2022 Statistics: Colouring by Numbers – Molesey Scalextric Club

2022 Statistics: Colouring by Numbers.

If you don’t like numbers or bright colours, or you value your privacy, it’s time to look away, because the club’s laptop custodian and your correspondent have followed Big Tech’s lead and been busy harvesting all the data that Molesey’s drivers innocently leave behind each time they race. If anyone knows where we can sell it, please tell us, but in the meantime you get to read it gratis, which must be the bargain of the century. Or not.

First we have the “One Lap Wonder” charts, where those who can pilot their car around Molesey’s track faster than anyone else get their moment in the spotlight. Three rounds of applause to Josh and one to Julian.

Next we come to the ever-popular discussion about which of Molesey’s lanes is fastest and which drivers perform best in each lane.

The first chart represents the fastest laps recorded by every driver in every race run in 2022. In other words, if ten drivers raced in one race, then ten fastest laps were recorded.

The individual charts show the lane-spread of fastest race laps for each driver who took part in ten or more races. At a whopping 61%, Lee’s love affair with green lane seems to be the most enduring. At the other end of the scale, Alex, Neil and Simon don’t seem too fussed about who they play with.

And now we come to a special treat for those who like this sort of stuff; a chart of dubious value which tries to illustrate how consistent a driver’s lap times are within a race.

For each race this year a ‘Consistency Score’ has been calculated, which is a driver’s fastest lap expressed as a percentage of his average lap. For example, if his fastest lap in a race is 9.500 seconds and his average lap 10.000, then his consistency score for that race is 95%.

The consistency score is just a bit of fun, so don’t read too much into it. If your score is 99.99% but you can’t lap faster than 12 seconds when everyone else is doing 8s, you’re still, bluntly, rubbish, just unusually consistent at being rubbish. All that really matters is who crosses the finish line first, but given that our leader Fishy Sunak has announced that he thinks the nation’s numeracy is shite and needs improving, it’s only right that Molesey joins in and publishes its own pointless data.

Drivers’ average consistency scores are shown in the table above, with individual race scores detailed in the large table below. Make of them what you will. Clearly crashes add time to a lap and hence affect the race average, so the consistency score reflects not only the ability of a driver to repeatedly lap close to his fastest lap, but also how prone he is to crashing. DNFs and individual race scores lower than 80% have been discarded so as not to skew the overall score.

If you’re peering at this on a tiny smartphone screen, click the button below to see the large table, although bear in mind that you’ll need either a magnifying glass or to do a lot of scrolling.

And finally, before we get to the results of Molesey’s official 2022 Drivers and Class Championships (which anyone with at least one eye on this website will already have seen on the Championship Standings page) we have an Average Points table, which is exactly what it says: the average number of points per race which each driver scored. Sadly for Julian it’s not a championship, so only a muted round of applause is appropriate this time.