Best Driver in the World...

[Nick Koske]

Well at least according to this guy. Stumbled upon this website somehow:
Chuck's Driver Rankings & Stats : Top 50 World Drivers
Anyways his top 10 drivers in the world:
1 Fernando Alonso
2 Kimi Raikkonen
3 Lewis Hamilton
4 Jeff Gordon
5 Kevin Harvick
6 Jimmie Johnson
7 Felipe Massa
8 Jeff Burton
9 Matt Kenseth
10 Tony Stewart

First off there's not a NASCAR driver in the top 10 that would make it in F1, IMO. So, for Massa to be behind some NASCAR guys seems to be crap. If you're not in F1 or NASCAR...there's no way to be a top driver?? Really?? First IRLer is at 25 with Scott Pruett at 27.

Tom Kristensen seems to be his first 'real' sport car driver...but there most likely because of his DTM results.

I'm not sure why folks feel the need to continually compare apples with grapes with oranges with strawberries with bananas with kiwi with watermelon etc...I suppose it's fun. The engineer in me just doesn't find piss poor calculations fun. There may be an algorithmic out there that can compare drivers from different series, but this sure isn't one of them.

Click 'by series' then 'alms-p2'...seriously...Raphael Matos is the best P2 driver?? Come on. Andy Pilgrim is the best GT1 driver...Sorry Oliver, Olivier, Jan, Ron, and Johnny...you guys play second fiddle to good ole Andy.

His basis for rating endurance racers is BS.

Further more, each differential is split equally between every driver in the case of endurance races, meaning their ratings moves half-speed if they share driving duties for a race

Really...you mean if you have one good driver and one poor driver in the car (or two poor drivers in the case of the Ford GT), that one good driver isn't as good in your rating system. If you have two equally good drivers (what it takes to win in the ALMS) they are only half as good because they are in the car half the time?

If you're results don't state the facts then what's the point? Oh well it's suppose to be fun right.

[Canada ALMS fan]

Okay, here is my 2 cents (as if anyone cares). His top 2 overall are spot on by a large margin. He obviously stopped trying very hard after those 2. Loeb has to be up there as do McNish & Kristensen. To have any NASCAR driver in the top 10 let alone 6 (!!!) is not acceptable. This is one of those threads that could go on forever...

[The Sheriff]

Well my first question is, who the heck is Chuck?

My first point is: Alonzo? What are you kidding? 2007 proved if nothing else that he is a mental midget. He imploded at the pressure of having Hamilton on his team and if he had the mental capacity of even Niki Lauda he would have most likely found a way to ride out the storm and won the world championship.

In regards to any NASCAR driver in the top 10 of any "greatest" list.....I don't think so. Certainly Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon have the capacity to drive a variety of cars....Stewart especially....but taking what a NASCAR driver does in essentially a spec car on spec tires and transferring that talent to a WRC driver (Seb Loeb for example) or a top F1 driver is a stretch.

[Hallen]

Don't sell all NASCAR drivers short. Remember, most of them are there for the money. Look at Colin Braun for example. A strong up and comer in the sports car world... even if it was mostly Grand Am. He is now in the NASCAR ranks. Somebody like Jeff Gordon could (and that is a very qualified 'could') have made a good F1 driver if that were the path he had chosen.

Any list like this is going to be horribly flawed. None of them take into account how good a driver is at working with a team and at setting a car up. That is a skill that is pretty much impossible to rate in some silly scheme. Many people beleive that a huge part of Schumacher's success was due to his ability to work with the team and make the car better race after race (and the fact that he was ruthlessly competitive)

Afterall, it is why we race, right? If this type of thing had any value, we wouldn't have to do the race.

I think it is funny that somebody actually thinks they can break it down into some kind of rating scheme like that. There are too many variables. It is like trying to model the weather or "global warming".

[Canada ALMS fan]

Sheriff, the only reason Hamilton was at the front last year was because he was driving a car being developed based on Alonso's feedback. Look at the pace of the devlopment of the Renault this year, FA has taken a dog of a car to the front almost while Hamilton is looking very average, having a hard time providing feedback to get the car set up correctly. Again, just my 2 cents.

