[andae23]

Every year Autosport asks ten team principals to make a top 10 list of F1 drivers based on their 2015 on-track performance. The current points system is then applied to those lists to make an ‘overall’ top 10 drivers. See this article for more details:

http://beta.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/122079/f1-team-principals-top-10-drivers

Here are the results:

1 Lewis Hamilton (229pts)
2 Sebastian Vettel (180)
3 Nico Rosberg (113)
4 Max Verstappen (77)
5 Daniil Kvyat (69)
6 Fernando Alonso (57)
7 Valtteri Bottas (52)
8 Sergio Perez (48)
9 Daniel Ricciardo (47)
10 Kimi Raikkonen (37)

Now, can be backtrack this?

It’s very easy to work out that Hamilton probably had seven 1st place and three 2nd places (unless one team principal was trolling and put him in 8th place).

Now Vettel: if we assume that he had the remaining three 1st places, then there are many permutations for the remaining seven votes. Assuming all team principals had the common sense to place him in the top four, the possibilities are:
– Three 1st places, three 2nd & 4th places, one 3rd place.
– Three 1st places, two 2nd & 4th places, three 3rd places.
– Three 1st places, one 2nd & 4th place, five 3rd places.
– Three 1st places and seven 3rd places.

Here’s where it gets interesting: note that Rosberg’s score is significantly lower than Vettel’s score, which means a lot of team principals must have put him quite far down their list. Since Rosberg has an odd points total and assuming he had no 1st and 10th places, he must have had an odd number of third places. Working it out, it looks like no more than three or four team principals put Rosberg in their top 3, even though he ended up 3rd on this list.

So yeah, that seems a bit odd to me, because there are a lot of 2nd and 3rd places that haven’t been claimed by Hamilton, Vettel or Rosberg. I guess the only conclusion is that, apart from Hamilton and Vettel, the team principals were really undecided.

[Keith Collantine]

Each team principal picked ten drivers so a total of 1,010 points were awarded.

The ten drivers listed above have a total of 909, leaving 101 points shared between the remaining drivers who don’t appear on the list. Curiously, that could equal one driver in each of the top ten positions (101 points are awarded per race), but I doubt that was the case.

[PorscheF1]

Verstappen surely sneaked into some team principal their top 3.

[WheelToWheel]

Perez and Ricciardo are too low. Perez did a better job than Rosberg, Bottas and Kvyat. Raikkonen too high up and Grosjean nowhere to be seen. Will the ratings from each team principal ne revealdd

[Michal]

Having a competitive car always inflate the score. Rosberg is the perfect example.

[Philip]

Hamilton’s score can only have come from all but 3 team principals giving him 25, and those other three giving him 18.

Arrivabene is sure to have given Vettel 25 so he’s 1. And I think Horner and Tost will have voted Vettel as well.

[Keith Collantine]

Here’s one of the potential solutions via Alex on Twitter:

@f1fanatic_co_uk I've had a go – there are obviously several solutions, but here's one example pic.twitter.com/3pjTGeaS3X

— Alex S. (@alexs1man) December 2, 2015

[alexf1man]

Thanks Keith, I really appreciate you sharing this with everyone. If you’d like to access the Excel sheet, please let me know on here or Twitter

[PorscheF1]

Only now I realised Massa is not in the top 10. Surely if Bottas is 7th he deserves to be 8th.

[Kingshark]

Bottas has been better than Massa by a bigger margin than the final points tally suggests. If not for his injury in Australia, puncture in Hungary, mixed tyre selection in Belgium, Raikkonen in Russia, and Williams pit crew in Abu Dhabi; he should’ve had 50 more points than Massa.

[Author]

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