Let's recap

This season has been like no other. As you can imagine, the change in the rules has a lot to do with it. However, although some things change, others never do, and in this case, the top 3 teams from last year are still the same.

There are only 6 races left until the end of the season, and this makes me wonder a few things, which is what this post is going to be about. Who is going to finish second in the constructors championship? Is there any chance Max Verstapen won't win this world championship?
Also, and since it was the last, I am going to analyze the Monza grand prix.

Will Mercedes beat Ferrari in the constructors championship?

Let's see how the season has unfolded so far:

Red Bull did not start the championship in the best way. However, it is the team that has consistently earned the most points per Grand Prix. Ferrari started as the big favorite, with a spectacular 1,2 in the first race of the year and no mistakes at the beginning of the season. Mercedes started out inferior to Ferrari, but has been the most consistent team on the grid.

As you can see, Red Bull overtook Ferrari a few grand prix ago and it would be extremely rare to see this situation turn around. The question now is whether Mercedes will overtake Ferrari in this final stage of the championship or not.

I have used the technique of the least squares to approximate the trend of each team to a line. It is obvious that in order to predict the number of points that a team will have at a given moment, it is necessary to make use of a large number of features, but for this estimation, it is more than valid.

Red bull gets on average 36.26 points per grand prix while ferrari and mercedes only get 23. That is, ferrari and mercedes are equally valid teams right now, however ferrari's good start to the season is currently securing them the second place. However, as we already know, formula 1 is a sport where anything can happen.

Is there any chance Max Verstapen won't win the drivers' world championship this year?

Since round 10, Verstapen has followed an unstoppable pace, clinical and flawless, in an unbeatable form. This is followed by a team that makes no forced mistakes and has a 10/10 strategy in every Grand Prix. He has all the ingredients to be the world champion again next year.

Verstapen only needs to win the next race to be mathematically the 2022 world champion. Even if Lecrelc wins the next 5 races, and Verstapen retired from those, without scoring any points in any of those races, winning that one race would make him the champion.

So, in short, for Verstapen not to be world champion this year, a miracle would have to happen.

Recap monza 2022

I want to emphasize three aspects. Firstly, stalk about Sainz's comeback, then to comment on the pitstop windows, and finally, to observe and discuss how the race ended.

In red, we have all the positions that Carlos Sainz was gaining. He started 16th and was in 4th position after 12 laps. That's a ratio of one overtake per lap consistently.

The strategy in Monza is clear; start with medium/hard and finish with soft with a pitstop at the end, or start with soft and finish with medium/hard and pitstop early in the race.
The 2 pitstop windows are clearly marked in gray. The drivers who started with hard tyres gained a lot of positions when the other strategy pitted. Positions they lost later when they had to pit almost at the end of the race.

Big surprises would have happened if the safety car had made its appearance a couple of laps earlier. However, the race ended behind the safety car, and as you can see in the graph, there were no more overtakes.

To sum up

In spite of what can be estimated with data, Formula 1 always brings surprises and spectacle, so we will should watch the following grand prixes.

The graphs shown here are made with Python. The data is taken by APIS through this web page: Ergast Developer API . If you are interested in being able to make these same graphs for any other grand prix, remember that you can access my github. There is a notebook where you can access it.

Link to the Github repository HERE