Does Champcar have an Inflation problem? Speed Creep data

[takjak2]

No, actually. Thanks for checking.

 

I thought I might find something with this data. I didn't.

The rule book and the board have done a good job at keeping overall speeds relatively consistent.

Note that this does not address any disparity within the field, makes, models, particular outliers, or a tendency for the rulebook to favor one type of car over another.

[Justin Andress]

Interesting data right there.  Quick question, does this include EC cars as well?  Trying to wrap my head around the outliers. 

[takjak2]

15 minutes ago, Justin Andress said:

Interesting data right there.  Quick question, does this include EC cars as well?  Trying to wrap my head around the outliers. 

 

This excludes EC cars*

(since mid 2019 and a few earlier outliers I recognized and removed)

[Justin Andress]

Copy, thanks.

[Chris Huggins]

Thanks Jason, nicevisualization.

[mostmint]

I would like to see this information for just the top 10 finishers.  The overall pace of the race is not affected by fast cars that do not finish, but if I understand correctly, these charts are.

[ABR-Glen]

Sure does show a trend in car counts though 

[drgrumpus]

What information do those graphs old?  I'm an engineer and I need titles for the X and Y axes.  

shoulda said "hold", not "old"

[Ian]

13 hours ago, ABR-Glen said:

Sure does show a trend in car counts though 

 

Hard to say if it's a trend.  Road America's numbers were obviously hurt by an extra early date, and the Ozarks race which was also national championship being super close proximity.

[mindspin311]

14 hours ago, mostmint said:

I would like to see this information for just the top 10 finishers.  The overall pace of the race is not affected by fast cars that do not finish, but if I understand correctly, these charts are.

Y is the car's FTD, X is the car's finishing position.

[mindspin311]

26 minutes ago, mindspin311 said:

Y is the car's FTD, X is the car's finishing position.

Nevermind, it looks like X is just the FTD in order from fastest to slowest

[ABR-Glen]

1 hour ago, Ian said:

 

Hard to say if it's a trend.  Road America's numbers were obviously hurt by an extra early date, and the Ozarks race which was also national championship being super close proximity.

I'm not sure how he accounted for 2 races per year at RA, but there is no data from Ozarks there. 

I'm looking at the warm colored lines (Red, Orange, Yellow) generally ending before the cool colored lines (green, blue), showing less total entries in recent years versus the past. 

[turbogrill]

Cost of traveling to race >>> cost of race

 

I still think chumpcar is a budget series

[MMiskoe]

just for curiosity, what does it look like when you put a Saturday race over top of a Sunday race?  I bet there are a lot that have noticeable differences.  I'd like to see this year's Watkins Glen races since it was very wet on Saturday up to about the last 3 hours, but the track was still pretty green.  I know Sunday was faster.

[takjak2]

4 hours ago, mindspin311 said:

X is just the FTD in order from fastest to slowest

 

This is correct

 

I can do some Saturday vs Sunday graphs 

[Ian]

13 hours ago, ABR-Glen said:

I'm not sure how he accounted for 2 races per year at RA, but there is no data from Ozarks there. 

I'm looking at the warm colored lines (Red, Orange, Yellow) generally ending before the cool colored lines (green, blue), showing less total entries in recent years versus the past. 

 

Not sure, but I'm saying quite a few teams who would've done spring RA did Ozarks instead, or decided they didn't want to freeze, and that nuked this years numbers.

[ABR-Glen]

3 minutes ago, Ian said:

 

Not sure, but I'm saying quite a few teams who would've done spring RA did Ozarks instead, or decided they didn't want to freeze, and that nuked this years numbers.

No argument there, but taking away that one race doesn't change the big picture.

Anyway, that's not what this thread is about, just what jumped out at me from those graphs.

I can make my own thread/graphs instead of taking this tangent any further 

[drgrumpus]

I'm confused.  Back to the graphics, what is the value on the X and Y axes?  Give me a summary of what you are graphing.  Particular cars, field average?  Car numbers(if paticular cars?  /add some text to describe the methodology and conclusions'

 

Frenchy

[petawawarace]

3 hours ago, drgrumpus said:

I'm confused.  Back to the graphics, what is the value on the X and Y axes?  Give me a summary of what you are graphing.  Particular cars, field average?  Car numbers(if paticular cars?  /add some text to describe the methodology and conclusions'

 

Frenchy

X axis is just car #.  Car 1,2,3,4,5….. in order of fastest laptime for that race.  
Y axis is the laptime.  

[smitham32803]

Being a little selfish (and a FL team) i would love to see  Daytona and Sebring as well.  I wonder if maybe people's perception of speed creep is predicated on specific tracks.  This looks like a lot of work went into aggregating all of this data, Thanks for  sharing.   

[Jamie]

On 8/18/2022 at 2:48 PM, ABR-Glen said:

Sure does show a trend in car counts though 

 

Fix speed creep at the cost of cars count. Worth it?

[LuckyKid]

Due to declining attendance the layout of the graph isn't the best at visually representing the actual speed creep.  You could have the same lap times with declining attendance and it would visually appear slower even if its not(assuming that the attendance drop is random across the population).   Would it be possible to assign each participant a relative finishing place as a percentile to better normalize the data along the X axis allowing better visual comparison of the Y (lap times)?

@takjak2

Do you have this in Google Sheets or excel?

[tyler_j]

Very cool graphs.

At first glance one could say at the VIR24 there was speed creep from 2016->2017->2018 (approx 6% each year). Then 2019 started a backslide.

When you look at the other 3 tracks though, the jump from 2016->2017 is pretty evident but after that nothing is really consistent.

 

So since there is no consistent trend across multiple weekends (other than 2016->2017), I would think the ~6% disparity could pretty easily be weather.

An 80 degree weekend vs 100 degree weekend seem like they could easily produce a 6% sway  (or 20 vs 50 at Road Atlanta haha).

You guys with more car data over the years,  can you confirm this against weather?

[ross2004]

I think some of those 2018 VIR numbers are bad data (the top 6 would be my guess). Must have been a timing issue. 

Edited August 25, 2022 by ross2004

[Gkuhn41]

1 hour ago, tyler_j said:

Very cool graphs.

At first glance one could say at the VIR24 there was speed creep from 2016->2017->2018 (approx 6% each year). Then 2019 started a backslide.

When you look at the other 3 tracks though, the jump from 2016->2017 is pretty evident but after that nothing is really consistent.

 

So since there is no consistent trend across multiple weekends (other than 2016->2017), I would think the ~6% disparity could pretty easily be weather.

An 80 degree weekend vs 100 degree weekend seem like they could easily produce a 6% sway  (or 20 vs 50 at Road Atlanta haha).

You guys with more car data over the years,  can you confirm this against weather?

 

Weve seen this delta within a race much less year to year.