Ranking the Formula 1 Drivers on How Many Points They Beat Their Team-Mates By
Thanks in part to the awarding of double points at the final race of the season, Lewis Hamilton beat Nico Rosberg to the Formula One drivers' championship by 67 points.
The gap between the pair ended up larger than it had been at any point throughout the year, adding a comfortable look to what was, in fact, one of the tightest in-team battles down the pit lane.
Further down the field, both Jenson Button and Daniel Ricciardo beat their team-mates by 71 points. Fernando Alonso's advantage was 106 points, Nico Hulkenberg's was 37 and Jean-Eric Vergne defeated Daniil Kvyat by 14 points.
But those raw numbers don't tell much of a story. The gap between team-mates at the lesser teams will always be smaller, simply because their cars score fewer points.
A percentage-based system attempts to solve that problem. It allows us—in theory at least—a more accurate picture of how each battle went down, and gives us an idea of which drivers were really the most dominant.
So using such a system, here's how the drivers ranked in 2014—from the closest battle to the most one-sided.
The Method and the Pointless
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The ranking system is simply what percentage of the lower-scoring driver's points the higher-scoring team-mate accumulated.
For example, if Driver A scored 50 points and Driver B scored 100, Driver B would have scored 200 percent of Driver A's points. The higher the percentage, the higher the rank.
Did it work to give a better picture than simply looking at the points gap? You decide.
The Pointless
Neither Sauber driver managed to score a single point in 2014. Adrian Sutil came closest with 11th-place finishes in Australia and Hungary.
At the latter, he was just one second behind 10th-placed Jenson Button. Esteban Gutierrez finished no higher than 12th, so Sutil can be considered the "winner" here.
No one who drove a Caterham scored a point either. Though Kamui Kobayashi was the better driver throughout the year, the winner here was actually Marcus Ericsson.
He achieved a single 11th-place finish, 10 seconds away from the points, in Monaco.
Kobayashi in turn "beat" Will Stevens, whose 17th-place finish in Abu Dhabi puts him ahead of Andre Lotterer.
Jules Bianchi over Max Chilton: Incalculable Percent
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Jules Bianchi: 2
Max Chilton: 0
Jules Bianchi's brilliant ninth place at the Monaco Grand Prix secured the first points of his F1 career. They were also the first points scored by Marussia.
The Frenchman crossed the line in eighth, but had five seconds added to his race time after he served a previous five-second penalty under the safety car.
Max Chilton didn't score at all, finishing no higher than 13th.
As this is a percentage-based ranking and the difference between zero and two cannot be expressed as such, the Marussia pair occupy a pre-ranking position.
But it's fair to say Bianchi dominated in 2014, as he did the previous year.
8. Lewis Hamilton over Nico Rosberg: 121 Percent
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Lewis Hamilton: 384
Nico Rosberg: 317
Only one team-mate battle at the sharp end of the grid remained open until the final race of the season. It was tight all year.
Nico Rosberg took the early initiative, before Lewis Hamilton's four successive wins gave him the lead. Rosberg got his nose back in front at Monaco and kept it there until a retirement in Singapore let Hamilton take back the advantage.
The Brit stayed ahead until the final race as he went on another run of victories. Rosberg cut the deficit in Brazil to take us to a final-race showdown.
It turned out to be slightly anticlimactic, the German falling out of contention as his team-mate's double-points victory stretched the gap to 67 points.
That's the biggest gap of the year, but is perhaps a fair reflection on a season which saw Hamilton win 11 races to Rosberg's five.
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7. Valtteri Bottas over Felipe Massa: 139 Percent
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Valtteri Bottas: 186
Felipe Massa: 134
Earlier in the year, we might have expected this gap to be far greater.
Valtteri Bottas was scoring podiums for fun while Felipe Massa was struggling to get points on the board. The Brazilian had a trouble magnet on his car, crashing out four times in the opening 10 races.
After the German Grand Prix, Bottas had 91 points while Massa was stuck on 30.
But the ex-Ferrari man did much better in the second half of the year, matching Bottas' podium count of three and outscoring the Finn by 104 points to 95.
The gap at the end was a more respectable—but still significant—52 points.
6. Daniel Ricciardo over Sebastian Vettel: 143 Percent
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Daniel Ricciardo: 238
Sebastian Vettel: 167
Before the start of the year, the odds on Sebastian Vettel beating Daniel Ricciardo were 1-12. It was considered a near-certainty, but things don't always turn out as we expect them to.
The four-time world champion was ahead in the early part of the year due to Ricciardo's disqualification in Australia and retirement in Malaysia. But Vettel's own DNF in Monaco saw the Australian seize the initiative.
He never gave Vettel a sniff thereafter.
