Bob Barnard Track Engineering

I watched a variety of sport over the weekend; US Open Golf, NASCAR, Indycar, Grand-Am and soccer. The one thing they all have in common is the love of statistics. What would the commentators talk about without all those numbers. How many majors since Tiger won one, how many greens or fairways hit in regulation, what is each hole playing in respect of par? How many shots on goal at the soccer, percentage of possession, games without a goal, or distance run by each player?

Think about baseball, what is there to watch if you don't know the ERA or RBI stats? NBA? Assists, average score, total points, points coming off the bench. It goes on and on. I swear that the golf guys could not complete a sentence without a stat.

So what about motor racing? Laps lead, tracks where Jimmie Johnson has not won, wins from pole, pit stop times, number of races without a win, how many times Ford has won at Michigan, and on it goes.

One stat no one seems to want to count in motor racing is deaths and injuries. I thought America was alone in not adding these up, but no. To try and get some comparison I went to good friends in Spain, Australia, France, Germany, Italy and England, and a friend with FIA connections. Surely the FIA keeps track? I have not heard from all of them, but the message is no one keeps count, or say they don't. How can the FIA Institute know what to research solutions and improvements for if they do not look at accidents? How does the Medical Panel know what injuries to expect, or the Track Committee know what to improve and update? The answer is they must, but no one wants to put the numbers out there. It's the same deal as not publishing standards, only the insiders should know such precious information.

Now I accept that here in the US the sport does not keep count, it is to split up to do that, but the insurers must. That is their business. How do you set insurance rates if you cannot assess the risk. It is an actuarial business, or like legalized gambling to me. What's the odds of having a claim at that track or event? How do we do it elsewhere? Look at the form book, or calculate the odds.

So, the most important statistic of all in motor racing is not how many championships someone wins, it is how many have to die or be maimed to accomplish it? We may never know.