Career Comparison - Championship Position vs Age - Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso

This week finally saw the announcement of Alonso's move to McLaren and the retention of Jenson Button, so with the driver line up sorted there, how do these drivers compare in terms of the their F1 careers?

The following diagrams plot each driver's season standings for each year they've spent in F1 up to the end of the 2013 season against age (Button in blue, Alonso in red), along with the team they were driving for at the time.

The best fit lines represent linear, quadratic and cubic performance models respectively, of the form pos ~ I(age-30) +I( (age-30)^2 ) + I( (age-30)^3 ).

The confidence limits around each line show how variable Button's career has been compared to Alonso's more consistent career trajectory.

These charts were generated using code described in the "Career Trajectory" chapter of Wrangling F1 Data With R.