Hi all,

Some of you might remember me from 2021 and 2022, when I posted race analyses here as Towards F1 Analysis: telemetry comparisons, tyre deg charts and breakdowns of the strategy calls everyone argued about after the race. I also spent a lot of time writing tutorials on how to do so on my Medium page ("Towards F1 Analysis") - that was pre-AI, old-school handwritten code ;)

I loved doing it, and I loved the discussions it started even more. Then life got busy and I stopped.

This season I picked it up again, and this time properly. It's now a full website: Towards Race Analysis ( towardsraceanalysis.com ).

Why? I want F1 fans to get really in-depth insights, stories and coverage without the noise. Most coverage either sticks to "he was faster in sector 2" or comes with a narrative someone wants to sell. I want to show what the data actually says, explain how I got there and say where the data stops. No favourite team, no clickbait, and no annoying ads covering half the screen.

For every weekend there's:

• Fuel-corrected long runs from practice, checked against how well practice has predicted the race so far this season. So you know how much to trust Friday.
• What decided the race: the gap between drivers split into pit stops, tyres, pure pace and traffic.
• Strategy what-ifs, given as ranges. For example: "P3 if the overtake on lap 30 works, P5 if not." You won't get "X would have won", because the model can't know that, and I'd rather be honest about it.
• A race replay with a strategy call at every lap: replay any 2026 race and see when the undercut window opened, what the tyres were doing and which calls the model would have made
• Car physics: traction, braking, fast corners, and a "fingerprint" of each car's strengths and weaknesses
• Race previews with a predicted strategy, backtested on earlier rounds and scored again after every race, so you can see when I got it wrong
• Telemetry comparisons, per-weekend scorecards for teams and drivers, and a glossary that explains every metric in plain language.

Everything is built on the official timing and telemetry data and updates automatically during race weekends.

Check it out on towardsraceanalysis.com

Feedback? Tell me what you think, what's missing and where I'm wrong. Back in 2021–22 the best improvements came from people here pointing out things I'd missed ("you forgot the VSC on lap 31!"), and I'd like to work the same way again.

See you in Austin 🏁

(Fan project, not affiliated with Formula 1 or the FIA.)

When riding onboard with a driver, is the radio comms ever muted? Either intentionally by the team or otherwise? I am NOT talking about the broadcast choosing to air certain team radios or not.

There's bickering around whether Lewis was called in to pit during the VSC or not, because Fred says they did. But there's nothing on the onboard when you watch back. BUT, you can see the radio on the steering wheel go green. So was it just a technical error that it wasn't heard on the onboard feed? Or can teams actually selectively mute conversations?

EDIT: Asked and answered. It is in the regulations that teams cannot mute their radio comms:

Article C8.8.2 — Driver radio The relevant provision states: "All such communications must be open and accessible to both the FIA and broadcasters."

This appears under Section C, Article C8.8 (Driver radio), and remains in Issue 20 of the 2026 regulations.

It must have been a technical issue preventing the comms from being broadcasted.

I worked out how much kinetic energy the cars have to get rid of under braking on one lap, at every 2026 race so far.

Monaco surprised me a bit. It has the longest braking time of any track (23.2 s) but it's only 7th, because the cars are so much slower there and the energy goes with speed squared. Monza is the opposite: one of the highest top speeds of the year, but only 11.6 s of braking, so it ends up 11th.

Baku is top at 13.2 MJ a lap, about 65% more than Silverstone at the bottom (8.0 MJ). It has long braking zones and 330 km/h straights, so it gets both.

How I did it:

For each round I took every driver's fastest race lap from the raw FastF1 car data and used the median across drivers (18 to 22 laps per circuit).

Braking time is how long the brake flag is on. Energy shed is the kinetic energy lost while braking, ½·m·Δv², using the 768 kg minimum mass (FIA reg C4.1 is 724 kg plus tyres). There's some fuel in the car on top of that, so the real numbers would be a bit higher.

The numbers are what the car has to lose under braking. How much of that the MGU-K actually recovers isn't in public telemetry, so I didn't try to model it.

Hungary is left out because the car data for almost every fastest lap there is broken.

I built this with Fastlytics, a telemetry tool I'm working on. Happy to answer questions about the method.

EDIT: Should have mentioned this but I’m not looking for this years car designs, or even car designs in the last 20 years really. I’m focusing on the (more simple) cars of the 2000s and 90s

I'm starting a project within SolidWorks (a CAD/3D modeling software) so I can get my CSWA (Certified SolidWorks Associate) as well as a portfolio piece so I am making a scale model of an F1 car that I can then 3D print.

