Formula 1 2025 - Chinese Grand Prix

 And the weekend started so well with Hamilton's sprint victory (https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/hamilton-storms-to-sprint-victory-and-first-ferrari-win-in-china-ahead-of.2VzfSIOQeFC6y2Kskxkpz9)

Just a note, Ferrari victories still don't make sprint races a good idea.

But I didn't get my hopes up because I have been *here* before. And I was wise not to because ...

Ferrari somehow managed to get both their cars disqualified, which is a special kind of ridiculousness (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/cn0j7gvnk89o).

I can, to an extent, forgive the Leclerc disqualification, because there is a chance it was related to how the car drove after losing it's front wing end-plate. Which was knocked off in a collision with his teammate ... and whose loss improved performance.

Meanwhile, the undamaged car got pinged for having undersized skid blocks!

How do you miss something like that?!!!

I hate being a Ferrari fan sometimes.

(I have learnt my lesson from the BBC taking the Chinese Grand Prix off the Sounds app after less than two weeks and will be listening to the Japanese Grand Prix replay tomorrow.)

Formula 1 2025 - Australian Grand Prix

An editorial decision was made to skip the rest of my 2024 write ups, on the principle that it's been, gone and done, and I have nothing interesting to add other than I really wasn't expecting George Russell to be that bitey. I think it is going to be the only way that Verstappen will stop knocking into people, if people knock back. 

Ferrari totally won the meme contest in Australia, that counts for something, right? 

I am aware it counts for nothing. I am trying to make myself feel better given that Ferrari somehow managed to finish behind a Sauber. 

A Sauber!!! 

(The Hülkenberg fan in me is so happy. If Sauber could get him a podium this year I will be ecstatic. The Ferrari fan in me is not comforted by this joy. It is a very odd feeling.) 

(I also feel vindicated in my belief that Binotto was not the problem. In much the way Domenicali, Arrivabene and Vasseur are not the problem.)

The vindication also does not comfort me. 

I will stick up for the strategy team however. If that strategy had paid off, they would have been feted as heroes. It's a fine line, and I'd rather them fail by making a decision than fail by dithering. I mean, I'd be even happier if they didn't fail, but I am recalibrating my hopes at this point. 

With regard to other teams, that second Red Bull seat remains cursed, I see that Helmut Marko is living up to the Darth Helmut jokes (although Anthony Hamilton is so lovely), and the Aussie curse has hit Piastri. 

All in all, an interesting season opener.

So when are Georgia replacing Wales in the Six Nations?

It's now been two whole Six Nations tournaments since Wales last won a game in the 6 Nations.

This year, they even got nil-ed (https://www.sixnationsrugby.com/en/m6n/fixtures/2025/france-v-wales-31012025-2115/report).

What are they even adding to the competition?

Don't worry, I am only being sarcastic, and I don't want rid of Wales, not least of all because I love Adam Jones.

But it is interesting that while there are suggestions that Wales (who came bottom of the 6 Nations) should have a play off against Georgia who won the Rugby Europe Championship, which is the next level down (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/articles/cn04pz1wezyo), to see who gets to be in the 6 Nations next year, there's nothing like the volume of suggestions that really, the bottom team ought to be got rid of, like there was when it was Italy down there, not being able to scrape a win by any means.

Why the difference? Is it because Italy, being the newest participants in the 6 Nations are not one of the "old boys", or is it because the other "big teams" are scared that one day it'll be them down there?

In my sports-watching life time, I have seen every 6 Nations team other than England be the Wooden Spoon (team in last place) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Nations_Championship#Wooden_Spoon 

If you think it could happen to you, you're less likely to suggest it when it happens to a Union of the same venerability as yours.

Even 8 years ago (https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/how-dyou-solve-a-problem-like-italian-rugby/) I was suggesting a play-off would be better than straight replacement of a team, so I'm glad everyone is realising I was right.

It's even more important now - lack of regular play against the top teams *is* holding Georgia back, and given Portugal's heroics at the last Rugby Union World Cup, the lack of mobility between what I will call tier 2 and tier 1 gives them very little to aim for or any way of improving.

If it's just one team swapped out permanently, that doesn't solve the problem of growing the depth of the game.

There are some downsides to the playoff plan - most importantly, where to fit the game in an already packed calendar and maintain player welfare. But I can't think of a more equitable solution.

Saints Ahoy - Game 22 and the 2024 season to date

Subtle change in name to reflect that the 2025 Rugby League Super League season has started. 

Game 22 was against Hull FC. This time Hull actually managed to score against Saints:  

I wish Saints had kept a clean sheet, but (shrug). 

