Did the new regulations improve overtaking?
On average we had 40.25 overtakes per gp this year vs 37 last year
Overtakes is a really exciting statistic and it's great to see that there have been more of them in the first few months of 2022.
It is clearly evident that the new cars are providing more excitement for fans and creating more opportunities for drivers to make daring passes on the track. In Bahrain this year we witnessed 76 overtakes, most of them because of multiple pit stops. If we compare the average or look at each circuit, the data is quite similar.
Most of the overtakes are still done with DRS assistance, but what changed this year is the ability of cars to follow each other closely without losing significant down force, engine overheating or high tyre degradation. This often helps the viewers follow the on-track action for multiple laps as evident by the fact that even though Red Bull have mightier straight line speed Max couldn’t overtake Charles during the opening laps, but still remained within touching distance.
Safety car/vsc laps resulted in a boring strategy where the teams pitted under these conditions to save lap times, we were also denied the close battle of Leclerc and Verstappen after his engine gave up. Kevin made most overtakes of 5, before retiring due to engine issues. Fernando and Lewis with 4 overtakes each.
On the other hand, Bottas and Stroll were overtaken five times.
If we look at Places gained and lost from the starting grid, only Yuki lost positions due to rear wing issues, . When we have 4 DNFs and same strategy from teams, this situation is bound to happen.During the race, Mick Schumacher gained 6 places, considering Kevin’s 5 overtakes Haas has a competitive car. Alex Albon who had quick reflexes managed to gain 5 places from starting position.
Magnussen continues to lead both overtakes and getting overtaken metrics, doing the most work for Haas F1 Team. As Nyck De Vries, Mercedes Reserve driver mentioned “Lewis has been trying some quite experimental parts of the car, and there was a different floor solution on his car that didn’t work”, being out of position meant Hamilton had to work harder on track to crawl back up the order. Zhou had problems during the race starts, dropping him to the back of the field on the first lap, since the data doesn’t include first lap overtakes, Zhou had far lower number of overtaken than actual.
As one would expect Red Bull’s Perez was only overtaken twice this season, excluding team orders, and Ferrari’s Sainz overtaken 3 times, showing RedBull’s and Ferrari’s pace advantage to the rest of the pack.
Data: The official overtake data considers an overtakes as change in positions at the end of each lap to simplify the calculation, which misses most of the on track battles. The data used here is compiled by reddit users u/catchingisonething and u/Meaisk after going through the onboards, which means it includes actual on-track moves for positions and but also excludes first lap, safety car, pit lane, team orders, lapped cars, cars unlapping, cars off track due to issues/spins.
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