What The Metrics Had To Say About Indianapolis And The Brickyard 400
The world of sports data is constantly changing, with more information than ever before available to teams, athletes, and even the common fan that can be used to predict performance trends. NASCAR is no different, and the author of this post has built a number of analytical metrics with the goal in mind of helping give race fans a more advanced view of the action on the track – because as any driver can attest to, auto racing isn’t always a fair sport.
The following numbers – explained in full detail here – are designed to measure driver performance in various aspects of each race, with many of them coming from NASCAR’s Loop Data. They are ranked by True Driver Rating (TDR), a variation on NASCAR’s Driver Rating which incorporates factors such as speed, track position, passing, luck, and equipment strength in order to best estimate how well each driver performed during an event.
The metrics from Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway are as shown below:
A week after winning at Pocono despite only the eighth-best TDR score, it was Ryan Blaney who the metrics were kindest to. Blaney finished third but was in position to win during the race's final long green-flag stretch when he ran second behind Brad Keselowski, who was short on fuel. Those hopes were dashed by a late caution as Keselowski ran dry coming to the green flag on the ensuing restart, allowing Kyle Larson to move up to the front row and pass Blaney for the win.
Blaney had solid underlying numbers all-around, but what was most impressive about his run was that it came while all of his Team Penske teammates struggled. In addition to his TDR win, Blaney led the field by a sizable margin in Equipment-Adjusted Average Running Position Score (EARP) at 280.56. EARP is the number in the "Score" column (which is based on Average Running Position) multiplied by the Equipment Rating ("Equip"), and then weighted appropriately.
Just behind Blaney on the metric leaderboard is Denny Hamlin, who coincidentally ran runner-up on the track to Blaney at Pocono. Hamlin once again had one of the fastest cars in Indy, but had to pit for fuel prior to overtime and then was caught up in an accident on the ensuing restart, finishing 32nd.
There was nothing he could have done differently, though, which is why he is rewarded with the second-highest rating. In fact, Hamlin actually beat Blaney in ETDR (Estimated True Driver Rating), which is responsible for half of the TDR score. ETDR is a more "basic" formula that simply adds each component together, while its counterpart ATDR (Advanced True Driver Rating) uses multipliers to reward drivers who stand out in specific areas.
Rounding out the TDR podium is the race winner, Larson, who did not have the strongest car all day (proven by his 11.2 Average Running Position) but got to the front at the right time. Larson's win may have been controversial given the way the final restarts were officiated, but his impressive drive to the front during the prior run shouldn't be ignored. Larson led the field in True Passer Rating (TPR), which takes into account situational passes and volume as opposed to being a raw differential.
Behind the top three, it's a bit of a mess. The late-race chaos and the strategy-heavy nature of Sunday's race allowed for several drivers to sneak in good finishes without doing the heavy lifting on the track, and vice versa. Todd Gilliland, Austin Cindric, and Daniel Suarez all scored top-10s with below average TDR scores, while Hamlin, Kyle Busch, and John Hunter Nemechek all landed in the TDR top 10 but finished 25th or worse.
As expected given that information, Sunday's Fairness Rating was a poor one at only .5819. That's not the worst this season (Nashville several weeks ago was a .2564), but it's still bad, and from the standpoint of a racing purist, it's frustrating to watch. Far too often in 2024, driver skill has been forced to take a backseat on the scoreboard to team strategy and total dumb luck, and that was once again the case in Indy.