2026 season after Round 5
Cumulative share of points vs cumulative share of drivers — the shaded area between the curve and the equality line is proportional to the Gini coefficient
Gini coefficients for all seasons 2010–2026, sorted by inequality. Green = competitive, red = dominated.
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index from 2010 to 2026. Below 0.15 = competitive market, above 0.25 = highly concentrated.
Log-log plot of rank vs points. Zipf's law predicts a linear relationship — deviations reveal structural patterns in the grid hierarchy.
Economics and information theory applied to F1 championship points
The Gini coefficient measures inequality in a distribution. Originally designed for income inequality, it works identically for championship points: how unevenly are points distributed across drivers?
A Gini of 0 means every driver has identical points. A Gini of 1 means one driver has all the points. Most F1 seasons fall between 0.45 and 0.75.
The HHI is a market concentration measure used by antitrust regulators. Applied to F1, it treats each driver's points share as a "market share." Would the championship pass an antitrust review?
HHI below 0.15 indicates a competitive field. Between 0.15 and 0.25 is moderately concentrated. Above 0.25 signals dominance — a regulatory red flag in economics.
The Lorenz curve plots the cumulative share of points (y-axis) against the cumulative share of drivers sorted from lowest to highest (x-axis). The diagonal line represents perfect equality.
The Gini coefficient equals twice the area between the Lorenz curve and the equality line. A curve hugging the diagonal means a competitive season; a curve bowing deeply means domination.
Zipf's law states that in many natural distributions, the value of the r-th ranked item is proportional to 1/r. On a log-log plot, this produces a straight line with slope −1.
In F1, deviations from Zipf reveal structure: a concave deviation (top-heavy) means the leaders hoard disproportionate points. A convex deviation means the midfield is more compressed than expected.
What the data says about 2026