What a fantastic first half of the 2021 season we have seen. Thankfully the summer break is now over and it’s time for Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen to renew their stoush for the 2021 World Drivers Championship.
There have been some epic battles so far this year between the seven time World Champion and the young Dutchman desperate to take the crown. The graph below shows the changes in the Championship lead during the season.
Leadership changes was one of the eight factors we looked at in our Best Season in Formula 1 History analysis. Both 2010 and 1986 topped the charts for this factor with a total of ten leadership changes over the course their respective seasons. 2021 has currently only seen two changes but the statistic doesn’t do justice to how tightly fought the 2021 title has been to date.
POINTS MARGIN
The next chart is a good representation of the frustration Max must have felt going into the summer break. After the second race in Austria Red Bull’s number one was heading the Mercedes driver by 32 points. In the space of the last three races Lewis has turned the tables to now lead by 8 points.
So does an eight point lead at the summer break mean Hamilton is odds on favourite to secure a record eighth title? Lets look at what has happened over the history of Formula 1…
WHAT CAN HISTORY TELL US?
At the mid-season break in 2017 we we developed a model to estimate the likelihood that each driver would go on to win the Championship. This model analyses historical data that allows us to map the current season standings to each driver’s probability of winning. The chart below shows the fitted curve against the actual WDC wins from different points margins at mid-season over history.
To clarify what all this means, a driver who is leading by 75 points at midseason (+75 on the x-axis) has historically gone on to win the Championship about 90% of the time. Alternatively a driver who is trailing the leader by 25 points (-25 on the x-axis) at mid-season has still gone on to win the Championship nearly 20% of the time.
Mapping our current season standings to the historical model and normalising the results so that they add to 100% gives us the probabilities described in the chart below. We’ve also added the current probabilities implied by Betfair markets to see how punters are reading things compared to our historical model.
As you can see both Betfair and our historical model show this season is a two horse race. Both models suggest no other driver than Max or Lewis has any meaningful probability of winning this year’s title.
WILL LEWIS HAMILTON WIN?
Our model suggests Lewis Hamilton has a 59% chance of taking the title this year versus a Betfair probability of just 52%. Why do the punters see this as a tighter race than our model suggests based on the current margin? We think the answer lies in the fact that Lewis’ current lead has had more to do with Verstappen’s recent DNFs than the impact of outright pace. This is something our simple model just doesn’t capture.
WILL MAX VERSTAPPEN WIN?
The model gives Max 41% chance of winning the 2021 Championship versus a Betfair probability of 46%. So as we have seen in the past punters continue to give the trailing driver a higher probability of winning than the statistical model. Does the betting public have a general bias towards backing the underdog? Possibly. But in this case we think this is genuinely a far tighter championship than our model implies.
One back of the envelope stat we can use to support this view is to sum the total points margins carried by the leading driver at the end of each race so far. Essentially the total area captured by each driver in the second chart above. On this measure Verstappen has carried a total lead of 78 points so far this season versis Lewis’ total lead of 38 points. Game on!
HAMILTON’S CHAMPIONSHIP TO LOSE
Lewis Hamilton goes into the second half of the season with an eight point lead but clearly both models show the probability of either Lewis or Max winning is tight.
Let’s hope the second half of the season delivers the same intensity as the fist 11 races have in what has been a brilliant fight to date. Hamilton v Verstappen…let the fight continue…