Which drives were better than the result showed?

Drivers whose ghost-projected finish beat their actual result strong drives masked by car pace, strategy, or circumstance.

A points-less afternoon can hide a great drive. Hidden performance surfaces those: it compares each driver’s ghost-projected finish what the model expected given their pace in a chosen host car against where they actually finished. A driver who was projected higher than they finished was, in pace terms, under-rewarded by the result.

What it shows

The table ranks drivers by the gap between projection and result:

• Ghost-projected position (fct_ghost_race_finish): each driver’s lap times recombined with a chosen host constructor’s car pace, then re-ranked by predicted cumulative race time.
• Delta: projected minus actual finish. A negative delta means the model projected a better finish than actually occurred the driver was under-rewarded.
• Confidence: how well the host constructor’s pace is estimated from panel data; more races with that team means higher confidence.

Only scenarios where avg_recombination_confidence ≥ 0.3 are included, and short runs with too few laps for a reliable estimate are excluded.

How to use it

1. Pick a host constructor from the filter bar; projections re-score against that car.
2. Sort by delta to surface the most under-rewarded drives.
3. Read confidence before trusting a large delta a low-confidence host pace makes the projection noisier.
4. Use the identity check as a sanity test: when the host equals the driver’s own team, projected should equal actual.

Reading the signal correctly

The delta is pace versus result, not an injustice ledger strategy, safety cars, and incidents legitimately move finishing positions in ways a pace projection cannot see. A negative delta says “faster than the result”, not “robbed”.

When the host constructor equals the driver’s own team, predicted finish should equal actual finish any non-zero delta in that case signals a data issue, not hidden performance. Treat it as a diagnostic, not a finding.

Data source

The chart queries fct_ghost_race_finish via DuckDB-Wasm in the browser.

Column	Meaning
projected_finish_pos	Ghost-projected finishing position in the host car
actual_finish_pos	The real finishing position
finish_delta	Projected minus actual; negative = under-rewarded
avg_recombination_confidence	Panel-data confidence; gated at ≥ 0.3

The data window covers 2018–2024.

For the full model definition, see the fct_ghost_race_finish reference.