2025 British GP: Race pace

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Race pace

The main idea of these charts is to show the representative average race pace of each driver. Since plotting the raw data will not show accurate information, I did a bit of data pre-processing. Click on the “expand methodology” button if you want to know more about how the data was analyzed.

Click to expand methodology

I removed the laps that were not raced under green or yellow flag conditions. This means that laps raced under Virtual Safety Car (VSC) or full Safety Car (SC) conditions were removed from the analysis.
The first lap is not consistent with the rest of the laps so it was removed from the analysis. Finally, laps in which a driver entered or left the pits are not “full laps”, so they were removed from the analysis as well.
If laps were done with the intermediate or wet tires, then they were considered for this analysis.
The box represents a modified box plot, with the line in the middle representing the mean (average) time done by each driver. The top and bottom lines respectively represent the 75% percentile and the 25% percentile.
The colors behind the box represent quantiles. There are 4 colours for each driver, with each colour representing a specific quantile. Quantiles with lighter colours include the fastest laps, while quantiles with darker colours include the slowest laps.
The jitter in the x-axis is mainly used to separate stints for each driver.
For example, if a driver stopped only once for new tires, then he had 2 stints during the race. Laps of the first stint will be aligned slightly more to the left side, while laps of the second stint will be aligned slightly more to the right.
Within each stint, the x-axis doesn’t represent anything. The points are jittered just to separate them and allow you to have a better view of each lap.
The scales are NOT necessarily the same for the fastest 10 and slowest 10 charts. I do this just to allow the package to separate the dots better and allow you to see each individual lap. For a fully representative chart of the data take a look at the 3rd chart (All drivers plot).
Finally, the column on the right side shows the percentage of laps done by each team in a 0.250 seconds bin. If you see for example a lot of red toward the bottom of the column, then it means that most of those laps in that time range were done by Ferrari.
Scenario: A Ferrari driver had the fastest lap of the race. It was a 1:20.300. That lap falls within the 1:20.250 to 1:20.500 bin. In that case, you would expect to see a fully red row on the column.
If another driver from another team—let’s say Red Bull—had done for example a lap with a time of 1:20.350, then then you would expect the row in that column to look half red and half blue.

This was a very difficult race to analyze. With so many virtual and safety cars, race control goes wild sending track status information.

Experimental feature: Added traffic data

Drivers are flagged as “in traffic” if they spend more than 33% of the lap (~1/3) within 2 seconds of any driver ahead (including backmarkers).

Still in testing so inaccuracies are possible.

Race pace: Top 10 drivers Race pace: Bottom 10 drivers

Remember Drivers with more pit stops tend to have faster average times than drivers with fewer pit stops.

Race pace: All drivers

The next plot is interactive. Click on the toolbar on the top, left side of the plot to zoom in and scroll. Hover with the mouse over the data points to get additional information.

This chart is better visualized on a computer. To get additional information on a point while using a mobile device, click and hold the desired data point to get the proper tooltip displayed.

Summarized race pace

This chart shows the same information as the previous chart, but in a summarized way. I’m not a huge fan of the traditional plain bar charts, so I created this chart which shows the same information and a little bit more.

The chart looks pretty funky, but you can read it like this:

The number on the right side shows the average lap time for each driver.
This number corresponds to the big dot that is showed in each of the bars.
Each bar is divided by all the laps done by each driver. This is another way of showing the distribution instead of just the average (like a typical bar chart would do).
Longer “mini-bars” show laps in which a particular driver had a slower lap time. Shorter “mini-bars” represent laps in which a driver had a faster lap time.
If a driver’s name is red-colored, that means that the driver completed less than 70% of the race distance.

Summarized race pace

Race laps… all of them

I’ve removed this chart because it takes quite a bit of time to generate and I don’t think anybody was looking at it. If you liked this chart and want me to bring it back, hit me up using the Get in touch link.

Laps in traffic

These are two new additions to the site. The first chart, taps in traffic, shows the percentage of each lap that a driver spent in traffic. The second chart, % of time spent in traffic, shows a summary of the total time a driver spent in traffic during a race. Both of these charts include backmarkers, which is how it should be done since backmarkers can have a big impact on the final results of a race.

It’s important to note that the % of Time Spent in Traffic chart doesn’t include laps completed under safety car (SC) or virtual safety car (VSC) conditions.

Laps in traffic % of time spent in traffic

Race pace delta

Similar to what I did with my latest quali post, I am now adding a new chart which shows the race pace deltas between all the drivers.

You can read the chart like this:

Choose a driver from the left side of the plot (y-axis)
Choose a second driver from the bottom of the plot (x-axis)
See where they intersect. The number that you see is the delta for their mean/average race pace.
If you see negative numbers then that means that the driver on the left side was faster than the driver he’s being compared to.
If you see positive numbers then that means that the driver on the left side was slower than the driver he’s being compared to.

The chart includes drivers that retired during the race.

Race pace delta