Three race wins and a further five podiums pushed Ricciardo's total to 238 points. Vettel managed only four podiums in total and was, for the first time in his glittering career, outclassed by a team-mate.
The final gap of 71 points accurately reflects the power shift which occurred at Red Bull in 2014. An anomaly, or has Vettel been found out?
All eyes will be on his performances at Ferrari in 2015.
5. Nico Hulkenberg over Sergio Perez: 163 Percent
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Nico Hulkenberg: 96
Sergio Perez: 59
The Force India pairing looked a close one before the season began. Nico Hulkenberg was the guy unfairly passed over for a seat at one of the big teams, while Sergio Perez had been a touch unfortunate to be dropped by McLaren after one season.
Perez was the man in the headlines early on with a fine podium at the Bahrain Grand Prix, but Hulkenberg was ahead in the standings from the very first race.
The German was relentlessly plugging away, scoring points at every one of the first 10 races while the less consistent Perez bounced between highs and lows. He could and probably should have won in Canada, but ended up with no points following a final-lap crash with Felipe Massa.
But as the second half of the season began, it was Perez putting in consistently good drives as Hulkenberg toiled. The Mexican outscored his team-mate in the final nine races—but the early-season gap was too great to close.
They finished up 37 points apart.
4. Jenson Button over Kevin Magnussen: 229 Percent
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Jenson Button: 126
Kevin Magnussen: 55
As one of the most experienced drivers on the grid, Jenson Button was expected to have the edge over rookie Kevin Magnussen early on.
He didn't in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, with Magnussen finishing second in his first-ever F1 race, four seconds clear of Button.
After that, expected service was resumed and the 2009 world champion built a healthy advantage during the first half of the year. After 10 rounds, Magnussen had 37 points, Button 59.
But instead of the Dane improving as he gained experience, it was Button whose form ramped up. The Brit made the most of his McLaren's improved competitiveness, while Magnussen lost a pair of strong results to post-race time penalties.
Sixth at Spa became 12th and seventh at Monza became 10th.
The gap between the pair became something of a gulf as the season drew to a close, and ended up at a substantial 71 points. It doesn't quite do Magnussen justice, as he wasn't that bad, but Button was definitely the better driver.
3. Jean-Eric Vergne over Daniil Kvyat: 275 Percent
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Jean-Eric Vergne: 22
Daniil Kvyat: 8
Jean-Eric Vergne's team-mate for his third season of F1 was 20-year-old Daniil Kvyat, a rookie plucked from GP3 and thrust into the spotlight. Kvyat was well-regarded, but Vergne's experience made him the early-season favourite.
But the young Russian scored three times in the first four races, and the pair were on level pegging when they arrived in Canada.
Toro Rosso's reliability issues had already started to affect the duo, and this pattern continued throughout the year. Both lost handfuls of points due to problems with their cars.
At the end of the season Vergne had 22 points, Kvyat just eight. This gap is not representative of the year; Red Bull didn't suddenly lose their collective minds and promote a duffer to one of the most sought-after seats on the grid.
But Vergne certainly showed enough to deserve a spot on the grid next season.
2. Fernando Alonso over Kimi Raikkonen: 293 Percent
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Fernando Alonso: 161
Kimi Raikkonen: 55
Fernando Alonso has a habit of beating his team-mates. He's done it every season in which he has scored a point with the exception of 2007, when he and Lewis Hamilton ended with the same total.
But no one could have expected he would annihilate Kimi Raikkonen quite as comprehensively as he did in 2014.
The Spaniard opened his account with 12 points at the first race of the season and never looked back. In the 16 races in which both finished, Alonso was the leading Ferrari at the chequered flag.
Raikkonen was never entirely comfortable with the car, but it was still a quite embarrassing display. The gap at the end was the biggest in purely points terms of any in-team battle at 106 points.
Unfortunately for the 2007 world champion, it's quite representative of what happened.
1. Romain Grosjean over Pastor Maldonado: 400 Percent
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Romain Grosjean: 8
Pastor Maldonado: 2
Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado in the same team made for several jokes about repair bills before the year got under way.
Funny, yes, but fair? Not quite. Neither are anything like as bad as they used to be and would have scored regular points had their Lotus been anything like its predecessor.
Only, it wasn't. Grosjean put in a mighty display in Spain to take eighth, and followed it up with another eighth at the next race in Monaco. But the car just wasn't good enough to challenge for top-10 finishes, and those eight points were all he scored.
Maldonado fared less well, and looked set for a pointless year before snatching ninth place at the United States Grand Prix.
The six-point gap translates to a whopping percentage. When weaving small numbers into large, the odd anomaly hops out, and this is one of them. Maldonado wasn't the most outclassed team-mate on the grid.
But Grosjean was definitely the best man in a Lotus.
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