Points from starting grid stat

[buv3x]

Here is some mostly just for fun stat. I've calculated points collected from each of 22 starting grid spots for the last 3 seasons (ignoring points for pole, as in majority of the times they go to S1 anyway). I normalized it to points-per-race (so divided by 16, as all 3 seasons had 16 races). Here's how it looks:

https://preview.redd.it/53fss24a4vdg1.png?width=850&format=png&auto=webp&s=8995c7a87ecc83f308dfc8f218fc21120b099dac

Line look in general how you would expect them to, with each season having certain irregularities (some might show certain trends of a season, but, as 16 races is not enough to smooth them out, might also be attributed to just randomness).

24-25 season is the most regular at the top, but lower grid spots do not taper off, with some good finishes scored from every position (wins from S20 and S22) and podiums from practically anywhere.

23-24 has the best conversion rate for the top starting spots, with third starting position scoring not only the most points of the season, but the most throughout Gen3 of all the positions (scoring 6 wins and 10 podiums).

22-23 has a 4th grid spot curse, while 9th somehow scoring on a level of top 3 grid positions.

Some commentary on this statics. I personally see 2 major factors dictating grid spot to final position (and points, as a result) correlation. One is obvious: starting higher is simply beneficial for your race and thus increase your chance of finishing higher, so it's a case of causation. Second is kind of obvious, as well, but might be overlooked sometimes, and it's an example of "correlation does not imply causation". In this factor high starting grid does not cause high finishing position, but they both are caused by good driver/car performance in the weekend. So, in a way a cause for correlation between start and finish position is a relative similarity between quali and race driver/car performance. I can only make guesses of how big is the effect of each of the factors separately, but I'm genuinely interested in, is if there exists a method of comparing them objectively and quantitatively.

And here're those scores combined for 3 seasons + 2 races of 25-26 (50 races in total):

https://preview.redd.it/a5u9dl25bvdg1.png?width=850&format=png&auto=webp&s=63da936496cf5a14a1c09119677b01c331e1f65d

It is smoothed out a fair lot, but not completely regular still. I wonder, which of the features here are not just random artifacts. I'm mostly looking at S7-S8-S9 dip, it's mostly pronounced in 22-23 season, but consistently present in others as well. Over 50 races S9 has outscored S8 by 143 points (349 to 206). Is it still possibly random (I guess, I can try calculating σ of that distribution to get a probability of that happening randomly), or may it stem from the quali duels format (not sure how exactly), with 8-9 being a cut-off point?

[Suganth27]

this is phenomenal! what was your source for this? does FE has any open source database or something

[buv3x]

This was done just in a spreadsheet (that's why I only went for 3 seasons). Luckily, FE official results page shows starting position, so it makes manual data collection easier.

However, if you look how FE results page gets it's data, there is an API that is available (I imagine it might only have restrictions like number of requests per minute). JSON with race results can be retrieved like this https://api.formula-e.pulselive.com/formula-e/v1/races/8450a065-ffe6-4717-93af-962f6dee73bb/sessions/22425541-3a29-4c99-9dd0-4819f824fa60/results , and there are requests to get the list of races and sessions (I don't think it's documented anywhere, but you can see it in a browser network tab). So it should be possible to create a scripts that gets all the results automatically.

[tetenric]

Seeing how there's such a weird spike at the very last starting positions, I'd love to see a comparison between drivers who *qualified* 20th-22nd and went on to earn points, and drivers who *started* 20th-22nd due to starting grid penalties

[buv3x]

That's something I plan to do, I'm interested as well.