Formula 1 - Monaco Grand Prix 2023

I didn't get to see any of the Monaco Grand Prix because a friend took me to see Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Given this is the third time I've missed a grand prix this season because friends or family organised something at the same time, I'm starting to think they're trying to protect me from Ferrari's continued uselessness.

I had 0 hopes for the Monaco Grand Prix because, as we all know, Leclerc is cursed at home.

Coming out of the film, I looked at the result and saw that Ferrari had matched my expectations and performed awfully. I should probably be happy, I am the only person whose expectations they are meeting ("Ferrari: Team 'far away from expectation', says principal Frederic Vasseur" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/65761260). You ain't just whistlin' dixie my friend.

It does support my theory that Binotto was not the problem and regime change, with no disrespect to Vasseur, is not the answer.

(Also, on a book-keeping tip, there will be no post next week, but several hopefully the week after to make up for it)

A further thought about the withdrawals from the Women's Tour De France 2022

The trick to blogging is having intelligent friends who spot things you don't.

R pointed out that there's another difference between the men's and women's races.  As is well known, to the extent that commentators make jokes about it, often, particularly on flat stages, nothing much happens for large numbers of kilometres.  The women's races don't have that, a greater percentage of the stage is raced flat out, which might lead to greater wear and tear on the women's race participants.

Withdrawals from the Women's Tour De France 2022

Previously, I've compared the attrition rate of the men's Tour de France with the Giro d'Italia Femminile (https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2022/05/18/for-guts-or-for-glory-was-the-2021-tour-de-france-attrition-rate-influenced-by-the-upcoming-olympics/). Last year, however, there was a women's Tour de France so I felt I ought to do a direct comparison. 

(Don't worry Giro d'Italia Femminile, you're still my favourite despite all the nonsense) 

For background on the 2022 Tour de France Femmes (henceforth TDFF), please see here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Tour_de_France_Femmes. 

First of all, yes, it was 8 days rather than the 21-ish for the men's, because as we all know, female bodies, absolutely can't cope with longer races (please, please note my heavy sarcasm on this matter).

First, there are the withdrawals by team and by stage:  

Yes, you're not imagining things, 24 teams competed in the TDFF. 

I find that interesting, because one of the reasons given for the shorter race is that the teams cannot sustain a three-week race, but allowing this many teams to compete might be a compromise to allow more women to compete, especially as the women's teams have 6 riders a team (2 members smaller than the men's teams). 

Four teams didn't lose a rider (Canyon-SRAM, St. Michel-Auber93, Trek Segafredo and Uno-X Pro Cycling Team), and no team lost all their riders. 

The Kaplan Meier of overall rider attrition looks like this:  

There was greater percentage drop out than the men's tour. 

However, if you compare them directly (with a small amount of fudging to take into account the different number of stages), as in the figure below, you can see that the withdrawal rate is only slightly greater.  

If we look at withdrawals from individual teams, you can see stage 2 happening to Stade Rochelais Charente-Maritime.  

Looking at withdrawals by individual stage, it looks like this:  

Stage 7 saw the most withdrawals, in fact it and stage 3 made up more than half the withdrawals on their own. 

Stage 7 was the queen stage, so withdrawals make some sort of sense, and Cycling News tells me that stage 3 had that many because of people affected from a crash the day before (https://www.cyclingnews.com/races/tour-de-france-femmes-2022/stage-3/results/).

Breaking the withdrawals down by type, it looks like this:    

27% of the TDFF withdrawals were racers who did not start the stage, versus 29% over the time limit at the finish and the remaining 44% who abandoned mid-stage (I have called Barbara Malcotti's misadventures [https://www.eurosport.com/cycling/tour-de-france-femmes/2022/its-dangerous-barbara-malcotti-booted-out-of-tour-de-france-femmes-after-team-car-breaks-rule_sto9065537/story.shtml] a mid-stage abandon). 

This is a very different pattern to the men's race, where only 5% of withdrawals were due to riders finishing outside the time limit.  There were 26% mid-race abandonments but 68% of withdrawals were due to riders who did not start the stage. Now this was partly due to several COVID withdrawals in the men's race, but the different balance is intriguing. 

I have no data to back up my theory that there is a greater difference between the front of the TDFF and the back than there is within the men's peloton, but I think it's a reasonable possibility. It's not just the cyclists, Vos, van Vleuten, they're good shouts for all-time good, but the support teams. In the men's equivalent, we see the difference between the World Tour and Continental Tour teams easily enough, how much wider is that going to be in the less well funded women's division. 

It'll be interesting to repeat this comparison this year.

Formula 1 - Miami Grand Prix 2023

I don't have Sky Sports so I "watch" formula 1 on the radio. That means I do tend to snatch up any opportunity I can get to watch it on the screen.

My mother, on the other hand, hates formula 1, very much in the spirit of "blöd im Kreis herumzufahren". She swears that both things that happened were accidents but thank to mother-derived-events, I managed to listen to 15 minutes of Miami Grand Prix and qualifying tops.

As a Ferrari fan, you'd be justified in saying that I didn't miss much. As an F1 fan, in general, it sounds like I didn't miss much. I'm perfectly willing to believe Verstappen drove well, but wouldn't it be nice if he had someone challenging him.

(Rumour also states we need to beware, very ware, of whatever they are planning for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, apparently they have promised more ridiculousness than the Miami Grand Prix.)

Formula 1 - Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2023

 (Sorry for the absence, I promise all of it was fun, and some of it will lead to content for the blog)

I didn't have "the BBC radio commentary team writes Fernando Alonso/Taylor Swift RPF live on air" on my bingo card.

On the other hand, it was probably the highlight of the race.

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix frequently has no racing (street circuit, cars too wide to allow passing, DRS zone chicken is the only sporting thing going on) but normally the Baku Chaos Bonanza makes up for that.  This time there was no chaos, so the race was duller than dishwater.

When the highlights of the race are wondering why the Alpha Tauri was so fragile compared to every other car that hit the wall and how long Hulkenberg's tyres would last (answer = not long enough), you know it's not a good race.

I may, however, have had a moment of personal illumination.  Something about the way one of the BBC articles was phrased made me realise that the new sprint format (which is rubbish) is designed to do away with practise to try to provide more excitement at the actual race because the strategy teams will have less data to predict performance with.  Ross Brawn has had to come up with something to fill the time.  I still think the sprints are rubbish, but at least I now appreciate the bounds he's working within.