Bristol Driver Stats: Fall

Every race in the playoffs is critical, but the elimination races, like this week’s Bristol race, are even more critical. How do drivers do in the fall races at Bristol? Here’s your Bristol Driver Stats.

NOTE: The following data are fall races only.

Races Run

Since the reliability of statistics depends on how many data points you have, the first thing to look at is how many races each driver has run.

• Harvick and Kurt Busch are the tops here, both with 19 races
• Kenseth, Johnson and Newman have all run 18 fall Bristol races
• The next highest is Kyle Busch, with 15 races

Finishes

The plot below shows the driver’s average finish at Bristol Fall races. The error bars are one standard deviation. That means that, 68% of the time, the driver has finished somewhere between the bottom bar and the top bar. That number is more meaningful the more data there is, so take it with a grain of salt for drivers who are in their third or fourth years. But for drivers with more races, it should be a pretty robust number.

• Erik Jones has a mean finish of 9.7, but that’s only based on three races.
• Chase Elliott has a mean finish of 10.2 (4 races)
• Joey Logano comes in third at 11.2 (11 races)

On the other side

• Byron has a mean finish of 22, but that’s based on two previous races. The standard deviation bars are small, but that doesn’t mean much given the small number of data points we have.
• Bowman has a similar finish (21.6), but based on four races. His finishes have been over a wider range.
• Of championship contenders, Almirola has a surprising mean finish of 26.8, with a standard deviation of 10.9.

Finish-High-Low

Here’s another way to look at the Bristol Driver Stats. The plot below shows the mean (the same as above), but this time, the error bars represent the best and worst finishes.

This is useful because you can look at, for example, Logano, and see that his mean finish is 11.2, but that’s not in the middle of the line. That tells you that he’s had a few bad finishes (and who hasn’t at Bristol?), but usually does better.

More stats to come… as I figure them out.

For now, I encourage you to look at some other interesting features of Bristol Motor Speedway

• Drivers pull as many gs around Bristol as the space shuttle astronauts did.
• Bristol requires some of the highest turning forces of all the circuit NASCAR runs