“If you love problem solving, science, or sport, and you’re curious about how data analytics and visualization can reveal insights and tell compelling stories, this is the challenge for you. It’s also a great opportunity to stretch your creative muscles and try something new this summer.” That is the burb introducing the 2025 Summer Challenge from JMP Statistical Discovery.
School-lab experiments are usually designed to explore the relationship between just two variables but analysis is rarely that straightforward in real life. This can be because several factors have to be considered in combination or because it simply isn’t possible to control all the variables that can affect the relationship between the two principal variables.
This is where JMP (pronounced “jump”) software comes in as it allows users to select different combinations of variables for analysis. To encourage greater use of the software, JMP Statistical Discovery is offering another of its Summer Challenge events, one of which was covered previously on physbang back in 2022 (https://physbang.com/2022/07/25/summer-challenge-2/).
This year’s theme is Formula 1 motorsport and the goal is to analyse a supplied dataset to reveal something of significance through visualisation (graphing). Participation is free via online registration at https://www.jmp.com/en/offers/summer-challenge/motorsport. After registration you will have access to the dataset, which is provided in JMP’s own format and can be analysed using a free 30-day trial copy of the company’s software.
It will help if you have some knowledge of how F1 Grand Prix races work but the registration page provides a video walk-through that analyses data from a past race to showcase some of the software’s features. There is also a general overall introduction to the software on JMP’s YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/@JMPStatisticalDiscovery.
The competition closes on 24th August and the judging criteria are listed on the registration page. Given that the trial software is active only for 30 days, it makes sense to have watched the explanatory videos and to have acquired (if necessary) a feel for the terminology, structure and strategies of F1 races before activating JMP.
To enable additional specific research, it will help you to know the race being analysed is this year’s Spanish Grand Prix, where the two McLaren cars continued their overall dominance, Max Verstappen finished lower than his flag position because of a 10 second penalty and the star of the show was Nico Hulkenberg, who climbed from 16th at the start to 5th across the finishing line (see https://www.formula1.com/en/results/2025/races/1262/spain/race-result).
There is also publicly-available information about the tyres and discussions about possible race strategies on various websites (see https://www.total-motorsport.com/f1-strategy-guide-for-2025-spanish-gp/ and https://press.pirelli.com/the-hardest-tyres-are-back-for-spain/) that might be worth reading before starting the task. You should always have a hypothesis in mind before tackling any sort of data analysis so try to decide what you want to find out before being confronted with the numbers!
Although there is a serious side to data analysis in Formula 1, and this competition offers a small prize to the winning entry, above all the JMP Summer Challenge is meant to be engaging. In the company’s own words, “We hope you enjoy digging into the data, learn something new along the way – and have a little fun while you’re at it.” You will also get a taste for real-world statistical analysis software that goes far beyond the capablilities of Excel.
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