TDF 2020 Week 3 Data Doodles

Late because of work

The stacked bar charts have come out a lovely near jersey yellow.  I approve of this serendipity.

The only teams that didn't suffer a withdrawal were Decuninck-Quick Step, Jumbo Visma, Movistar and Sunweb.

Withdrawals by stage pie charts

Four stages, stages 8, 11, 17 and 19 make up almost half of the total withdrawals.  According to one guide, stage 11 was supposed to be an innocuous stage and 19 was supposed to be a recovery day, so it could be due to people withdrawing due to previous damage.  Or wasp stings.  Which yeah, getting stung in the mouth is nasty!

Interestingly, the overall Kaplan Meier survival curve does seem to have 3 sections, which do marry up to the three weeks, with a slight slope, a deeper slope and then a slight slope again.

Visually, the individual team Kaplan Meiers are too busy to get much out of, although you can still see Ag2R's no-good bad-day.  Next year, I'll see if I can get the colours to match up with the teams a bit better.

The week 3 withdrawals are pretty evenly divided.

Different withdrawal types split by week

As the weeks progressed, there were more withdrawals due to DNS, possibly reflecting wear and tear.  The mid-stage abandons reduced as the weeks went on, possibly due to sheer stubbornness of riders.  The outside of time limit withdrawals only occurred in weeks 1 and 3, poor John Degenkolb aside, both were at mountain stages.  There being only 3 outside of time withdrawals still shocks me.

All withdrawals, split by type

Most withdrawals were mid-stage abandonments, which again suggests that the only way of stopping riders is either damaging them beyond carrying on, or holding the World Championships that close to the TDF that time trialists withdraw to be ready for them.

I'd like to take the opportunity to link to this really neat analysis - https://twitter.com/xavierdisley/status/1308009665696063488?s=03 - where Pogacar's energy output on that amazing time trial stage is compared to that of others.  It's fascinating.

Ferrari Foul Up Bingo - After the Tuscan Grand Prix

Team, the FIA throw you a huge party of a Grand Prix to celebrate 1000 races.  It is held at Mugello.  Florence makes a fuss of you.  Fans are allowed to be present.

Eighth and ninth just isn't acceptable.  I mean, it's not acceptable anyway, but in this situation, it really isn't.

I never thought I'd see the day that a Ferrari had an under-powered engine.  The Ferrari of my childhood was that glorious, unreliable V12 which, when it wasn't exploding in a variety of ways, was the most powerful thing going.  How do you go from that to this excuse of a lawnmower engine?

It's just so frustrating.

Only one square has been dabbed, and that's the already dabbed "too indecisive to decide on a strategy."  When one of your drivers says he doesn't care which strategy you choose as long as you choose one, this suggests a problem.  When it's not the first time your drivers have made this statement, it suggests an on-going problem.

I've not dabbed "cars crash into someone else" since that would involve one of the Ferraris was the person doing the hitting, and neither of them did.  Somehow they both avoided all the chaos, all three times, which I would like to congratulate them on.

Now, if only I could convince my Mum to stop suggesting I switch allegiance to Racing Point.  No, just because they will be Aston Martin, will have Sebastian Vettel as one of their drivers and will be infinitely less frustrating than Ferrari, none of those are reasons to betray my team.  Also, I might never forgive Racing Point for dropping Perez.

(I am pleased that the FIA decided not to be idiots and aren't going to reprimand Lewis Hamilton for wearing a very polite t-shirt asking for justice for Breonna Taylor (https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/12071177/lewis-hamilton-calls-for-justice-for-breonna-taylor-after-winning-tuscan-gp).  Otherwise I was going to have to point out they're a driving formula that accept alcoholic drink sponsorship, and therefore really can't speak about anything anyone is wearing.  Lewis Hamilton remains excellent.) 

Tour de France 2020 Week 2 Data Doodles

 I'd just like to once again state quite how sketchy and preliminary these are.  These follow on from last week's.

Lotto Soudal remain the team worst affected by withdrawals, although 3 teams are now short two riders.  B&B, Decuninck- Quick Step, Ineos, Israel Start-Up Nation, Jumbo Visma, Movistar and Sunweb are the only teams that haven't lost anyone.

