A common criticism of modern Formula 1 is that some races are "parades" where the finishing order is essentially the same as the starting order. Such races are less exciting to watch, as they are essentially won in qualifying. As such, I'd like to identify which modern circuits are most and least likely to have on-track action, of any sort.
As such, I will create an "F1 Parade Factor" which is a measurement of the difference between the rank of the cars at the start and at the end of each race for each circuit used in the past decade. Specifically, I'll use the Kendall rank correlation coefficient to quantify this difference. A value of 1 means a perfect correlation between starting and finishing orders, a value of 0 means the rankings are independent, and a value of -1 would mean they're perfectly inverted. I expect to see positive values for all tracks, given that the Formula 1 starting grid is ordered by ascending qualifying times, but I'll be interested to see how much it varies between tracks.
This sort of metric can be difficult to parse, so in addition to calculating the tau for each circuit, I will plot it alongside a chart of how often cars have issues at a particular circuit, such as crashing or having mechanical problems.
Results
This method is promising, identifying a number of low-action Tilkedromes as the most parade-like, and identifying several of my personal favorite circuits as the least.