Not that it particularly matters right now, but I was wondering how you obtained driver ratings for years prior to the advent of loop data in 2005 because I know that a lot of the data used to calculate them (fastest laps, average running position, pass differentials, etc...) are not available for those years (even though a few people in my circles have tried to calculate ARP for previous seasons based on old video footage, which doesn't interest me all that much personally)?
Fair enough. I looked at old video footage to determine how many times each driver made an on-track pass for the lead and was passed for the lead for all seasons back to 1985. Perhaps you could use that to estimate pass differentials for some of those earlier years to improve your model's accuracy.
Not that it particularly matters right now, but I was wondering how you obtained driver ratings for years prior to the advent of loop data in 2005 because I know that a lot of the data used to calculate them (fastest laps, average running position, pass differentials, etc...) are not available for those years (even though a few people in my circles have tried to calculate ARP for previous seasons based on old video footage, which doesn't interest me all that much personally)?
I used machine learning to estimate them:
https://neilpaine.substack.com/p/the-week-that-was-april-20-24-2026?utm_source=publication-search#:~:text=%F0%9F%8F%81%20Tyler%20Reddick%20won%E2%80%99t%20stop%20winning%20%E2%80%94%20so%20let%E2%80%99s%20update%20his%20season%20projection
Fair enough. I looked at old video footage to determine how many times each driver made an on-track pass for the lead and was passed for the lead for all seasons back to 1985. Perhaps you could use that to estimate pass differentials for some of those earlier years to improve your model's accuracy.
My original article was here:
https://racermetrics.com/on-track-passing-in-nascar-year-by-year.php
And then my slightly updated version of this is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lA4J5Bq9g-nr89WzR1mdN88fS8_8vV9f91uLrzXaLm4/edit?gid=0#gid=0
I admit I'm surprised Earnhardt 1990 was not one of your highest-rated seasons.
Great lede. Nice piece.