Over the course of the off-season ideas and thoughts were bounced around in efforts of creating new and useful content for the upcoming season. The one thing that I kept coming back to was simply, data. The root of your preparations evolves around data. Just looking at where a driver finished in the correlative race of a previous year doesn’t tell you the whole story.
Brad Keselowski won the race at Kansas Speedway last June. You should pick him in 2012 to win there again, right? Not so fast my friends. He had a decent, but not race-winning type car. He had an average running position of 11.56 and was only the 10th highest among driver rating (102.4). Again,he had good top-ten type car, but not race winning. Brad led nine laps that day, and claimed the victory via fuel mileage strategy.
There is valuable information hidden within data. Each week I’ll dive into the numbers by recapping past race(s). I’ll be providing traditional and loop data from a few drivers over those races. If there is ever a request for a driver for an upcoming race, feel free to send it my way via twitter. Until Daytona, I’ll leave you with a few 2011 season total stats:
Driver Rating: Ky Busch 104.1, Edwards 101, Johnson 99.1, Kenseth 98.9, J. Gordon 96.5, Stewart 96
Avg Start: Edwards 9.4, Kahne 11.3, Menard/Ku Busch 12.0, Newman 12.3
Avg Finish: Edwards 9.3, Harvick 11.5, Johnson 11.9, Stewart 12.0, Kenseth 12.2
Avg Mid Race Running Position: Kyle Busch 8.3, Kenseth 10.4, Edwards 11.6, Stewart 11.9, J. Gordon 12.4
Poles: Edwards, Biffle, Ku Busch, Kenseth, and Newman with three each
Wins: Stewart 5, Harvick/Ky Busch 4, Keselowski/J.Gordon/Kenseth 3
Quality Passes: Ky Busch 2219, Bowyer 2141, Ku Busch 2104, Menard 1975, Kenseth 1927
Leaders of % of laps in top15: Ky Busch 79.6, Edwards 74.6, Johnson 71.6, Kenseth 70.9, Harvick 70.1
Leaders of % of fastest laps: Johnson 8.9, Ky Busch/Edwards 8.1, J. Gordon 7.7, Stewart 6.5
Laps Led Leaders: Ky Busch 1455, Johnson 1115, J. Gordon 922, Stewart 913, Edwards 903
Most positions improved in the last 10 percent of laps: Allmendinger 134, Ambrose 85, Harvick 78, Edwards 76, Vickers 63
-David Rochester



