Tuesday, May 28, 2013

2013 Monaco Grand Prix Finishing Position vs. 2013 Driver Salary

I've only watched a few Formula One races, but I did manage to catch this weekend's Grand Prix de Monaco. Beautiful and exciting race, and only about 100 minutes long for those with things to do.

I did a quick regression on finishing position vs. 2013 driver salary. It's only one race, so there's bound to be some discrepancies (there were a couple accidents and one engine fire). However, the correlation is still quite moderate (R=0.613) andit makes the case for a more egalitarian approach to driver salaries. Alas: there's more to racing than just one race, and more to racing than, well: racing.

To note: one would expect a fairly strong downward-sloping curve if drivers were paid based on the results of just this one race.

I'll do another regression on 2013 World Series final results vs. salary.

Salary data (via Reddit) courtesy of Crash.net.



And when you log the salaries:




The best fit, as one may expect, is exponential: