Considering how finicky and difficult Moto2 is, it's honestly one of the most impressive things I've seen. Proper alien level performance. Shame that didn't translate to MotoGP performance (not yet, anyway).
Absolutely not steady, but what he showed in Catalunya was good indeed.
The data was scraped from Wikipedia (it's legitimately easier to look at that than to refer to the official API!).
Fun fact: the best and worst rookie season by the chosen metric both took place in 2013. Eleven years later...
E for clarity: Given that the seasons have different lengths and some riders didn't even fully take part in their rookie seasons, to make things somewhat comparable I divided the scores of each season in the feature races only by the number of races the rider took part in, multiplied by 20, and rounded.
This is basically the same as points per race, but the last steps yield a score comparable to the ones in a modern (pre-2023) MotoGP season, making it look like a theoretical championship of sorts.
I appreciate the clarification on data normalization.
boh ho controllato Viñales.. 2011 in 125 anno da rookie ha fatto 248 punti in campionato
And indeed, (248 / 17)*20 ≈ 291.7, which rounded down is 291. Next time I'll make a gallery and put the notes in the first page, writing them in contract clause font definitely wasn't a great idea.
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I don't think so not because there are no aliens here anymore but because the competition and the bikes are way closer than before..At least in 2013 only Yamaha and Honda were capable of fighting for the title with only 4 riders being the most competitive whereas now there are like 8 or even more and the bikes make it even worse
I doubt it, he had a top 2 bike on the grid and Pedrosa to guide him. It all just came together for him that season. Also, these days the machine does a lot more talking with the riders making less of a difference in comparison to 2013. Who knows what happens after the 2027 regulations though.
Probably right, but never say never.
I can't remember anyone saying he'd win the title pre-season, despite the factory Honda ride etc etc.
The guy is clearly amazing and hopefully the stars will align for another super rookie in the future.
Yeah I don't think many people were saying that. He was the most anticipated rookie coming up. A rookie coming up and going straight to the factory team was also a huge point of discussion if I remember correctly. All eyes were on him and he exceeded expectations and then some.
Yeah, exactly that the rookie rule would have prevented it - between 2010-12 I think it was. Strange how it was removed when it was. 😂
This. "Haters" will not admit, this rookie season of his, is why he is/was great, or the greatest. You do not win against those type of riders by chance and "everything just going your way", then continue to win 5 more championships...lol.
Vinales having a better rookie year than Acosta is not what I expected
Vinales is easily one of the most talented riders, sadly for him talent isn’t everything
Yeah, if we are talking about raw talent only, Vinales >>> Acosta, not by much but still I would pick prime Vinales (lets wait for prime Acosta first though, maybe I'll change my mind). But his mentality... it is what divided good riders to great ones.
I think based on pure talent it could be the case, but as you mentioned, the mentality and a few other things make Acosta already a better and more complete rider at his young age. 2017 sadly showed how fast everything can fall apart for Vinales.
Some riders just suit the smaller categories better too. I mean he's very good on a MotoGP bike...but not that good.
Then you get riders like Fabio that thrived on the bigger bike.
Amazing job! Would be great you could add the Rider Age next to each result
I was about to comment and noticed this cool coincidence.
Very cool and interesting graphic, thanks OP!
I'm sure there are many other cases but if we take MMarquez DNS in 2011 into account (the last 2 rounds he did not compete in) he would be at like 335 points at 20 rounds.. and that includes another 4 DNF lol
I've said it before but Pecco's career turnaround is sooooooo impressive. Bad rookie season in Moto3, looked like a very average rider (at best) compared to Fenati in the VR46 team but started performing once he was on that shitty Mahindra. Worked his way back up to a back to back MotoGP world champion from rock bottom. Crazy stuff.
I recently watched all classes in 2013 and 2014 because they were the last couple recent years I hadn't watched yet on the VideoPass.
Looking at the back of the table in 2013 moto3 races never stopped feeling weird, as if I was looking into some alternate reality. While he still was decisively outmatched by Fenati in 2014, Pecco was on another galaxy compared to his 2013 self. A mid season injury curtailed his progress, but before that he was very much at home in the top10.
Meanwhile, Team Italia was still at the bottom of the table. Who knows how many riders were burned there or in simiarly bad teams. What's for sure is that it really puts into perspective how good even the last Moto3 backmarker is.
That Terol guy that beat Vinales to the championship in 2011 must have been a real star after dominating the moto3 class that year.
If I am not wrong he even have a corner named after him=)
The same corner marc passed him at during the race.
Marc has a habit of doing that, see Lorenzo corner at Jerez.
Terol competed against Zarco in 2011 in 125... And only won because of the cheated bike. Viñales was 3rd in the championship, and never a menace.
Weren't they both running the RSA? I don't remember any allegations of cheating at the time.
I remember Zanco having jelly knees every time he was close to a win, Terol was much more experienced and it showed.
Just look at Barcelona 2011: Terol had to cut the throttle twice not to overtake him on the straight.
Ajo had the "Derbi" version and not the "Aprilia" one, maybe they had different engines.
You mean the Derbi Márquez won the championship with the previous year ?
Zarco overtook Terol from the last corner to the finish line in Barcelona, doesn't look like lack of power, slipstream was very powerful in 125.
He’s nearly 6 years older than Mav though and had been racing in that class for a long time, that’s a massive amount of additional experience.