The good news for Saints is that Morgan Knowles was back from injury in this game, and Jake Burns, got his first ever try for the senior team, then the second in the same game. (A bit of background - https://www.saintsrlfc.com/teams/first-team/jake-burns/ He might be one of the last of the proper, has a non-Saints career to fall back on, players). The most heart-warming part, exactly how happy the Saints Twitter guy was. 

The game 22 "who is present together when Saints score" matrix diagram, I'm including it because I think it looks pretty, and it's nicely shows how forwards interchange (paler colours), while the backs stay on (darker colours).  

For the season to date, Saints have had 172 point-scoring moments and 98 conceded. 

22 players have scored for Saints.  

The "Saints often score in minutes 50-53" has been reinforced.  

Who is present when Saints score?  

The present-together-when-Saints-score matrix has an interesting pattern. Whitley's line makes that pattern. This is because he was present for a lot of point-scoring moments early in the season, then was out for a while, and has now been present for several more tries now he's back. So he's been separated from the main "often present when Saints score" group, but has still been present a lot with them.  

The equivalent network graph looks like this. When do Saints concede?  

The pattern of Saints conceding minute 9-12 has gone. It is starting to look like Saints concede a lot in the last 10 minutes, which I'm not sure is reflective of tiredness (justifiable) or more time needed on conditioning (not acceptable). 

Who is present when Saints concede?  

The matrix diagram of players together when Saints concede also looks interesting. It basically looks like a tartan with a repeating pattern, but each repeat is slightly paler.  

The concession network graph just looks odd.

Not actually yearly round up of film locations

There's a reason L says the motto for my blog should be "I never drop projects, I just don't update them for a while". 

This one used to be yearly and then stuff happened, so I'm taking the chance to update it now. This is a list of all the locations where films I have mentioned up to August 2020 (yes, I know). 

Looking only at real locations, the US and UK lead the way.  

It's a lot less clear cut when I include fictional locations.  

There's still an disturbing, overwhelming, more than 80% of them are set there, English slant to the films set in the UK. It does possible suggest something about film funding in the UK, and where Hollywood sets films when they're set in the UK. When I have time to learn how to do nice map plots, I think this will be my dataset.

Formula 1 - Belgian Grand Prix 2024

 The reason I couldn't remember a thing about the race was because I was flying to the US at the time. It was a bad race to miss because it sounds like many things actual happened - https://www.formula1.com/en/racing/2024/belgium A race, with racing, and then disqualification nonsense. Apparently that's the first win lost to a technical disqualification since Schumacher!

Also at Spa!!

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Belgian_Grand_Prix for full details)

Saints ahoy! - Game 21 and season to date

This is one of the games where I know there are errors in the data. At various points Stephens swapped on for players who weren't on the pitch and I'm not sure when Mbye came on. I do not blame the overworked Saints social media fella, but it'd be nice if Super League tried to give me this information.

(I am not entirely joking when I threaten to do this for St. George Illawarra this season because the NRL has proper stats. Lack of time will be the only thing that stops me.) 

Game 21 itself was also a disappointment, because Saints lost 46-4 to Leigh. So not only did they beat us twice, they beat us twice in leopard print undercrackers (https://www.saintsrlfc.com/2024/07/26/saints-well-beaten-by-leigh/). The two yellow cards for Saints didn't help. 

It turns out the reason the social media team didn't say when Mbye came on was because they were in denial about Welsby going off. Which I really don't blame them for. 

Some quick reworking later, there are better figures. 

This Leigh team are now the team who have scored the most against Saints in 2024.  

There continues to be a pattern of Saints scoring in minute 50-53.  

There are 4 minutes where Saints have conceded 4 point-scoring moments, with some evidence that they concede often in the last 10 minutes.  

Because of injury in this match, Welsby is no longer ever present when Saints score. He is still the player most often present when Saints score, but that's because they only scored once in game 21.  

Because of the injury, Welsby is no longer the player present most often when Saints concede.  

The "who is present together when Saints score" is now four quadrants, with a intermediate group between them. The intermediate group are Whitley, Batchelor and Bennison. Whitley is just back from injury, which might explain it. 

The line that interests me is Ritson's, because where it crosses Lomax, Percival, Blake, and Welsby's, it is darker than expected. Not by much, but enough to be seen.  

The who-is-present-together-when-Saints-concede matrix is fascinating.  

My best guess for why is something about Welsby's injury, combined with the many point-conceding moments in this game. 

The network graph equivalent for point-scoring moments shows the central blob and the Stephens, Royle, Ritson and Paasi subgroup.  

The together-when-Saints-concede network graph looks more like the expected starfish, although there's signs of that subgroup in this one too.  

