For Guts or for Glory: was the 2021 Tour de France attrition influenced by the upcoming Olympics?

When looking at the withdrawals from the 2021 men's Tour de France; there were a lot, but not that many more than in 2020 - (details here - https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2021/07/21/tour-de-france-2021-data-doodles-week-3/). One possible question was "is the increase in withdrawals due to the 2021 course being harder, or because people were more willing to drop out than usual because of the up-coming Olympics?" 

@rorygaron (https://twitter.com/rorygaron) on Twitter suggested a good comparison that might answer the question - look at the withdrawals from the 2021 Giro Rosa. 

In many ways, it's a perfect comparison, the Giro Rosa being the most well known women's race, it being another grand tour that was just before the Olympics. However, it was likely to have fewer "I'll drop out so as not to risk my Olympics" drop outs because it was further away from the Olympics (finishing on the 11th of July vs the 18th of July, with the first of the Olympic road cycling events on the 24th of July). 

The plan was to map out the Giro Rosa withdrawals, and see if their pattern matches the 2020 or 2021 men's TDF more, the idea being that: 

If the curve for the 2021 Giro Rosa resembles the 2020 men's TDF pattern, the increased withdrawals in the TDF could have been due to increased "Olympic" withdrawals.  

If the curve for the 2021 Giro Rosa resembles the 2021 men's TDF pattern, no, the increased number of withdrawals are probably due to the race conditions. 

There are, of course, certain caveats, the Giro Rosa is over a smaller distance, there are smaller teams and due to funding (or lack thereof) there is less technical support e.g. soigneurs etc so it can be harder for the racers to overcome wear and tear damage. There is also one more team in the Giro Rosa than in the men's TDF.

Riders remaining at the end of the 2021 Giro Rosa

   

3 of the teams were completely wiped out with no riders reaching the finish while 3 teams had no drop outs at all.

Withdrawals by stage 

   

Looking at this chart, my first reaction is WTF happened in stages 4 and 10. I looked it up, stage 4 appears to have been an unfortunate mix of difficult time trial with a very fast winner, but from the stage profile, what happened with stage 10 is inexplicable, I mean yes it was the stage after the queen stage but still. One possible cause for the late attrition is that the Giro Rosa, unlike the TDF, was not split into weeks and there were no rest days.

Kaplan Meier chart of all withdrawals

   

You can see the effect of stage 4 in the overall Kaplan Meier.

Team Kaplan Meier

   

Looking at the team version, my first question is what happened to Team TIBCO-SVB? It turns out that both they and Bizkaia Durango had to withdraw their teams due to COVID - Article on Tibco and the article on Bizkaia Durango.

Reasons for Withdrawals

   

The Giro Rosa had more morning Did Not Starts than the men's TDF (36% vs 21%), ~ the same percentage of mid-stage abandonments/DNFs (40% vs 42%) and fewer Over Time Limit withdrawals (24 vs 37% - and all of those were in the same stage, stage 4). 

If we compare the rate of withdrawals, the Giro looks much worse.

   

 However, if we the spread the points out so that they cover the same time span (cheating I know, that's why I've not joined the points up on the "roughly relative curve"), the curves don't look all that different until right towards the end of the Giro Rosa, when we know there were at least a couple of Olympic dropouts. 

 

So, what can I say from this? Mostly that the jury is still out. 

One obvious further check would be to do the same thing for the 2020 Giro Rosa and see if there's a difference. 

For the data on withdrawals, what type they were and which stage they happened on, I relied on Pro Cycling Stats - https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/giro-d-italia-femminile/2021/gc/startlist/roster-with-dropouts 

https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/giro-d-italia-femminile/2021/gc/stages/all-stage-profiles https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/giro-d-italia-femminile/2021/gc/stages/winners 

 For the explanations as to what happened on each stage, I found Cycling News invaluable.

Formula 1 2022 - Miami Grand Prix

I was not surprised that the Miami Grand Prix was not a success. 

