Chart Party at Suzuka: The 1999 Japanese GP
OK, final race of the season is up. The championship fight, as expected, went down to the wire. Suzuka has seen its fair share of title deciders. This is a track I'm sure McLaren loves. However, before we get into the good, good stuff, let's look at the statistical footprint the drivers left on this season. Not ALL of them, but the most important throughout the season.
Let's talk points
Here we have the Ferrari and McLaren drivers, each with a certain color to mark them. Vertical Axis is points (higher is better for many reasons), Horizontal Axis is races. The table is how many points each driver had after the GP (Except Japan, because I haven't run it yet), and the graph just plots that.
As you can see, the fight was close at the start until The Michael ran into a wall at Britain. He came back, only to hit another wall at Monza. The Michael has the wins tiebreaker with 7 over Mika's 6. To win the championship, Mika needs to score 5 points. The Michael, on the other hand, needs to outscore The Mika by at least 6 points. That would tie them up, and The Michael would win on the tie breaker. In summary:
- Hakkinen at least 2nd = Hakkinen WDC
- Schumacher Win + Hakkinen 3rd or worse = Schumacher WDC
- Schmacher 2nd + Hakkinen non points = Schumacher WDC
- Anything else = Hakkinen WDC
Below the Big Two are the absurdly inconsistent Frentzen and Villeneuve. They serve as context to the absolute dominance of the Big Two. However, they serve as context for the rest of the drivers right below. You know, like, for example, the Tyrell drivers.
As you can see, Diniz and Takagi (Mostly Takagi, TBH) pale in comparison to the Ferrari and McLaren Number 2s. So has Salo, but Salo ... well ... from Monaco to Austria he was dominant. After that, he just ... flat lined. Bunch of DNF and meh results. As for our guys, you can see that Spain and Monaco pretty much turned the switch for us, that's when the first upgrade package was put on the car.
Now, there's a reason why Mika and Michael aren't on those charts.
They are too good and make our results look bad.
Let's talk results
Of course, we could rate drivers by points all we want, but we can also rate them by their finishing positions. I could take an outright Average, which would work just fine. Instead, I'll take a Geometric Mean. In simple terms, it works like your standard Average, but it is less sensitive to freak deviations.
Here we have the cumulative Geometric Mean, I'll call it Average. It is not and someone might hate me, but I want to simplify terms. In this case, the lower you are, the better. You want to be as close as possible to 1. It'd start trusting the graph after Canada, since it has more data at that point. The only conclusion we can take from this version of the chart is that The Michael and Mika were stupid good this year. Do remember, however, that McLaren had the better race car.
This is the reason why I made this chart in the first place. Double H Frentzen has been better than what the points standings show. He's been trailing off in the past few races, but he's considerably better than Villeneuve. Yey, Villeneuve is better points wise. Again, do remember Double H is on a McLaren v Villeneuve on a Ferrari. Gap is still significant.
This chart also shows that Mika Salo was significantly better than the Tyrell bois ... then he started finishing races, finishing them badly and his rating seriously trailed off. Takagi ... is Takagi. As for Diniz ... well, he's been so good ... on a Tyrell. I'd probably rank him as the 3rd or 4th best driver of the year (Behind the Big Two). Maybe overly optimistic but ... hey, he's been great. Much better than anticipated.
Finally, here's that full chart. Guys are pretty much in tiers. The Big Two clear of the rest.
Back to the regular Schedule
OK, Chart Party is over, let's go back to the usual, we have to prepare for a championship decider. Only Benetton brought an upgrade. Everyone else is set and done.
I decided to check how the share prices are doing. $200k is pretty solid.
OK, here are the full 2000 regulations. No Change on Engine means we might see Mugen Honda boost their performance 1 or 2 points ... or lose 1-2 points. Fortunately, the Partner deal we have will allow us to remap the engines. If Mugen Honda won't give us power, I'll adjust the Engine for POWER! Fuel Downgrade ... Elf can no sell those, no big deal there. Tire Upgrade is GREAT for us Customer deal plebs. Better Goodyear tires for EVERYONE will tighten up the gaps, which we desperately need.
Something else I wanted to show is the legal Driving Aids the FIA has authorized. This serves two purposes. First, helps you decide if that driving aid you found someone is running is legal or not. Complaining about a legal aid is BAAAAAAD. FIA will hate you.
The second purpose is that it is a hit list. If you can't make a good driving aid, then you can simply steal it from someone else. I'll try to target Williams' Auto Gears, the only driving aid we don't have. We could build them, sure, but if the steal succeeds, we have a level 2 Auto Gear aid right away.
Finally, before we get into the race proper, we have Factory. This is the reason why I considered taking a Loan. I could have increased the size of the Factory to Level 2, but that required $6m. We don't have that much cash. Instead, I just put the $1m into maxing out the Workshop.
Yep, here we are. The iconic Figure 8 Suzuka International Circuit. Rain is expected on every race. Overtaking is difficult around here. You know where this is going.
Points in "Rain", "Overtaking" and "Wind", with an extra point of "Grip" because pace. If it rains, Tyrell ain't getting stopped.
Huh ... if things go right ... we might get a solid starting position.
OK, this needs explaining as per usual. First, the "Did Not Qualify" line. Rain happened. Many only did laps in the Wet periods of track time. Only the Top 4 here, as you can see by the lap times, managed to go out on the Dry period, which lasted 5 minutes or so. The guys put down great laps in, effectively, single shot qualifying. Got Wet again, and no one could improve. Of course, Takagi put down an absolutely amazing lap that put him on pole. Japanese driver powered by a Japanese engine on pole for the Japanese GP. The great Mugen Honda master plan, yeah? A Tyrell front row lockout, something I did not expect to write this year.
As for down here, all of these guys failed to meet the 107%. You can imagine how terribad Haberfeld and DC were to not be allowed to race. Fortunately for Mika, a ton of people were allowed in because of the wet period.
Even MORE rain. This is very, very good. You know who's very good in the rain? Damon Hill of course. Also this Schumacher guy and this Finn too.
The Michael did his job, getting a win gives him the best chance to get the WDC. However, The Mika also did his job. With his 2nd place finish, there's no catching him. Mika Hakkinen is your 1999 FIA F1 World Drivers Champion. Diniz will finish the season with a podium, Takagi scores 2 point on his home GP. Yes, he turned pole into 5th, but he's driving a Tyrell, give him a break.
Double H's luck is still terrible.
Here's your final points standings. I do not know why Frentzen is not on the image. He finished with 39 points, which means he's actually P4 in the WDC. Takagi is P6. Not sure what kind of stuff is going down in this cartoon. Anyway, best of the rest for Diniz at P5.
Why is Double H "Unclassified"!?!? Did he got banned from the championship or what?
3 points separate Ferrari and McLaren. Ferrari win this round. This sounds oddly familiar. Of course ... Tyrell being 3rd was not expected. Being 3rd AND being clear of 4th was unthinkable. I thought 5th-6th would be our top. Guess I was very wrong.
Yes, Jordan was a big disappointment. They were outright better than us all year.
All right ... all right. No consideration for the Tyrell Manager.
No, it isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Let's take a deep dive into the finances before we go.
Fcous on the Year To Date column. Most of our income was Diniz and Takagi being pay drivers, then the FIA Funding. After that, we made do without a true Title sponsor, a bunch of cash sponsor (Most of that cash coming from said fake Title Sponsor) and our Partnership suppliers. $35.4m for the year is a solid number.
Now, our expenses. $36.4m. Most of it was the Loan taking away $10.2m this year. We won't have to pay back a Loan next year AND we will have an actual Title Sponsor in Red Bull + more Sponsors in general. We lost $1m this year. We could have made $10m without that Loan ... we will make A LOT of cash next year. We will also spend a ton, since we have a Factory to improve, but we will make money anyway. The future looks bright.
The final 2 images of the season. First, the Manager rankings. Last time, we finished a surprising 4th. This time, an even more surprising 3rd, just like our WCC rank. This is really F'ing good.
Finally, the FIA ranking. Last time out, we finished 7th which ... was alright considering our WCC result (9th back then). This time, we finish 3rd, which is a considerably better result. The best aspect of this? Those $24m the FIA will give us. Next year we'll be swimming on money. SWIMMING! Remember how we were struggling to survive Season 1? Not anymore.
What surprises me is Prost on 4th and Jordan on 5th, considering they were among the most disappointing teams around. Benetton, of course, was very disappointing too.
There's the conclusion of the 1999 F1 season. The teams are now preparing for the 2000. Preseason will set the expectations. Who will meet them and who will regress? Only one way to find out. Next up, Preseason!
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