One of the commentators after the final race in Homestead mentioned that Jimmie Johnson should be happy he finished in third because it allows him to avoid the “dreaded second-place curse”.
Anytime someone says something like that, it makes me wonder whether there really is a curse, or whether that person had just been talking to Carl Edwards. So I analyzed a little data and guess what… there really IS a second place curse. […]
At the start of the season, the big news was that cautions were remarkably down from last year. As I showed, this isn’t a new trend – it’s a continuing trend since 2007. Since the season’s data are now complete, I thought it was time to revisit the data. […]
I love getting questions from readers because I always worry that the geeky stuff I find interesting is only interesting to me. I love it even more when they not only give me a question, […]
This was the first year that most people noticed a decrease in the number of cautions, but (as I’ve pointed out), 2012 is merely the latest in a six-year trend of decreasing cautions. The same downward trend is evident in the Nationwide Series. This year is perhaps notable for it being so extreme.
The data clearly shows the trend: The question, of course, is why?
Being the data geek that I am, I was really curious if the decreasing number of cautions was specific to this year. It’s not: Cautions have been decreasing since 2005,as the graph below shows. The squares are the cumulative number of cautions per 100 miles, obtained by adding up all the cautions in a season and dividing by the total number of miles in the races. (This is a more accurate number than total cautions, given rainouts, shortening races and different venues from year to year.) […]
The plot below shows the cumulative number of cautions per mile since 2007. I’m using number of cautions per100 miles to 1) make up for races that were not run to completion; 2) compensate for […]
I honestly cannot help it – scientists are naturally skeptical. If you make an assertion, I will have to question you on what data you have that supports it. This is second nature to the people I work with, but I realize it is damned irritating to non-scientists (aka “normal”) people.
So when I started reading everywhere that “cautions were down 35%”, I had to go look into it. This is a preliminary post – more detailed analysis will follow as soon as I’ve read my students’ final projects and gotten comments back to them. […]
Great comment from Robby on my post statistically comparing AJ Allmendinger and David Ragan:
One thing you didn’t really factor which is a big deal to car owners is busted equipment. David Ragan destroys alot of race cars…AJ is one of the least wreck prone drivers in NASCAR. Ragan’s low finished were often a result of a wreck. AJ’s bad finishes were generally the result of bad handling cars or bad luck (Dover, Indy, Texas). […]
TNT is offering a million dollars to anyone who picks the top ten drivers – in order – at any of the six NASCAR races they broadcast. You have up until 25% of the race has been run to lock in your selections, which means up to mile 100 at Daytona this weekend. How likely are you to win? […]
The NASCAR pundits have again simplified a complex situation. Incorrectly.
The NASCAR Net is a-twitter since FOX floated a trial balloon about moving races from ESPN to SPEED. I’ve heard the argument over and over, in print and on radio that this is a bad idea because EPSN is in 100 million homes and SPEED is in “only” 78 million homes. They argue this would be a decline of 22 million potential viewers. The question not being asked how many of those 22 million ESPN watchers are actually potential viewers? […]
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