This Sporting Blog: November 2026

Sunday, 1 November 2026

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

We'll ignore that I've somehow forgotten to write up my US Grand Prix notes when I swore I had, and that I'm that far behind in this series that I accidentally did the maths for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix before doing this one. I will catch up, eventually.

The Madrid Grand Prix itself:

Like the race itself, nothing spectacular in the scrutineering data.

The χ² for the race is 1.32, so none of the differences are statistically significant.

Bar chart showing how often cars were scrutinized compared to the expected number at the Madrid Grand Prix. The values are displayed as a standardised residual. Car 12 (Antonelli) was the most over-scrutinized compared to expected, with a value of 0.34, followed by 6 cars at 0.17. Cars 11 (Perez), 18 (Stroll) and 55 (Sainz) were the most under-scrutinized compared to expected with a value of -0.51. 5 cars were tested exactly as much as expected.

The bottom 3 cars (Perez, Stroll and Sainz) are 3 out of the 4 cars that retired, which makes sense.

This is the first time that Antonelli (car 12) has been that high up.

The season up until the Madrid Grand Prix:

The continuing increase in the χ² for the season-long scrutineering can best be seen in the figure with the dotted lines for significance. χ² is now 4.58 (compared to a threshold for significance of 33.92).

Bar chart showing how often cars were scrutinized compared to the expected number up to the end of the Madrid Grand Prix. The values are displayed as a standardised residual. Car 44 (Hamilton) is the most over-scrutinized compared to expected, with a value of 0.60, followed by cars 1 (Norris) and 63 (Russell) on 0.56, then 3 (Verstappen) on 0.46. Car 18 (Stroll) was the most under-scrutinized compared to expected with a value of -0.98, followed by car 77 (Bottas) on -0.79 and car 11 (Perez) on -0.70. 5 cars were tested exactly as much as expected. Only car 81 (Piastri) has been tested as many time as expected.

It really is the cars at the bottom of the pile that are pulling the numbers up, because their absolute values are so much larger than the over-scrutinized.