Racing Against the Elements: Analysing the Impact of Weather on Formula One Races: Data Science Report

Daly, Niamh (2023) Racing Against the Elements: Analysing the Impact of Weather on Formula One Races: Data Science Report. Undergraduate thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

Formula One is a data driven sport, where data is continuously being gathered and processed to facilitate fast paced decision making to get the best results. A challenge that Formula One has faced in recent years has been adverse weather conditions causing stoppages to the Formula One races. These stoppages occurring in the form of red flags, safety cars, and virtual safety cars. In some cases, the full race distance was not being completed due to these stoppages, and instead races being completed under a countdown clock as opposed to a lap counter (Emms, 2022). A recent example of this, and the inspiration for the project, is the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, whereby the race was scheduled to run 44 laps, and ended up being officially concluded after 3 laps due to the torrential wet weather conditions at the circuit (Formula1, 2021). In its wake the event left a heap of disappointed fans and a question as to the impact the weather has on Formula One. It would seem that the weather is having a greater impact on the sport and its ability to perform to the highest standard in these conditions.

This analysis attempts to determine the impact weather has had on Formula One as a sport, utilising historical Formula One and weather statistics, sourced and compiled from a number of resources solely for the purpose of this study.

The Formula One data was sourced from the Ergast Developer API (Ergast Developer API, n.d.), Formula One Wiki (Formula 1 Wiki, n.d.), and Motorsport Stats (Motorsport Stats, n.d.). This data included: lap times, race locations, scheduled race start times, safety car deployment, virtual safety car deployment, red flag data, and many more. The weather data was sourced from Visual Crossing (Visual Crossing, n.d.), which provided detailed historical weather data (precipitation, temperature, windspeed, visibility, cloud cover, dew, etc.). From the available data, the chosen period for the analysis covered the 2005 season until the end of the 2022 season, which included 348 races, at 37 racetracks, across 29 countries.

Item Type:	Thesis (Undergraduate)
Supervisors:	Name Email Moldovan, Arghir-Nicolae UNSPECIFIED
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences Q Science > QA Mathematics > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure > Sports
Divisions:	School of Computing > Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Computing
Depositing User:	Tamara Malone
Date Deposited:	15 Jan 2024 17:56
Last Modified:	22 Jan 2024 12:25
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/6920

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