F1Punter

The winning margin is not a market that I usually get involved in, but with uncertainty surrounding so many of the traditional markets both at this circuit and at this point in the season, it looks to be worthwhile falling back on some statistics.

The average winning margin (the time difference between the first and second place finishers in the race) since we began racing at Sepang is 17.32 seconds. This is well above average. To put it into context, the average winning margin for the whole of the 2007 season is just 5.27 seconds and if you remove Sepang from that sample just 4.5 seconds.

Can anyone offer an explanation for this? Is it purely down to the layout of the track? Two of the last nine races here have seen winning margins of just a smidgen under forty seconds!

I had hoped to play this market on the spreads, with a limited downside (no negative) and a huge potential upside; but none of the traditional indexes are currently offering a market and the liquidity at Spreadfair is non-existent. SportingIndex did price up the winning margin in Melbourne so hopefully something will appear as we get closer to the off.

On the fixed odds front Expekt.com are offering the best prices:

10/11 that the margin of victory is six seconds or more looks like a standard price that doesn’t take the track averages into account at all. I am going to take advantage.

For something a little more speculative: 15/1 that the margin of victory is twenty-five seconds or more looks worth a shot. This bet would have won twice in the last nine years and during that period we have also seen twenty-three and twenty-four second winning margins.