6.3 · Lap 1
What lap one is worth.
Rank the riders in a moto by their opening lap, rank them by where they finished, and compare the two orderings. A correlation near 1 means the first lap already wrote the result; near 0 means it told you almost nothing.
By season
Bars are the median correlation across the season's measured motos. Coverage matters as much as the number. 2020 has no lap-1 times at all — the lap sheet prints --.--- for every rider — and 2021–2024 have one for part of the field, so those seasons describe the riders who got a clean start rather than the whole field.
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Moto by moto
Correlation is not causation and the causality here runs the other way: a rider who starts well is
usually a rider who is fast. What the number measures is how much of the finishing order was
already visible on lap 1 — not what caused it.