Saturday, 16 May 2026

Are the scrutineers picking on my driver? - Update after the Miami Grand Prix

The Miami Grand Prix itself:Bar chart of driver numbers on the y-axis compared to standardised residual levels for the Miami Grand Prix along the x-axis.  The driver the most over-checked compared to expected is Leclerc (car 16), with a value of 0.52 compared to expected.  Cars 6 and 30 (Hadjar and Lawson) were the cars tested least compared to expected, with a value of -0.35 compared to expected.  Cars 1, 5, 18, 41, 55, 63 and 77 were tested exactly as much as expected. 

So yes, they are picking on my driver, that's the only reason Leclerc (car 16) could be the most over-tested driver compared to expected. 

More sensibly, none of those numbers are significantly away from expected. There was no "extra check of a random top 10 finisher", even though there were more than 15 finishers. So the reason for the check isn't there being 15 or more finishers - that's one theory ruled out. Maybe they only do the test every other race? At least that's a testable hypothesis. 

The season to date: Bar chart of driver numbers on the y-axis compared to standardised residual levels for the season to date along the x-axis.  The driver the most over-checked compared to expected is Russell (car 63), with a value of 0.51 compared to expected.  Cars 6 (Hadjar) is the car tested least compared to expected, with a value of -0.51 compared to expected.  Cars 1, 5, 87 (Norris, Bortoleto and Bearman) were tested exactly as much as expected. Over the season so far, Russell's car (63), is the most over-tested compared to expected. Which makes sense given he's finished all 4 races, and quite highly in all of them. 

Car 6, Hadjar, is the least tested compared to expected. It makes some sense, he's not finished two of the races, but he's not alone in that. Possibly it's just a quirk of small numbers, because there have only been 136 expected tests. 

1, 55 and 87 (Norris, Sainz jnr and Bearman) have been tested exactly as much as expected. That's fewer cars than after the Japanese Grand Prix, but I think that's because there were a lot of people had incidents during the race so there was more variation in the number of tests. 

None of the differences are statistically significant. 

After 4 races in of potentially 22, no drivers have been significantly over-tested, but the pattern of how close to expectation the number of checks is over the season varies, possibly as a function of small numbers at this time.

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