Ducati really made Bezzecchi's season look much better compared to some others below him. Not that Bez was bad, not at all.
180 for Pedro, but how?
Given that the seasons have different length and some riders didn't even fully take part in their rookie seasons, to make things somewhat comparable I divided the scores of each season in the feature races only by the number of races the rider took part in, multiplied by 20, and rounded. This is basically points per race, but the last steps yield a score comparable to the ones in a modern (pre-2023) MotoGP season.
With Pedro having only taken part in seven races so far and being one of the two riders that took part in sprints in their rookie season, his score will look very different from the official one.
I remember mirs rookie year in moto2, very much like his championship year in 2020 for the second half of the season, never really off the podium, sad he cant show how good he is on the honda now
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Once I'm done with work I can put up a CSV with all the data I can get and/or a similar viz to this.
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here is the data for all rookies in all years where Wikipedia has rookies marked (basically 2001 onwards). You can copy-paste it into a .csv file, open it with whatever spreadsheet processor you want, and you're good to go.
If you want I can grab you all scores fwiw. It would need a tweak in the scraper to account for classes below 125cc but it should be reasonably quick (but you can probably get that data with APIs anyway). Perhaps, I can try telling apart rookie seasons from wildcard appearances by counting races and/or looking at the wildcards section thinking about it, which could probably push me backwards a couple decades with virtually the same scraper.
Note that I use Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP even in older years for the sake of uniformity.
Also, some names might come up twice mapped to the same class. This happens when a rider comes back to a class when that class has changed name (it happened with Aleix going back to Moto2, I used the 250cc score for the viz because it was the first season in the middle class).
Don't forget MM joined MotoGP on a factory bike, not in a satellite team when most of the others were denied that. Dorna changed the Rookie Rule for him...
In GP racing, the bike has always been a factor. I could've attempted to normalize by bike quality as well, but I decided to keep it as is and only normalize by race count to stay faithful to the official scores.
I'd be curious if you could do, historical rider H2H.
Like how many times Jorge outraced Vale and vice versa.
I should be able to do that pretty easily with the analysis cruncher I used for the grid->wins table the other day. Will see tomorrow. Might be more than just a table.
You don't know what you're talking about, sorry.
The rookie rule existed for about 3 years (something like 2009-2012 or so) and did not block a single worthy rider from getting a great ride. Pretty sure the only rider on this list that even could have been affected by that rule (based on the time they debuted in the class) is Aleix - and there's zero chance that, were that rule not in place, a factory Honda or Yamaha would've been coming his way as a rookie.
Name one rider that was denied a factory bike that they would have gotten otherwise because of the rookie rule. Literally just one. You can't, because there aren't any.
Why was the rule ever brought in? All I remember at the time was everyone saying it was the stop Spies getting a factory Yamaha.
He wouldn’t have needed to replace Rossi or Lorenzo, Yamaha could’ve run 3 bikes - it was allowed at the time as we saw in 2011 (Repsol Honda).
At the time the intention was stated as being trying to help satellite teams - considering it was in the immediate post-recession era maybe Dorna thought that manufacturers needed an incentive to provide more support to them?
He wouldn’t have needed to replace Rossi or Lorenzo, Yamaha could’ve run 3 bikes - it was allowed at the time as we saw in 2011 (Repsol Honda).
Yes, but as you know Honda didn't ideally want to be in that situation, they backed themselves into a corner because Dovizioso met a performance clause which they seemingly hadn't expected him to.
Additionally Yamaha of course could have, if they really wanted to, given Spies maximum support and a "factory bike in satellite colours", just like Rossi got from Honda when he first entered the class. In effect that would've been no different to the 3-rider team solution
Ben Spies.
And who would he have replaced in your fantasy, Rossi or Lorenzo? Get real
You say "MM joined MotoGP on a factory bike, not in a satellite team when most of the others were denied that" and the only example you can give is a rider who, had the rule not existed...would have had absolutely no chance of getting a factory Yamaha anyway.
As always, people only ever bring up the rookie rule when they're attempting to reduce the value of Marquez's achievements and act like the only reason he was the first rider since Kenny Roberts to win the title in his rookie season is because he was given opportunities that others were not. Absolute fiction.
Great job! Well done, thanks!!
Really interesting graphic.
Definitely think there's something to say about season length and especially introduction of sprint races though. Perhaps one based on percentage of available points would be more accurate?
Good job OP. Maybe you could add the date on this one, or the number of races of 2024, and do a new, definitive version at the end of the season when the data is complete.
How did you get Acosta being 287 in moto3? didn’t he score around 250
I think that, to cut down the disparity between seasons that had different amounts of races, OP made an average points per race and then multiplied it by 20.
So, imagine a rider scores 150 points in a 15-race season, that's 10 points per race, so over a 20-race season (assuming the same points per race) that rider would have gotten 200 points.
Yup.
In Acosta's case, the 2021 season had 18 races and he took part in all of them, hence the score is multiplied by about 10/9ths.
Thanks!
Just a suggestion - was wondering if you'd mind including totals for Acosta and Augusto's debut MotoGP seasons excluding sprints as well? Just to give a better comparison with the other riders on the list who debuted prior to sprints being introduced. If it takes too long don't worry about it though! (EDIT: never mind, this is all irrelevant)
This already excludes sprints.
Oh shit yeah, I only just noticed that note at the bottom of the graphic now. No worries then!
Raul’s Moto2 season was something very special