I don't actually mind the ridiculous bombast (unlike most F1 fans; for some reason, high tech sports attract people who do not like change), but it was always going to be a boring race because it's a street circuit. I summed up my views two years ago in Just Say No To Street Circuits and I haven't changed my mind. 

Streets are too narrow to allow racing. 

I am aware that Ferrari got a 2-3 and objecting to that is just a sign of Ferrari fans's excessive everything, but I am giving Sainz jnr's right front wheeljack man a yellow card after that stop. Mistakes cannot be allowed to creep in. 

I understand the urge to shout at the strategy team, like the BBC commentators did, but Andrew Benson also on the BBC made a very good point that there's little strategists can do when you're in a car with less straight-line speed on a circuit that doesn't allow overtaking*. 

It does mean the engineering and aero teams are on a yellow card. Go faster than the Red Bulls!  

* I became a lot fonder of Benson after Grosjean's crash when he was so clearly the adult in the commentary box.

Book Review - The Puffin Book of Funny Stories

The LibraryThing entry says by Helen Cresswell, but it's more collected by her and with introductions by her (and one of the bits is excerpted from one of her books).

I strongly suspect I got this when I was still in primary school.

The book is a bunch of funny excerpts from funny books some of which were aimed at children.

Reading it back now, I am fonder of some of the stories than I was and the collection will always have a special place in my heart for introducing me to Three Men In A Boat.  The book used The Cheeses, which makes sense because it's one of the funnier free-standing bits and of the other options both The Packing of the Luggage and Uncle Podger are probably funnier with more life experience.

The book may also have been my introduction to Adrian Mole and one day I will get round to reading Witch Week.

No LibraryThing recommendations, because I don't think enough people have reviewed it.

Formula 1 2022 - Emilia Romagna Grand Prix

It's not late *just* because I'm sulking. 

I didn't like sprint races, even before Ferrari decided to screw up tyre strategy in this one. Now I really don't like them. 

The race went no better, in between Ricciardo happening to Sainz jnr, and Leclerc happening to himself. 

I am giving one yellow card each to the strategy team and Leclerc.  

Of course, the first truly bad race of the year for Ferrari happened at Imola. I think I am just going to have to declared it cursed and move on.

Benford's Law - From February 2021 to the end of July 2021

Today's post was supposed to be about cycling, and withdrawals from the Giro Rosa/Giro d'Italia Femminile compared to withdrawals in the men's Tour de France, but it requires more prose than I am presently capable of (running fencing competitions takes it out of you). 

Instead, let us return to an update to the Benford's Law project which has been chugging along in the background. 

In July, I recorded the first digits in the top news article on the BBC website on 25/31 days. In those 25 articles, there were 261 numbers with leading digits. That's 10-11 per day, which is a less than February but the same as March and May.

July numbers - 

   

No number appeared exactly as often as expected, 8 was the closest, only 0.1% away from expected. 

1 and 7 are the most different to their expected values with 1 being over-represented and 7 under-represented. 

If you add together the sum of all the values of (observed-expected)squared, all divided by the expected, the calculated test statistic is 3.6, the lowest monthly total so far. 

The critical chi squared value for 9 items with only one line is ~ 15.507 The test statistic smaller than the critical value therefore the difference is not significant. This data does not disobey Benford's Law. 

If we look at the rolling total from February to the end of June, there have been 1860 numbers with leading digits.

Rolling total numbers

   

No number exactly its expected value. 1 is the number furthest away from its expected value and remains over-represented. 

If you add together the sum of all the values of (observed-expected) squared, all divided by the expected, the calculated test statistic is 2.45, reducing as it should with more numbers. 

The critical chi squared value for 9 items with only one line is ~ 15.507 The test statistic smaller than the critical value therefore the difference is not significant. This data does not disobey Benford’s Law.

This is a reduction from the test statistic of the total to May, but it's not as low as it was in April.

