Winning is everything in racing, but ...

I've been wanting a better way to evaluate a riders performance during a race. The MotoGP teams obviously have some amazing datasets on each of their riders based on the output from the telemetry units on the bikes, but normal people aren't going to be getting their hands on that data.Still, I figured there had to be something else we could use beyond championship points, especially when it comes to evaluating riders that aren't usually at the sharp end. In addition to MotoGP, my other main sports obsession is baseball, where there are a couple dozen different advanced metrics that you can use to evaluate a player, all fan developed, albeit by fans smarter than I am. What I wanted to build was something akin to WAR. If you're not a baseball fan, or not THAT kind of baseball fan, WAR stands for Wins Above Replacement and is designed to give you a single score that sums up a player's total contribution to their team in excess of what a replacement level player would provide. This theoretical replacement level player is what any team would have access to with minimal cost or effort.When I started thinking about how the concept of WAR would apply to MotoGP, the first problem was what would constitute replacement level. There isn't a lot of consistent data that would help define what that replacement level rider would be capable of doing if they were plopped into the saddle. When a team is considering who to put on their bikes for the season, finding someone capable of circulating at the back of the field well out of the points isn't the goal. Even small independent teams are looking for riders who can get into points paying positions on a regular basis, so that's what I've tried to base this new score around; how much better, or worse, did the rider perform when compared to the rider in the final points paying position of 15th.The Sector+ score for each rider is based on the following factors:Sector times: a simple plus/minus 1 score if the sector time for an individual sector was better or worse than the rider in 15th place;Technical rating for the sector: each sector of the track is scored on a scale of 1 to 3 according to how technically challenging it is, and an appropriate modifier is added to each sector score for the rider;Sector time delta: the delta between the rider's sector time and the sector time posted by the rider in 15th place;Race stage: each race is divided into three stages and the latter two stages apply increasing multipliers to the sector delta times.Just like WAR in baseball, Sector+ isn't perfect. There are issues with the data available from MotoGP, especially the breakdown of sector times not being tied to a riders position within that sector. When setting the replacement level value for a lap, I'm forced to use the sector times for the rider that finished the lap in 15th place even if they started the lap elsewhere in the field. However, I feel like it does give us the ability to more simply capture a riders performance over the course of the race. A tactical error in qualifying or getting bumped off the track in the first corner, for example, won't ruin a riders Sector+ score. The rider cutting through the field from the back to take 4th place (Joan Mir!) could end up with a better Sector+ score than the race winner. And while crashing does prevent a rider from generating Sector+ score for the remainder of the race, they don't lose anything they've already accumulated.Sector+ isn't meant to supersede actual championship points. Winning is everything, and winning in MotoGP means scoring points. I just wanted a way to argue relative value, and eventually have a tool capable of doing predictive modelling of rider performance once I've ingested enough data.Here's how the MotoGP field has stacked up through the first three rounds of 2018:Rider : Championship pts : Sector+ scoreAndrea Dovizioso : 46 : 176Marc Marquez : 45 : 242Maverick Vinales : 41 : 201Cal Crutchlow : 38 : 203Johann Zarco : 38 : 208Andrea Iannone : 31 : 144Valentino Rossi : 29 : 194Jack Miller : 26 : 123Tito Rabat : 22 : 63Danilo Petrucci : 21 : 100Dani Pedrosa : 18 : 127Alex Rins : 16 : 137Hafizh Syahrin : 9 : 18Pol Espargaro : 8 : -37Aleix Espargaro : 6 : 48Jorge Lorenzo : 6 : 57Franco Morbidelli : 6 : -104Takaaki Nakagami : 5 : -37Scott Redding : 4 : -115Alvaro Bautista : 4 : -49Karel Abraham : 1 : -115Thomas Luthi : 0 : -105Bradley Smith : 0 : -122Xavier Simeon : 0 : -250If anyone is keen, I can post the Moto2 and Moto3 results. I also threw together a site with race by race reports and a couple of articles evaluating riders who might be changing teams for 2019 and where they should end up.Thanks for checking it out.
Submitted May 03, 2018 at 08:22AM by onedaylucky https://www.reddit.com/r/motogp/comments/8gokka/winning_is_everything_in_racing_but/?utm_source=ifttt