At some point near the end of Bigryeguy98’s dominant Season 4 Championship victory, I found myself wondering how his season compared to some of the all-time F1CRL seasons. The season certainly would have been different if fivesix2KING had competed for the entire season, but he didn’t. The reality we have is that Bigryeguy98 secured the Championship with 145 points (with a 32 point margin over his closest competitor).
Math
The first step for me was to compare Bigryeguy98’s performance in Season 4 to some of the seasons we’ve seen historically, from a Points per Race perspective. Note that I only included seasons where the driver raced five or more races.
| Driver | Season | Points/Race |
| xJRACx | Season 1 | 21.9 |
| Bigryeguy98 | Season 4 | 20.7 |
| Bigryeguy98 | Season 1 | 17.8 |
| HAL9100 | Season 3 | 14.1 |
| Reyrey61924 | Season 1 | 13.4 |
| PCC-Godly | Season 4 | 13.3 |
| xINCIDENTx | Season 2 | 13.1 |
| ghost_726 | Season 3 | 12.7 |
| xINCIDENTx | Season 4 | 12.6 |
From a Point/Race perspective, Bigryeguy98’s Season 4 comes in second behind xJRACx’s dominant Season 1 performance, where he averaged 21.9 points per race and ran away with the Driver Championship. It is worth noting that xJRACx and Bigryeguy98 are in a class of their own when it comes to most successful seasons by Point/Race.
What Does the Math Mean?
As with all data, there is some nuance to be had. In Season 1, F1CRL races averaged 11.8 competitors per race. In Season 4, F1CRL races averaged 16.2 competitors per race. Assuming all competitors had equal skill, Bigryeguy98 faced more competition in his Season 4 performance than xJRACx did in his Season 1 performance. It’s also not realistic to assume that all competitors are equal. While it would technically be possible to analyze the average TrueSkill that each competitor faced during his high-scoring campaign, it would require more time and TrueSkill tweaking than this CEO/God-King/reporter (“Writer”) is willing to commit. That being said, I would surmise that most F1CRL competitors would agree that the field has progressively gotten more competitive and more skilled as the league has matured. As an additonal data point, at the time of writing this post (following the conclusion of Season 4, in advance of the beginning of Season 5), Bigryeguy98 does have a higher TrueSkill than xJRACX.
| Driver | TrueSkill |
| Bigeryeguy98 | 30.588 |
| xJRACx | 29.105 |
So Which Season Was Better?
The honest answer is I don’t know. Bigryeguy98’s Season 4 performance felt more dominant to this Writer, but perhaps that’s recency bias. As a Season 1 racer, xJRACx’s performance in that season sure felt pretty dominant. But for now, I’m thinking that the season Bigryeguy98 put together in Season 4 is a performance that has not yet been seen, and perhaps may not be seen again, depending on how the driver roster continues to evolve as F1CRL moves into Season 5 with the release of F1 22. Fans of the league can only hope that both xJRACx and Bigryeguy98 are both active competitors in Season 5 and put up another titanic battle to resolve the question of who stands as F1CRL’s reigning dominant driver.