Okay, so “Racing Point,” huh? Let me tell you, this whole thing started because I was bored one weekend and stumbled upon some old Formula 1 footage. I got hooked on the idea of understanding how these teams strategize, especially the mid-field teams that always seem to be punching above their weight.
I started by, you know, just Googling around. I typed in stuff like “Racing Point strategy,” “Racing Point performance analysis,” and things like that. I found a few articles and forum posts, but nothing really clicked. It was all surface-level stuff.
Then, I dug a little deeper. I decided to focus on specific races. I picked a few where Racing Point did surprisingly well, and a few where they didn’t. My thinking was, “Okay, let’s compare what happened.”
So, I watched those races. Not just passively watched, but actively. I took notes. I paused the videos. I rewound sections. I was looking at things like:
- Tire choices. Which tires did they start on? When did they pit? What did they switch to?
- Overtaking maneuvers. Where on the track did they make their moves? Was it a DRS zone? A tricky corner?
- Track position. Were they stuck in traffic? Did they have clean air?
- Weather,was it raining?
It was slow going, I’m not gonna lie. It felt like I was watching paint dry sometimes. But, I started to see some patterns. For example, in one race, they pitted earlier than everyone else, got onto a harder tire, and then just cruised while everyone else struggled with tire degradation. That was a lightbulb moment!
Getting Organized
My notes were a mess, though. Just a bunch of scribbles in a notebook. So, I decided to get organized. I created a simple spreadsheet. Columns for the race, the driver, starting position, finishing position, tire strategy, and any notes about key moments.
Filling in the spreadsheet was a grind, but it really helped. I could start to see the data in a more structured way. I could compare races side-by-side. I could filter by driver. It was way better than my messy notebook.
I kept at it. Watched more races. Filled in more data. Read more articles, but this time, the articles made more sense because I had my own data to compare it to. The result is pretty cool. I think the spreadsheet is very valuable for me.
