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How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - TonyLima - 10-06-2026

Re our discussion of jet lag. They don’t even try.

RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - dabigv13 - 10-06-2026

Interesting article, but this strategy only works because of the timing of the event.

Quote:Exploiting a scheduling quirk—Singapore’s 8 p.m. race typically follows a slate of afternoon starts in Europe— the entire paddock just lives in an alternate, nocturnal universe.

But if the game is at 12 EST/9am PST like the WF game, or from Georgia Tech's perspective, at 1030PM EST/730PST, you can't just keep your body on your local time. I don't really count the WF loss as a brobdingnagian loss, and I discount the GaTech win as well, because they just aren't fair competitions.

IMHO Stanford, or cal for that matter, will never be a contender while they are in the ACC. Even great Stanford teams struggled with early east coast games. You simply can't overcome the human body clock. Even the best teams going across multiple time zones and playing very early or very late will not perform at their best and will lose more than their talent and coaching would otherwise predict.

Stanford's optimal strategy is to play all their home games against east coast teams as late as possible, though the early games are probably still harder than the reverse- the numbers suggest the penalty for east coast teams going west and playing late is not as bad as the inverse. Maybe some sort of agreement could be made in the conference for all bicoastal games to start between noon and 4 PM (PST) but of course the TV overlords wouldn't allow that.

RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - M T - 10-06-2026

Sigh...  You really have to check these damn computers.  I asked DuckDuckGo
"what time is it in paris if it is 8pm in Singapore"
and got back:
Quote:8:00 PM, Oct 6 Central European Summer Time (CEST)
2:00 AM, Oct 7 Singapore Standard Time (SST)

It took me awhile to realize it gave an answer to
"what time is it in Singapore if it is 8pm in Paris"

RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - dabigv13 - 10-06-2026

I was trying to get Gemini and Claude to give me some exact win percentages on west coast teams playing early games on the east coast, and basically neither could do it unless I gave it a whole database of games myself. Pretty dissapointed in our machine gods TBH, they can be pretty lazy and stupid.

RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - Jamesy - 10-06-2026

(10-06-2026, 01:58 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:  Interesting article, but this strategy only works because of the timing of the event.

Quote:Exploiting a scheduling quirk—Singapore’s 8 p.m. race typically follows a slate of afternoon starts in Europe— the entire paddock just lives in an alternate, nocturnal universe.

But if the game is at 12 EST/9am PST like the WF game, or from Georgia Tech's perspective, at 1030PM EST/730PST, you can't just keep your body on your local time. I don't really count the WF loss as a brobdingnagian loss, and I discount the GaTech win as well, because they just aren't fair competitions.

IMHO Stanford, or cal for that matter, will never be a contender while they are in the ACC. Even great Stanford teams struggled with early east coast games. You simply can't overcome the human body clock. Even the best teams going across multiple time zones and playing very early or very late will not perform at their best and will lose more than their talent and coaching would otherwise predict.

Stanford's optimal strategy is to play all their home games against east coast teams as late as possible, though the early games are probably still harder than the reverse- the numbers suggest the penalty for east coast teams going west and playing late is not as bad as the inverse. Maybe some sort of agreement could be made in the conference for all bicoastal games to start between noon and 4 PM (PST) but of course the TV overlords wouldn't allow that.

Why is it such a big deal at the college level, but at the NFL level, where a 10 AM PT start on the east coast is only an hour later than in college, no one gives it a second thought? NFL teams from the pacific time zone are actually over .500 when playing at 10 AM PT over the past 10 years. Teams aren't routinely going out more than 2 days prior, similar to the college level, and margins at the NFL are even smaller than in college.

RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - 82lsju - 10-06-2026

(10-06-2026, 03:00 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:  I was trying to get Gemini and Claude to give me some exact win percentages on west coast teams playing early games on the east coast, and basically neither could do it unless I gave it a whole database of games myself. Pretty dissapointed in our machine gods TBH, they can be pretty lazy and stupid.

not college football but here's an analysis of NFL teams

https://maxmoacanin.substack.com/p/the-nfls-west-coast-disadvantage

which asserts that after adjusting for home field advantage and relative team strength traveling east for a game is not a problem

Quote:Over the past 36 seasons, west coast teams did not underperform the model’s expectations when traveling east.

