The Inventor
OK, I don’t know if you’d really call the intelligentF1 model an invention, but it fits the alliteration.
James Beck has been modelling complex engineering systems for 15 years. Originally a Computational Fluid Dynamics engineer/scientist, he has worked on Data Assimilation schemes at the Met Office and is currently in charge of the aerodynamics and re-entry heating of the latest European Space Agency mission to Mars. His friends tease him that it’s not rocket science.
An avid motor racing fan, he first attended a Grand Prix in 1988 and got very wet. His favourite trackside memory is yelling ‘Johnny Herbert is going to win the race’ whilst standing at Copse corner watching Damon Hill using Michael Schumacher as a brake on the big screen. He always felt that there was much more insight to be gained from the huge amount of timing data generated at a Grand Prix weekend, and as he couldn’t find anyone else doing it, he thought he’d have a go.
He lives near Portsmouth in the UK and has a wife and three children.
Like this:
-
Sports Data Journalism and “Datatainment” « OUseful.Info, the blog… →
November 4th, 2011 → 12:25 pm[...] Again looking at Formula One, the Intelligent F1 blog features a data-powered model developed by a rocket scientist that provides engagment oaround a particular race over an extended period, from predicting Sunday [...]
juan mateo horrach torrens
October 22, 2011
Hello James,
Congratulations for your web. For me, is the most interesting thing i have seen about f1 in a lot of time. I also have a master degree in industrial engineering, and it seems that older than you, because my falling in love with f1 begins in the 60`s. I work in the environmental sector, but my main passion is f1. I believe that f1 represents the best combination of intelligence, determination, thecnnical sofistication, courage and glamour.
For all the people wich wants to go deeper inside and discover the real value of each one, your web is a big improvement.
Thank you very much, and, please, dont stop.
Juan Mateo Horrach Torrens
intelligentf1
October 22, 2011
Thanks for the feedback. I’m glad that you like what I’m trying to do. If you have ideas for things you think I might be able to analyse, then let me know, and I’ll see what I can do.
Nirav Patel
October 26, 2011
Amazing stuff! I am currently a Geography student at the University of Florida working in the Medical Geography department, but I always love the plethora of data that is generated by these races. I have done GIS analyses of the Nurburgring Nordschleife with temperature and precipitation and determining the most dangerous parts of the track based on grip. I have a school project using programming with R and I hope to study many of your analyses to develop my own project ideas, because I want to do a statistical analysis of F1 data from a particular race this year.
From what I understand, is a majority of your data strictly generated from the Live Timing resource that is available on F1′s website and positional data from races. Cheers and thank you for this great resource! A dream job would be a data analyst for the FIA or a team, haha! Again great work, and I will be citing you within my project!
intelligentf1
October 26, 2011
Thanks for the comments.
The data comes from the FIA media centre and is published after the race – I use the laptime data only as all the positions can be generated from that. The intelligentF1 model is designed to add value to the data to give more insight into the races. There is work going on to model the races live using the live timing data stream – hopefully then it’ll be something helping to understand the races in real time.