Toward the title 2015

[Schummy]

A bit of gap analysis to get a feel about what kind of hopes there are for the championship.

Race 7 (12 to go)   
Drv Gap  Gap1  Dif Unl Same
HAM   0        
ROS  17   4.9  -18      0.7
VET  43  12.4    9      1.8
RAI  79  22.8       -8  3.4
BOT  94  27.1        8  4.0
MAS 104  30.0       18  4.4
RIC 116  33.5           4.9

Gap = Well... gap with leading driver.
Gap1 = Equivalent gap if only there was one race to go. Gap1>25 imply a very unlikely chance to overcome the gap. Gap1 > 10 means a difficult gap to overcome.
Dif = Points to gain or lose respecting leading driver to be in the "difficult gap boundary in the next race.
Unl = Points to gain or lose et cetera ... et cetera ... to be in the unlikely boundary in the next race.
Same = points to gain or lose to remain in the same conditions in the next race.

In short, Rosberg has still an "easy" gap with Lewis. Vettel is in a difficult position. Kimi is near the unlikely zone and the rest are practically out of the title.

Rosberg would have to lose 18 points the Hamilton in Austrai to get in the "difficult gap" label. Vettel, needs to recover 8 points from LH to be in a not difficult position (it practically implies winning in Austria and Hamilton lower than 2nd). Kimi easily will go into the Unlikely hell in Austria because he just needs to lose 8 points to Lewis; it would leave the number of contenders to a grand total of two drivers.

In all that scheme it's implied a relatively stable landscape in the future, without dramatic changes in the balance of power.

[Schummy]

To complement the former post, I ran a simulation of a myriad of possible alternative future races to get an estimation of the probabilities of each driver beating each other driver at the end of the season. Same for teams.

     HAM  ROS  VET  RAI  BOT  MAS  RIC
HAM   50   82  100  100  100  100  100
ROS   18   50   93  100  100  100  100
VET    1    8   50  100  100  100  100
RAI    0    1    2   50   81   91  100
BOT    0    0    1   19   50   73   85
MAS    0    0    1    9   28   50   79
RIC    0    0    0    1   15   22   50

     mer  fer  wil  rbr  lot  ind  sau  str
mer   50  100  100  100  100  100  100  100
fer    0   50  100  100  100  100  100  100
wil    0    0   50   98  100  100  100  100
rbr    0    0    3   50  100  100   93  100
lot    0    0    0    2   50   56   63   78
ind    0    0    0    2   44   50   59   72
sau    0    0    0    6   37   41   50   67
str    0    0    0    2   22   28   33   50

The first three are in a separated league, detached from the rest, although Vettel just has a few chances against Rosberg. Raikkonen, Bottas, Massa and Ricciardo fight for positions between 4th and 7th, the only thing practically safe is Kimi is not going to be overtaken by Ricciardo.

About teams, the first 4 teams are practically fixed in their "definitive" positions, with just a marginal chance for Red Bull against Williams. The other 4 teams are in a very open fight between them with total fluidity in their positions. (Please note how I carefully ignore McLaren and Marussia ).

These results have been calculated supposing the status quo until the end of the season will not be substantially changed.

[Schummy]

Evolution of the level of likelihood to close the gap with the leading driver in the WDC. The leader driver (Hamilton) is represented by the grey horizontal line at the bottom. Critic levels are the boundaries of "Comfortable", "Difficult" and "Unlikely" zones, they aprox mean 10% and 1%, respectively, of probability of closing de gap with the leading driver.

Rosberg and Vettel are still in the chase, but it is difficult from a probabilistic point of view. If Rosberg wins in Japan and Hamilton get another zero, then Nico will go back to the "Comfortable" zone, so he will be a very real contender (although Hamilton will continue to be the clear favorite).

Many races ago the rest of the field became virtually irrelevant in the race for the title. They were "eliminated" around the Monaco, Canada and Austria races.

Another aspect is the close distance between Rosberg and Vettel...