This one’s gonna be a little late partially because I had a doctor’s appointment today and also because I’ve been working on combining all my IndyCar data from a number of different source files into a single Google Sheet consisting of a single year-by-year rundown of each driver’s performance in each category I track going as far back as I can. I have IndyCar lead change data going back to the early ‘30s and a few races even earlier. Some of that I obtained from various newspaper subscription services. Anyway, my goal is to finish entering all the IndyCar data dating back to the formation of CART before the IndyCar finale at Nashville this weekend, so I can integrate the 2024 data into that file and have a complete archive that I can consult more quickly when doing single-season evaluations. I then want to finish entering my NASCAR data (there are a number of drivers I haven’t entered yet who I have data for) and after that, I also have an F1 file going back to 1984 that is mostly complete. If you want to see what this spreadsheet looks like, here is an example:
Plus it was awkward enough submitting that last column during the debate, and I didn’t know about submitting this one on 9/11 even though I had previously announced it. Nonetheless, I made sure to get it done while it was still September 11 somewhere. I haven’t calculated all the F1 driver ratings for Peterson’s first two seasons yet but I can pretty confidently say he leads my model for 1972 because I don’t think any other driver has anything comparable to beating Niki Lauda 6-1. Emerson Fittipaldi did win the title while his teammate Dave Walker failed to score a point, but Walker was so low-rated in my model that that won’t be worth as much.
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