🇦🇿 F1'24: R17 - The Bearmandoza Line

In the 1990s, there wasn't as much access to sporting stats as there is now. You couldn't go to a website, ask for all of Steph Curry’s jump shots at home when the temperature was 20 or above in the third quarter with an odd number on the shot clock from 30-60 degrees left of centre on a Tuesday and watch a metronomic display of sporting excellence that looks mundane, but reflect the years of practice and frustration that went into each swish.

And for every conventional, everyday superstar like whoever was good in the NBA in the 90s, you could compare them to stars in previous eras. “Hey, Shaq rebounds just like Moses Malone, watch how his elbow rotates.”

This made it difficult when new players emerged who didn't have comparators. Players that could play more than one position, or something like that. Unicorns where the press couldn't say ‘he’s just like this guy!’ because there was no ‘this guy'.

However, while sport changes, the stats don't tend to. And doubly so when there's a mathematical formula involved. The NFL has its QB rating - an opaque way of calculating ability at one of the most difficult positions in all of sports. A perfect rating is the suspiciously specific 158.3.

Then you had someone like Kordell Stewart. The Pittsburgh Steeler had the nickname Slash, not for any great love for Guns and Roses and millinery, but because he was a Quarterback Slash Wide Receiver. How do you judge a player historically who can play multiple positions?

I don’t know the true origin of it, but ProFootballTalk among others used the Kordoza Line as a measurement of mediocrity. Slash Stewart had up years, down years, but settled in as a solid but not spectacular quarterback as the receiving element of his play faded, ending with a career QB rating of 70.7. The ruling was if you were below this, you weren’t doing your job correctly (the Kordoza name comes from baseball’s Mario Mendoza, with the Mendoza line at .2 batting average or above). More reading here.

How does any of this relate to F1? Well, I’m glad you asked. At the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Ollie Bearman scored a point, becoming the sport’s first driver to score points with different teams in their first two races. After his last-minute call up in Jeddah, Bearman deputised for Carlos Sainz and finished seventh. He then secured his 2025 drive with Haas, and the suspended Kevin Magnussen lost his place in Baku. Bearman stepped in with 10th, giving him seven points for the season.

Despite the high-profile silly season, which has extended to in-season silliness now, driver changes on performance are still rare. Drivers being hauled out of their seats with a few races to go is an exception, rather than a rule. 

But if you’ve driven all season, and you have fewer points than a teenager who has only done two races, I don’t think you can call that a successful season. 

Welcome, therefore, to the Bearmandoza Line of 2024.

The ghost of Haas present Kevin Magnussen (6), the ghost of Haas future Esteban Ocon (5), literal rookie Franco Colapinto (4), the under–performing Sauber pair of Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas alongside deposed Williams driver Logan Sargeant all currently fall under this line. The other thing they have in common is every driver under the Bearmandoza line has the same number of sprint points as you do.

It’s unfair to include Colapinto here, because Singapore will be only his third race. But for the other drivers, how can they say they’ve achieved what they set out to do if they are below this line. Yes, the cars are different, and I’m sure you could put 10-time race winner Bottas in a Ferrari and he’d be ok, but right now, he is 22nd in a 20-driver championship, with a pair of 13th-place finishes at Monaco and Canada serving as his season highlights so far.

Even Logan Sargeant stands above him in the championship after finishing 11th at Silverstone this year. Perhaps Colapinto is the better comparator here. The Argentinian driver delivered a huge buzz for Williams in fans and sponsors, and has repaid that with 12th in Zandvoort and eighth in Baku - scoring more points in one race than the American did in his (now surely over) F1 career? 

Sergeant may end up at PREMA’s entry into IndyCar alongside Callum Ilott, but Bearman’s current F2 team having an entry in the American series does not automatically mean they must have an American driver. Sergeant drove for PREMA in Formula 3, finishing third in 2020, so he knows how some of the team works, but what does it say about IndyCar if they consider a driver with one career point in F1 to be among the elite group there?

There is no news on the future of Zhou Guanyu, who said in June that he would like to stay at Sauber. Like Sargeant, the Chinese driver has significant commercial backing. But he has not scored a point since Qatar 2023, rolling around near the back of the grid. Sauber look set not to score a point this season, and he peaked at the start of the season with an 11th in Bahrain, which suddenly feels like a different era, let alone a different season.

Colapinto we’ve discussed, and that brings us to Haas via Alpine. Esteban Ocon has scored four times this season, sneaking 10th place three times (Miami, Canada, Spain) and took ninth in Belgium. Alpine have not finished higher than that, and the intense intra-team rivalry with Pierre Gasly probably gives Ocon his own personal line to aim at, but with five points, this is comfortably Ocon’s worst full season in F1, although in his defence, he does normally finish the season strongly.

He’ll be Bearman’s team-mate next season, and won’t want to be outshined by the Brit, but in news that will make you feel incredibly old, the 28-year-old Ocon will have a role in mentoring at Haas as they get ready for 2025 and the new rules starting in 2026.

What is difficult to remember - despite his points finishes - is that I’m finding it difficult to think of any on-track highlights for Ocon this season so far, and even that ninth place was an upgraded tenth after Russell’s Spa disqualification.

As for Magnussen, he doesn’t have a drive for 2025. I think it would be unlikely if Sauber imported the 2024 Haas driver line up alongside Nico Hülkenberg. But the Danish driver has proved this season - possibly more than most teams - that he can play the team game. 

Hülkenberg has 22 points, scoring the first of those in Saudi Arabia. While Bearman was higher up the field, Magnussen had been given 2x 10-second time penalties, making his race literally pointless. As a result, Haas advised him to be the world’s most expensive roadblock so the German driver could pit and come out ahead of perhaps faster drivers behind.

He did the same thing in Miami, describing it as “stupid tactics” as Magnussen ran off the track several times to stay ahead of Lewis Hamilton as the Mercedes driver tried to chase down Hülkenberg for the final points-paying place. Magnussen accrued several penalty points in that race and others, creating the situation for the race ban, clearing the way for Bearman to take a point in Baku.

To finish tenth, Bearman needed some luck via a collision between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez, but which driver doesn’t need luck? It might be a little bit unfair to group these drivers under an arbitrary line, but Bearman’s performances in the 2024 F1 season have been great as a stand-in. It’s unlikely he’ll get a chance to be in another Grand Prix before 2025, but he’ll be a driver to watch next year.