it’s largely a matter of chance.
