Visualising Vodafone Mclaren F1 Telemetry Data in Gephi

Last year, I popped up an occasional series of posts visualising captures of the telemetry data that was being streamed by the Vodoafone McLaren F1 team (F1 Data Junkie).

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the data this year, but being a lazy sort, it struck me that I should be able to visualise the data using Gephi (using in particular the geo layout that lets you specify which node attributes should be used as x and y co-ordinates when placing the nodes.

Taking a race worth of data, and visualising each node as follows (size as throttle value, colour as brake) we get something like this:

(Note that the resolution of the data is 1Hz, which explains the gaps…)

It’s possible to filter the data to show only a lap’s worth:

We could also filter out the data to only show points where the throttle value is above a certain value, or the lateral acceleration (“G-force”) and so on… or a combination of things (points where throttle and brake are applied, for example). I’ll maybe post examples of these using data from this year’s races…. err..?;-)

For now though, here’s a little video tour of Gephi in action on the data:

What I’d like to be able to do is animate this so I could look at each lap in turn, or maybe even animate an onion skin of the “current” point and a couple of previous ones) but that’s a bit beyond me… (for now….?!;-) If you know how, maybe we should talk?!:-)

[Thanks to McLaren F1 for streaming this data. Data was captured from the McLaren F1 website in 2010. I believe the speed, throttle and brake data were sponsored by Vodafone.]

PS If McLaren would like to give me some slightly higher resolution data, maybe from an old car on a test circuit, I’ll see what I can do with it… Similarly, any other motor racing teams in any other formula who have data they’d like to share, I’m happy to have a play… I’m hoping to go to a few of the BTCC races this year, so I’d particularly like to hear from anyone from any of those teams, or teams in the supporting races:-) If a Ginetta Junior team is up for it, we might even be able to get an education/outreach thing going into school maths, science, design and engineering clubs…;-)