While the teams are focused on what’s to come, working as hard as they can in their factories on the 2023 cars before closing for Christmas, and some like Aston Martin even announcing their presentation date, for others it’s time to look back and Do numbers to see what the 2022 Formula 1 season has given of itself in different sections. And one of the most decisive of each race is the first lap. The start and the corners that follow always offer the best opportunities for overtaking and spectacle. That is why it is the moment most followed by fans on Grand Prix Sundays.
We review the data of each race and do calculations to see how the drivers are ordered by the positions they gained and lost during the season taking into account that in this statistic those who start further back tend to shine and the opposite occurs with those who do so above because, in addition to having fewer options to gain places, an accident penalizes their position much more. Having said that, the man with the best balance is Stroll. It may surprise many, but the Canadian He finished with a positive balance of 30 positions gained, five more than Ocon, the next on the list.
Both are followed by their former Aston Martin and Alpine teammates, Vettel and Alonso, with +18 and +15 respectively. And Tsunoda (+14) with the Alpha Tauri closes a top-5 taken with the data of all the races (not counting the sprints) except one, that of Silverstone, since in that one the first lap was aborted due to multiple accidents before have a first time reference and the restart was taken with the original positions of the grid and the absence of the victims, which would have left distorted results that it is better to discard.
In addition to leading the global statistics, Stroll also stands out in two sections. He is the driver who has won the most positions in a first lap of the race with seven (with a brilliant start in Japan) along with Magnussen (in France, in a less eventful start), and also the one who has finished the most races, improving his position from game (16). Continuing with the positive data, Verstappen and Ocon are the ones who have lost their place the least times in the first kilometers of the race, only once, which also highlighted its regularity in the outputs.
the down side
After reviewing the ones that are best off this list, it is time to go to the opposite side and see who are the ones who suffer the most. Y The one who occupies the last place with 56 places lost in 2022 is Sainz. The man from Madrid is clearly penalized for three incidents and there was little he could do to avoid them: in Imola he was hit by Ricciardo, in Japan he spun under the deluge and in Austin he was beaten by Russell when he started from pole position. Three moments that account for 50 positions, practically all of those that leave him in the queue. An example of how unfair numbers can be.
With Carlos at the bottom of the grid they are boots (-36), Zhou (-18) and Hamilton (-18). The Finn also adds two negative records with the Alfa Romeo because he is the one who finished the course with the most races with lost positions (12) and with fewer citations with positions gained (2), so in his case his position in the table is a true reflection of how irregular he has been in the first few laps. In total, eleven are the pilots who finished with a positive balance and nine, with negative, excluding Hulkenberg (who ran for Vettel in Bahrain and Arabia) and De Vries (for Albon in Monza), whose presence was testimonial.