I think it's interesting that even with 21 games worth of data, the shapes and patterns are still changing.

Withdrawals from the 2024 Tour de France

I was going to say that there were relatively few withdrawals, and then stage 12 happened (https://www.rouleur.cc/blogs/the-rouleur-journal/from-covid-to-crashes-how-stage-12-of-the-tour-de-france). From a viz perspective, it's interesting because you can see stage 11 and 12 happening to the peleton in the picture.  

Or, you can't half tell which week had the mountain stages. 

You can also see the race happening to Astana (the red-orange line) in the Kaplan Meier split out by teams.  

The next visualisation is a pie chart of withdrawals by stage.  

The interesting thing is that while normally there's maybe 2 or 3 stages that stand out for having a lot of withdrawals, in 2024, there were no real standout "evil" stages. 

All withdrawals  

Did not start the stage withdrawals are most of the withdrawals, which is possibly because it takes over night for the riders to realise they are too injured to continue. Adrenaline is a terrible thing.

Withdrawals by week by type 

Week 1's withdrawals were all either Did Not Starts or mid-stage Abandonments  

Week 2 featured Did Not Starts, mid-stage Abandonments and some Outside the Time Limit withdrawals.  

Week 3 also features all three kinds of withdrawals.  

Withdrawals by type by week  

That's another set of charts that shows most of the mountain stages were in week 2, because those are the stages where people are most likely to be over the time limit. 

This series was originally intended to see if more riders withdraw in Olympics years (and showed that they don't - https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2023/11/18/withdrawals-in-week-3-of-the-2023-tour-de-france-an-overall-round-up-and-confirmation-that-the-olympics-didnt-cause-more-withdrawals/), it's interesting to see that there are two groups of races when you compare the withdrawal Kaplan Meier charts since 2020, and two curve shapes.  

I can maybe explain 2021's shape being different, although the end point isn't significantly different, because of the COVID withdrawals. 2021 was also the last year before the riders reduced in number, which might explain the two clumps. It's easier for a wounded but not out rider to hide in a pack, whether that pack is his own team, or a larger groupetto.

Formula 1 - Hungarian Grand Prix 2024

I'm not going to get this or the Rugby League project finished in time for the start of their respective seasons. There's a reason my next big project will start in September.

See, I am not even a McLaren fan, and the way they were obviously starting to be better than Ferrari, I really wasn't by the time of the Hungarian Grand Prix last year, but I wanted Piastri's first win to be less anti-climactic than that.

And trust me, British commentators, I noticed that suddenly team orders are already when the British teams do it. Like I appreciate the point of McLaren had to appear fair, and they didn't know how close the end of the year would get, but the end of the year also explains why I am okay with teams having rigid "driver 1, driver 2" style team orders. Like, I think Verstappen would have won any way, but it makes it a bit of a "what could have been" for Norris.

(I feel I need to add, I am Papaya neutral, I don't prefer Norris or Piastri.)

Saints Ahoy! - Game 20 and the season to date

Every league has a team like Warrington. Their purpose is to look like they could win the league, if everything lines up for them, and then things suddenly just don't line up for them. And the just don't continues for a long period of time. 

In Warrington's case, the "and then something went wrong" has lasted since 1955 (they have won the Cup since then, but never the league). Even their own fans sing a song about it. "It's always our year, it's always our year, same as the next one, it's always our year." and so on. 

In 2024, everything was starting to look like they might win. Sam Burgess as coach seemed to be the magic ingredient. It didn't, of course, end with them winning the league but 2025 could be their year. 

I try not to torment them too much, because they aren't a bad team, usually, and because I really like Stefan Ratchford as a player (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Ratchford). Yes, I know, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's stand-off, but I have wanted him on my team since before his nose was a non-Euclidean nightmare. 

Anyway, following Saints's loss to them in the quarter-final of the Challenge Cup (https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2024/08/13/saints-ahoy-visualisations-from-game-9-challenge-cup-quarterfinal/), game 20 was Saints and Warrington's first meeting in the league. 

And Saints lost. 

Lost to a team who had a man red carded in the 20th minute. And another one yellow carded later. 

It wasn't going to be Saints's season, was it. 

As in the last game (https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2025/01/26/saints-ahoy-game-19-and-the-season-to-date/), 4 out of the match day 17 were people who'd made their debuts this season. The season to date visualisations also started to see the effects of Hurrell's injury, as he dropped down the "present for" charts, and this mid-season bundle of Ritson, Royle, Stephens and Paasi really started to form up.

But I get ahead of myself... 

The point-scoring and point-conceding matrix diagrams look pleasingly similar with some small differences. 