Stage 8 (CAZÈRES-SUR-GARONNE>LOUDENVIELLE, containing the first hors category climb of this years tour, or Nans Peters vs the mountain) remains the stage with the most withdrawals.

The withdrawals occurred on a variety of stages.

This year's number of withdrawals is about average (can I find the @LeTour tweet that said that?  No, of course I can't!).

For the individual teams, you can see from the shape of the curve how suddenly the race *happened* to Ag2R-La Mondiale.

What I was interested in was if the kind of withdrawals changed over time.

They haven't really.

I am legitimately surprised that there has been only one withdrawal due to missing a time cut (and that was John Degenkolb after stage 1 happened to him almost more than it happened to anyone else except Philippe Gilbert and Rafael Valls.

Somehow they've been up many, many hills and the Grand Colombier and the only person cut was on stage 1.  It's incredible.

Ferrari Foul-Up Bingo - After the Italian Grand Prix

Only one new dab, because oddly, I don't have a square for brake failure, due to an apparently forlorn hope that that would be the one thing on the car they'd make sure to get right.

Noticeably, driver error is the most marked square.  Boys, this is not good enough, even if you never did hear a more piteous sound than Leclerc post-accident.  Try not to do that again, Charles!

However, the Italian national anthem did ring around Monza.  (Yes, I am reaching, if nothing else, Ferrari's form in the last ten years has increased my powers of reach.)

I am grateful for small mercies.  Anyway, not even at maximum curmudgeon setting can I begrudge Pierre Gasly this moment.  Listen to what it means to him.

The French commentators were restrained, in that way that only they can be.  And we love them for it!  (Given that one of the UK radio commentators was almost in tears, I think it's more than forgivable.  Apparently Gasly really is that likeable.)

After a race whose only rational explanation is that the focussing of every Ferrari fan's mean thoughts finally worked, we are going to need to do it all over again this week, because I cannot deal with a world where Mercedes win at Mugello.  It is not acceptable.

Start thinking mean thoughts!

Tour de France 2020 Data Doodles

Inspired by @psychemedia on Twitter/blog.ouseful.info, and his F1 charts where you could tell when something had happened and who it happened to, even if you hadn't watched the race, I wanted to do something similar for the Tour de France.  Only, I still wanted to watch the stages.

Also, other people have probably done more things with times and speeds, so I thought I'd focus on withdrawals.  

Can you tell which stages are the hardest from the number of withdrawals?

I couldn't decide which I liked the look of more, the version where the stages are chronological or arranged by number of withdrawals

The figures suggest that stage 8 was nasty.  (Which it was, in a good way)

The whole peleton hasn't lost that many, and more than 90% of riders remain in.

(This was why I was asking if anyone had a good explainer for Kaplan Meier graphs made using R.  If anyone finds one, I am still looking.)

But let's look at it by team.

This is the withdrawals by team in absolute numbers.

Now, but in percentages

And now the Kaplan Meier by team, which I acknowledge is ugly.

Mostly, Lotto Soudal appear to be cursed.

Other things I'm thinking of is dividing the withdrawals as to whether they were abandonments or do not starts and seeing how they differ, and deciding whether the DNS should be counted as belong to the stage before, or the stage they didn't start.

It'd also be interesting to see if there's a pattern in the withdrawals in the different weeks.

Ferrari foul-up bingo - after the Belgian Grand Prix

 At the Spanish Grand Prix, Ferrari decided on a strategy ten laps after Vettel suggested it.  Now far be it from me to suggest that the team on the pit-wall maybe ought to be able to think of these things before the guy in the car, but really, it's what they're paid for.

But I didn't dab the "too indecisive to decide on a strategy" square because I fell into the same trap that all sports fans fall into at some point.  

Hope!

I hoped that this was a one-off, and that they weren't falling back into bad habits.  The Belgian Grand Prix dashed this hope.  Telling one of your drivers that you'll be going for strategy C or D, when the driver has to do very different things now depending on which of those options you go with, is not helpful.  They really did need to make a decision, and make it sooner.

"Pit stop disaster" is not dabbed, because the slow pitstops weren't due to a pitstop disaster but an engine pressure leak.  I'm sure Ferrari will find a way to screw up a pitstop at some point.