Week 10: Whose race is it?

Rank the same two-car race outcomes first for the team and then for car 14, with the objective and its stakeholder stated

10 May 2027

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Week 9 left us with finishing-position distributions. They describe what each strategy might produce, but they do not say which result we should prefer. This week adds an objective: the explicit rule used to rank candidate decisions. An objective names both the quantity being ranked and the stakeholder whose interest that quantity represents.

We work with a joint plan, one candidate strategy containing outcomes for two distinct cars on every supplied path. Under the team objective, we convert both finishes to points, add the two cars’ points on each path, then take the probability-weighted mean. Under the named-driver objective, we keep the same paths, weights and finishes but count only car 14’s points. The evidence does not change when the stakeholder changes.

The points lookup comes from the FIA’s 2026 Formula 1 General Regulatory Provisions, Section A, Issue 03. For one ordinary race reaching at least 75% of scheduled distance, P1–P10 score 25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1, and a team’s constructors’ points use the results of both cars. The FIA does not prescribe our expected-points calculation or either objective. Every plan, path, probability, outcome and expected value in the lesson is synthetic.

The lecture validates a joint outcome set before ranking it, derives one plan path by path and then changes the objective without resimulation. The selected plan changes. We account for that change in three places: expected team points, car 14’s expected points and car 22’s expected points. One named interest gains and another can pay for it; neither objective is neutral or automatically correct.

In the lab you repeat that operation on a locked five-path fixture and submit both rankings, the objective-change deltas and the assertions that keep the evidence fixed. The final instrument must state what it optimises and whose interest that serves. The defence must make the same choice answerable after the race.