Saints players who played together when Saints scored in game 20:  

The really interesting thing is the pale zone that shows Robertson, Mbye and Paasi didn't play with Stephens, Dodd and Royle. 

Now, from Saints's as it happened report (https://www.saintsrlfc.com/matches/2024/first-team/saints-v-warrington-wolves-2024-07-19/), I know Paasi and Stephens were swapping on and off for each other but I hadn't realised it for the others. 

Saints players who played together when Saints conceded in game 20:  

So it's quite clear that Stephens and Paasi are the people swapping on and off for each other. 

How does that affect the season-long charts? 

20 players have now scored for Saints.  

When do Saints score?  

It looks like Saints score more in the second half than the first. 

Jack Welsby is still ever present when Saints score. Hurrell is dropping down the ranks because of injury. 

The "who is present when Saints score?" matrix now looks really complicated.  

The Davies, Ritson, Stephens, Paasi and Royle subgroup is definitely starting to form. Warrington hold two of the top 3 places in the "who scored against Saints?" bar chart. When do Saints concede?  

The pattern of Saints conceding in minutes 9-12 or 70 onwards continues. 

Who is present when Saints concede? Because the last few games have featured Saints conceding, Hurrell's drop is even bigger here. 

The "who is present together when Saints concede?" matrix diagram is still made of three distinct thirds.  

The network graph of who is together when Saints concede looks very different, more like a starfish with the central blob having lots of extended tentacles. Secondary sub-teams, playing together because of injuries to others, are definitely starting to appear.

Saints Ahoy! - Game 19 and the season to date

Saints fans ask for very little. We just want to beat Wigan. Therefore losing to them 16-12 makes us sad.

I mean, I think we did very well given the number of children in our starting line up.  

Look at Harry Robertson, literally the poster boy for that line up. (https://www.saintsrlfc.com/teams/first-team/harry-robertson/) He's 19, making his debut and they throw him in against them!!! 

Of that starting 17, there are 4 players who made their debut this season!!! 

And you know what really doesn't help when you have a team that's almost a quarter infants (and a couple of players not much post that stage)? When one of your senior players gets himself yellow carded in the first minute. 

Matty Lees, give yourself a shake! 

It being such a low-scoring game means there's no figures for the game. (Don't worry, I am adding some extra analysis at the end to make up for it.) 

For the season to date, there may be starting to be a pattern of Saints scoring in minute 50-55.  

19 players have now scored for Saints at any point this season. 

Percival, the kicker, still leads the way. Welsby is still ever-present when Saints score, present for all 153 point-scoring moments. What does the matrix graph look like now?  

The network graph looks weird.  

I can't quite explain why Royle, Ritson and Paasi look like they're making a sub-community with Davies and Stephens. I know why Royle, Ritson and Paasi, because the few games they have played have been together, but I didn't think that they'd shared that many with Davies (Stephens yes, Davies, not so much). This is one of the advantages of visualising the data. 

The pattern of when Saints concede has reduced.  

An ever-present when Saints score, Welsby has been ever-present when Saints concede.  

The who-is-present-together when Saints concede matrix looks odd. Normally they go, darkest, paler, even paler, palest (from one side to the other). This one goes darkest, paler, palest, paler than paler not as pale as palest. It appears to be an effect of the same sort of sub-community formation seen in the "present together when Saints score" network graph.  

The equivalent network diagram actually looks more reasonably than the point-scoring equivalent.  

The last time I compared "rank in the list of present when Saints score" vs "rank in the list of when Saints concede" was game 13, when Saints had hit 100 point-scoring moments and point-conceding moments were about half that (https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2024/10/31/saints-ahoy-visualisations-from-game-13-and-the-season-to-date/). 

In this game, Saints hit 150 point-scoring moments (now 153) and point-conceding moments is still ~ half that (73) so I thought this would be a good time to look at that again. 

As expected, the numbers have evened themselves out. 

The player present for the least point-conceding moments relative to point-scoring moments is Percival at -6, followed by Mbye and Stephens at -4. Percival is a mixture of being taken off at minute 50 early in the season and a couple of cards and Mbye tends not to be the starting hooker in the big games (the ones Saints are more likely to concede more in). Stephens is the one who intrigues me because he's a forward who has been given his debut this season, so those are happy numbers. (L will tell you I was excessively fond of Stephens even before this stat.) 

Looking at it the other way (players present relatively more often when Saints concede than when they score) [and ignoring Robertson who has only one game], the only one with numbers >2 (which I am calling insignificant) are Delaney and Ritson and neither of those are explicable. 

I'll keep an eye out on this stat going forward.