Formula 1 2022 - Australian Grand Prix

Both Melbourne and Sebastian Vettel are back!

Although one of those two had a much better weekend than the other.

From a Ferrari point of view, that could have gone better, but not much.  I'm not going to card Carlos Sainz jnr because ... well he out-performed the car and was calm and steady so often last season that I'll forgive him one bad race.

(Okay, I will forgive him many bad races but only because I <3 both my lovely Ferrari boys)

The Draw for the 2022 World Cup

Normally, after a World Cup draw, I do an alternative "draw" based on purely on the national team rankings.  For this World Cup, that is difficult, because 3 places have yet to be filled.  Yes 3/32 teams (more than 10%) still haven't qualified but they've had the draw anyway.

Now obviously, a pure potluck draw doesn't have quite the same mathematical issues as mine (I did actually calculate the draw by rankings for all 18 possible permutations, and will add them slowly to the data-blog) but is there any need to have a draw this early?!

Formula 2022 - Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Late due to computer issues 

Once it was clear that Mick Schumacher was fine after that crash, I said I'd be happy with whatever the result was. Hopefully, FIA will see reason and make the circuit make safety changes. There's no point enforcing safety upgrades at Spa and so on, if they're not going to do the same to every race on the calendar. 

With regard to Ferrari's results, second and third place are not bad. I can't expect Ferrari to win every race - I can hope, but I can't expect.

 

Formula 1 2022 - So it begins

I found last year's format worked really well for summarising my feelings, so I've stuck with it for this year. 

This year started well in pre-season.  

I ask for very little from Ferrari (and expect even less) but one of the things I ask for is for the car to look good. Even if it drives like a lemon, the Ferrari should be the prettiest car on the grid. 

 And oh, the F1-75 is a stunner. Look at it!  

I mean, that car I could forgive being a lemon. But it's not.

   

Very much not a lemon. 

Not just glorious Ferrari victory, but glorious Ferrari 1-2. 

After the race, people were discussing the fact that this broke Ferrari's second longest win-drought. As someone who remembers the great 1990-1994 failures (although at least that Ferrari was the prettiest car on the grid and sounded amazing - when the engine didn't explode), this feels different, because even as an under 10, I knew the 1994 Hockenheim was a one-off, relying on things happening to other cars. This was not that. 

There is hope! And smiley faces.

Formula 1 - Did the fastest lap points make any difference in 2021?

When I last looked at whether the fastest lap bonus points made any difference to anything from 2009 to 2020, the answer was a resounding no. 

Then we come to 2021 – the closest F1 season in years, decided by the forces of chaos made manifest. Surely, if having fastest lap bonus points was going to have an effect, this would be the year. 

The fastest lap points winners for each race can be found below:  

Seven different drivers, driving for four different teams, won points. 

How did this affect the Constructor's Championship?  

It had no effect. 

How about the Driver's Championship?  

*Although removing the fastest lap points results in Norris and Leclerc having the same number of points, Norris stays in 6th because of better highest place finished (3rd). 

So basically, it changes nothing in the Driver's Championship either. 

If the fastest lap points don’t make a difference in a year like this, which came down to the last race, they’re not going to make a difference most years. 

But, I thought, let’s go further. Formula 1 introduced the sprint race points this year, maybe the effect of those masked anything from fastest laps. 

The sprint race points were as follows:  

If we remove those too, does it have any effect on the Constructor's Championship?

   

No. 

How about the Driver's Championship?  

Also no. 

Neither of Formula 1’s most recent attempts at shaking things up have done a thing, either individually or together, to change the result. 

Maybe, just maybe, the problem is in the design of the cars that are too wide to allow any overtaking. 

I am hopefully, if not expectant, that this year’s aerodynamic regulation changes might lead to something of a shake-up. I don’t necessarily mind Mercedes (or Red Bull) winning everything, it’s the fact that I know no other teams stand a chance of even a race win unless those two teams crash that I mind.