In the 494 games specified above:
  • The west coast road had an average win probability of 44.1 percent, slightly lower than their 46.8 percent win rate. In other words, they won at a slightly higher rate than expected.
  • They either matched or outperformed their point-spread benchmark 56 percent of the time (278 games).
  • They covered the model’s point-spread benchmark by 1.61 points, on average.

And the results were similar for early kickoffs. Of the 494 games, 367 of them started before 2 p.m. EST. In those games:
  • The west coast team won 46.6 percent of the time—slightly higher than the model’s benchmark, which gave them an average win probability of 43.8 percent.
  • They covered the model’s point-spread benchmark spread by 1.35 points, on average.


RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - dabigv13 - 10-06-2026

I can think of several reasons why the NFL and college results would not track.

College players are younger than NFL players. Their body clocks are different than older adults. Teens tend to stay up later and sleep in later- probably something anyone who has been a teen or has a teen may be familiar with.

College gametimes are more varied as well. The NFL doesn't play at 9am PST like we just did against WF.

College players are mostly professionals now, but presumably they still have some classes and homework that could make keeping an optimized sleep schedule more difficult.

I am trying to get some better data. What I have found so far suggests west coast teams playing early on the east coast fail to cover the spread at a very high rate, 65-70%. That flips for east coast teams playing late on the west coast. But that seems like a messy way to measure this.

RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - Mick - 10-06-2026

(10-06-2026, 01:58 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:  Interesting article, but this strategy only works because of the timing of the event.
IMHO Stanford, or cal for that matter, will never be a contender while they are in the ACC. Even great Stanford teams struggled with early east coast games. You simply can't overcome the human body clock. Even the best teams going across multiple time zones and playing very early or very late will not perform at their best and will lose more than their talent and coaching would otherwise predict.

Stanford's optimal strategy is to play all their home games against east coast teams as late as possible, though the early games are probably still harder than the reverse- the numbers suggest the penalty for east coast teams going west and playing late is not as bad as the inverse. Maybe some sort of agreement could be made in the conference for all bicoastal games to start between noon and 4 PM (PST) but of course the TV overlords wouldn't allow that.

July 4, 2015. I lived in Arlington VA, my son had an internship in WashDC, and we got to socialize a fair amount. The SF Giants were visiting the Nationals in the first game of an East Coast road trip. Because DC had planned a fireworks show that they wanted to conclude relatively early, the Giants vs. Nationals game received an 11:30 a.m. start time -> 8:30 a.m. body clock time.

I told my son that, even though the Giants were pitching Bumgarner, they were likely to get clobbered. And clobbered they were.

First batter, Michael Taylor, home run.
Second batter, Yunel Escobar, double (misses a home run by two feet).
Third batter, Bryce Harper, two-run home run.

After five pitches, the Nationals led 3-0. Bumgarner was tagged with six runs. Washington scored nine runs, ultimately.

P. S. I just found out that there were almost identical circumstances in 2012, and the Giants lost that one too, 9-4. Bumgarner started both games.

RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - Goose - 10-06-2026

(10-06-2026, 06:43 PM)Mick Wrote:  After five pitches, the Nationals led 3-0. Bumgarner was tagged with six runs. Washington scored nine runs, ultimately.

P. S. I just found out that there were almost identical circumstances in 2012, and the Giants lost that one too, 9-4. Bumgarner started both games.
As I recall if Bumgarner was going to have trouble it would happen early. He often had first innings that were rocky by comparison to the rest of the game. Of course, the early start time arguably exacerbated that tendency.

RE: How F1 Drivers Beat Jet Lag - Mick - 10-07-2026

(10-06-2026, 08:23 PM)Goose Wrote:  
(10-06-2026, 06:43 PM)Mick Wrote:  After five pitches, the Nationals led 3-0. Bumgarner was tagged with six runs. Washington scored nine runs, ultimately.

P. S. I just found out that there were almost identical circumstances in 2012, and the Giants lost that one too, 9-4. Bumgarner started both games.
As I recall if Bumgarner was going to have trouble it would happen early. He often had first innings that were rocky by comparison to the rest of the game. Of course, the early start time arguably exacerbated that tendency.

You're right about that. His 1st inning ERA was 4.52, worst of all innings by a comfortable margin. Career ERA was 3.47.