Quote Originally Posted by Munkvy View Post
How can you use statistics to take into account the context behind the stage times though? Ie that everyone who was on Rally2 would be under instruction to finish the rest of the rally at all costs, so naturally their pace is going to be off when they Rally2 (see Juho and Kris as good examples)... And what about the difference in tyre choice vs the correct tyre choice? I don't think you can use data unless you add in the variables that impact the validity of the data...
I'm the first to say those statistics are not a complete picture; it's a tool that can add more info. How you interpret and combine that info with context is up to you.

For example: Latvala vs Meeke comparison of just pace is misleading but combining the difference with the knowledge Meeke was cruising can indicate that Meeke would have probably been faster.

So I'm not trying to make a system that can take into account many things and give some answers; It would be too complicated with weather, tyre choice, road order, how much a driver is attacking etc. but I did find it helpful in two ways:
1. Knowing some elements of context you can get some numbers that you can compare and get a better idea. For example in case of a different tyre choice you can compare two driver when they had same choice and different choice and see how much the choice was worth.
2. When the data is layed out in a table and you make a color coded scale you can sometimes spot "anomalies" that can lead you to investigate what happened there. For example you could notice a driver having different performance between days so you can then investigate, was it tyre choice, setup, road order...

Anyway don't want to make huge thing out of this, just a mini project I did for fun.