5 instances that show F1 statistics can prove to be misleading

F1 is a data-driven sport. Numbers are everything and every tiny detail gets analyzed to evaluate progress or regression in the same manner.

There's a lot that goes into this and often fans and sometimes even pundits use these stats to jump to conclusions. The issue with something like this is that statistics without context are half-baked information and when that happens, it hurts the viability of the conclusion that is reached in such a case.

There is this famous quote by former Swedish Mathematician Andrejs Dunkels that reads:

"It's easy to lie with statistics, it's hard to tell the truth without them".

That's true in F1 as well as there are far too many instances of statistics being used to make a claim but often those prove to be misleading, nothing else.

In this feature, we will take a look at five such instances where statistics prove to be misleading.

#1 Charles Leclerc: Great qualifier, bad racer

If we look at Charles Leclerc's career stats, we see a driver who has just five wins from 23 pole positions. So much so that now Max Verstappen has a better conversation rate from Leclerc's pole than the Monagasque himself.

However, what this has done is created a very skewed perception of Leclerc as a driver. There are far too many that laud his qualifying exploits and at the same time, belittle his skills as a racer. The reality is, however, different and it lies somewhere in the middle.

Leclerc is a brilliant qualifier, arguably the best on the grid but he's also driven cars that are great in qualifying but suffer in the races. As a result, he's been unable to truly make the most of his superior pace in qualifying.

#2 Michael Schumacher: Much better in races than in qualifying

Michael Schumacher has a somewhat skewed view as well when F1 fans look at his statistics and try to jump to conclusions. For the German, a record with 91 wins but comparatively only 68 pole positions paints the wrong picture.

It gives a view of a driver who was not as good or successful in qualifying as he was in races. That's just not true when it came to Schumacher because, during his era, he was arguably one of the best qualifiers on the grid.

The first half of his career was against the rampaging Williams and McLarens, who dominated qualifying in their respective cars, while the second phase of his career was in an era where qualifying was done in cars with fuel loads equivalent to a race start.

Ferrari's strategy was to fuel cars heavier than the competition and as a result that negated the battle for pole often. As is often said, points are given on Sundays and that is what Michael was more or less fixated on during his career.

#3 Lewis Hamilton is the GOAT because of 'statistics'

This was often a quote used by David Croft during race telecasts for Sky Sports where he referred to Lewis Hamilton as the 'GOAT' because 'just look at the numbers'. Now, first of all, there's just no criteria to define who is the greatest and hence this has been a point of debate in F1 for far too long.

Having said that, only 'statistics' without context cannot be used to term who is the greatest of all time. Could Max Verstappen's dominant season like the one he recently had qualify him to be the GOAT? Maybe, maybe not.

Does Michael Schumacher's feat of transforming Ferrari from an underperforming team to the best on the grid qualify him? Or does Lewis Hamilton, for his entire career, being a feat of breaking one glass ceiling after another classify him as the GOAT?

The GOAT can be classified based on several different criteria and unfortunately for now we just don't have any concrete method to single out any one F1 driver.

#4 Using the number of overtakes to determine how entertaining an F1 race was

One of the worst methods used to identify if a race was great or not by many of the F1 pundits is to just look at the number of overtakes in a race.

Unfortunately, that is a very lazy method to identify if a race is good or bad. Arguably one of the biggest exceptions could be the Titanic battle between Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso at Imola in 2005 and 2006 for the win. Or the defensive masterclass from Sebastian Vettel in Nurburgring in 2013 against Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean.

One has to bring context into these statistics to fairly conclude, something that's not often done, unfortunately.

#5 Red Bull RB19 was the most dominant car in history because it won the most races

Finally, something that was claimed multiple times by Lewis Hamilton and a few members of the Mercedes F1 team during the 2023 F1 season was that Red Bull was the most dominant car in the history of the sport.

The reason behind it? The car won all but 1 race throughout the season and hence by that metric one could argue that it was the most dominant car.

For this particular case, we've done a complete article explaining why Red Bull isn't and it comes down to looking at the wrong metrics once again.