F1 Pit Stop Strategist (What I’d Like to See): Post Pitstop Re-entry Points

Why oh why doesn’t F1 get into the spirit of releasing live time data in a API form during the race?

Here’s something I’d like to build, based on track position graphics:

LF1 driver track position

The ability to play along as a pit lane strategist looking for opportunities about when to pit….

For example, I’d select my driver, then using a model of how long it takes to pit, how far behind the traffic is, and how the time difference maps onto distance round the track, we could pop up a graphic showing the window the pitting car would look to return in to…

F1 track position

Post hoc timing data is available, I suppose, so I guess I could model what this might look like anyway…?

Author: Tony Hirst

I'm a Senior Lecturer at The Open University, with an interest in #opendata policy and practice, as well as general web tinkering...

5 thoughts on “F1 Pit Stop Strategist (What I’d Like to See): Post Pitstop Re-entry Points”

  1. What must be more frustrating is that the data is available to the F1 timing app from the app store which gives real time track position display. I assume they pay for it though?

    I do find with that app I can do a pretty good job of calling when a pit window is reached – although, without access to the drivers feedback and other data it’s hard to call when they’ve used up a set of tyres and hence reached an optimum point (eg in today’s race, I could see Button staying out had got him a window but couldn’t understand why he was staying out until he out in quicker lap times than those who had switched to hard tyres. I could see he had effectively passed Webber as a result and was almost past Hamilton which was spot on when he re-joined the track :)

    1. Accelerometer data would help you see how well the tyres are working too. In fact you could build an understeer / oversteer algorithm just in case Ecclestone ever decides to let you have the data :)

      1. @James Agreed… I wonder how successful Mclaran feel their release of data has been this year, and whether they’d consider displaying more next year?

    2. @Nick It’s possible to grab the data feed that powers the F1 timing app on the web (though you need to use your F1 credentials to log in), but I suspect that F1 Admin would send a copyright takedown notice if you started doing anything with it… I still don’t really understand why there is such tight control over the data, and why they don’t open it up? Who knows, community developers might even come up with views and analyses that the teams would find useful?!

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