Data for the Seven Habits of Successful Championship Contenders

My article at NBC Sports makes a number of claims, and I don’t like to put assertions out there without the proof behind them.

Average Driver Finishes vs. Rank

This is the graph supporting the notes about the decent correlation between average driver finish and ultimate season rank.

A scatter plot showing how average driver finishes relate to final rank.,
Key: 2017-circles, 2018-squares, 2019-diamonds, 2020-stars, 2021-triangles. The line is a nonlinear least-squares fit to the data.

Number of Races with Laps Led

Another area I looked at was not the total laps led, but the number of different races at which laps were led.

The drivers who ended up at the bottom of the playoffs didn’t lead laps at many different races.

A scatter plot that compares how many races a driver led laps at versus that driver's ultimate season-ending rank.

Playoff Points

The final graph I didn’t include in the article shows the data for how many playoff points each driver earned during the regular-season championship.

A scatter plot showing the number of playoff points accumulated during the regular season vs. the final rank.

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