[ChuckK]

It can be seen that a former F1 winner is a mid pack runner every week in NASCAR. It can also be seen other successful open wheelers are end of the pack runners and don't always qualify.
Driving the big taxis looks easy---but when they are out of tires it isn't all that easy.
I doubt if a NASCAR driver could hop into F1---the skill base is just too different.
Pretty silly to try and compare them............Like who is the best ball player Manning or A-Rod? Different games.

[John Thawley]

Originally Posted by ChuckK

It can be seen that a former F1 winner is a mid pack runner every week in NASCAR. It can also be seen other successful open wheelers are end of the pack runners and don't always qualify.
Driving the big taxis looks easy---but when they are out of tires it isn't all that easy.
I doubt if a NASCAR driver could hop into F1---the skill base is just too different.
Pretty silly to try and compare them............Like who is the best ball player Manning or A-Rod? Different games.

Fair enough! Pretty good observations.

[Cafefroid]

Hi guys,

I saw in my web server stats that a bunch of visits were coming from this forum so I decided to take a look!

First of all : this is for FUN! I read a bit about ELO ratings in chess and saw it was applied successfully to a couple of other sports like Hockey and Football (soccer). I was curious to see if it could be adapted to race car drivers.

In my opinion, it fares pretty well. First of all : There were no "artificial" weight added anywhere. The ratings were built only by applying the algorithm over the 1500-plus race results I have entered. I never entered some magic-formula where i.e. F1 is twice as hard to drive as GP2, which is twice as hard to drive as F3 etc.

Of course, there is for now a bunch of NASCAR drivers at the top of the list, which seems a bit wrong. But looking at the facts, they are 43 starters in a NASCAR race and 20 in F1. Considering that both these series are at the top of their ladder system, mixing-up the best 20% of both series would give us 4 F1 drivers and 8 from NASCAR in our top 12.

As for Sebastien Loeb, I decided to restrict myself to asphalt races on a closed course to still maintain some comparison possibilities. (And restrain myself a bit)

As for the ALMS drivers, their poor rankings can be explained by a couple of things. First off, the race results with multiple drivers and categories makes it much longer to compile, especially when only the last name of the drivers is specified. It takes only a couple of seconds with a macro command to format some results from Motorsport.com, but I can spend like 10-15 minutes on a single endurance race. For that reason, the prototype rankings are not as deep as the stock-car or open wheel rankings. Over time, this will even-out.

Also, about Raphel Matos at the top of the ALMS-P2 rankings. First, that list shows the overall rating of a driver, not only the rating built by driving that series. Matos rating climbed because of his success in Star Mazda and Atlantic series but are now dropping to more average numbers now that he is not as dominant in the indylights.

I tought about some ways to restrict these lists to only "regular" drivers but so far, I have not found anything satisfying

Lastly, about the way the numbers are applied in endurance racing : There is no way to know if a race result with a driver change can be attributed to either driver so I split the rating change equally between all drivers. As long as they are driving together, there will be no way to know if it's 2 average drivers or one good and one bad. Also, I don't that duo beating a third driver alone in his car should both be credited with the win for the same reasons.

Of course it ain't perfect, but I think it was worth a try.

I take note of all your critics and some changes might come by in the near future so overcome some of those issues.

Have fun!

[John Thawley]

Hey, thanks for dropping by with an explanation, Chuck... and, don't think that your efforts aren't appreciated. Looks like you're putting in a lot of effort. Please stick around and keep us updated.

JT

[Nick Koske]

Originally Posted by Cafefroid

Lastly, about the way the numbers are applied in endurance racing : There is no way to know if a race result with a driver change can be attributed to either driver so I split the rating change equally between all drivers. As long as they are driving together, there will be no way to know if it's 2 average drivers or one good and one bad. Also, I don't that duo beating a third driver alone in his car should both be credited with the win for the same reasons.

In the ALMS, in any class, if a car wins a race 99.9% of the time the drivers ability are nearly equal (i.e. both good drivers), at least currently. That can't be said about all endurance racing, but the ALMS is super competitive and it takes two top notch pro drivers to win races, whether it's LMP1, LMP2, GT1 or GT2.

You'll have to forgive me/us here we're all hardcore sport cars fans and when we don't see our favorite drivers (many of whom are ex-F1), we get bitter.