I am doing this as I want to work in F1 for my career so I think this will be a good showcase of my skills and passions to universities and future employers.

I need scale measurements of an F1 car that I can then base the model off of. But for the life of me I cannot find detailed enough blueprints with measurements so that I can make my design accurately. My teacher who is teaching SolidWorks and is a certified educator for it has some scale models of F1 cars that I can then take measurements from but I would prefer to take measurements from a diagram for better accuracy.

If anyone has or knows a place I can get free blueprints like that, it would be greatly appreciated

CdfA means Coefficient of downforce Area, otherwise referred to as -ClA or -ScZ

CdA means Coefficient of drag Area, otherwise referred to as ScX

CoP means Center of Pressure, otherwise referred to as aero balance

Fig.X (front ride height in mm, rear ride height in mm)

My conclusion from doing the aero map:

The aero package needs to be reworked to reduce the extreme Aerobalance and downforce sensitivity during dynamic scenarios. Forthis, a front wing with a greater ground clearance should beimplemented. To compensate the resulting downforce loss of thenew higher front wing would need to be larger (chord length). Thegreater ground clearance should make the front wing lesssusceptible to drastic downforce changes and underbody flowblockage during dynamic scenarios making the overall packagemuch more stable.​

Feel free to critique my conclusions or my methodology.

I’m a viewer more than a technical/car person but.. I was reading about the recent OpenAI Navier–Stokes result and am wondering what you guys here who actually understand CFD/aero make of it.

I know F1 teams already use CFD extensively (I played F1 Manager and had to manage my CFD time ha ha) and Navier–Stokes is basically at the heart of a lot of what they’re trying to simulate.

But.. does a mathematical breakthrough like this actually have any potential practical effect on F1?

I mean, could it eventually lead to better turbulence modelling, more accurate prediction of vortices/separation, more efficient CFD solvers, or getting more useful information out of the limited CFD resources teams are allowed under the regulations?

Or is this really a pure mathematics breakthrough with basically no direct relevance to the kind of RANS/LES CFD being used in motorsport?

I suppose my actual Q is can discoveries like this eventually filter down into better numerical methods or aero simulation for F1 or other types of Motorsport?

Thanks ❤️

David Coulthard talked about how drivers are told to drive offline to pick up rubber at the end up the race to ensure the cars make weight. I thought the cars were weighed with their wheels off specifically for this reason. I remember there was discussion about this at the end of Spa 2024 when Russell was DQed due to weight and people blamed it on not driving the whole track at the end, thus not being about to pick up rubber.

During the safety car evaluation laps on the Thursday of Spain, all the flag boards showed a white flashing 43. why?

Monza was always feared to be a laughing stock when it came to the 2026 power units. The expectation was horrific super clipping and downshifting on straights.

Obviously the cars were clipping at the end of straights as they do at most tracks this year, but it was nowhere near as bad as feared. Cars seemingly reliably held 300+ km/h right through the straights, kept in 8th gear, and still had enough juice for overtake mode where applicable.

I think back to some earlier races like Japan where the super clipping was wild, and this was nowhere near as bad. Did teams map out deployment intelligently, now they have more experience of the PUs?

With Lawson serving Hadjar's engine allocation penalty, what stops teams from switching chassis for a weekend when having to serve a grid drop.
For Example-
In the 2021 Turkish Grand Prix, Lewis could have took over Bottas'es car, and have Bottas serve the penalty, then have a almost new engine next weekend.
Same for Max Verstappen in 2025 Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

Ferrari and Mercedes have been offered boosts under ADUO. Mercedes will get an additional upgrade for 2026 and one for 2027, while Ferrari, Audi, and Honda will get 2 upgrades for 2026 and 2027, while RBPT Ford PU is still the benchmark and is deemed to be the most powerful on the grid.

Not to rant, but why is FIA deciding the ranking of PU, based on only ICE, not the entire hybrid system as a whole, because Mercedes arguably has the best package here? Isn't the point of 50-50 split was to have innovations of hybrid tech (although that would still be debatable). I understand that there are limits on deployment but nothing on ES, but clearly Mercedes have figured out something others haven't, shouldn't even RedBull get the chance to innovate here?

IMO, this regulation rule is clearly becoming less about equal power, and more about arguing who ICE is the weakest. What could RedBull's strategy from here on out, assuming they won't get any more ADUO upgrade slots for 2 years? Is aerodynamics their only hope or can they bring upgrades to electrical side of things, if they aren't counted under ADUO?

PS: I saw it on FIA's X handle, couldn't share the link, since the post got deleted.

I was just kinda thinking back to the grooved tire era (which I did not watch as I was a youngster lol), and had a thought. Those tires almost certainly gained contact area as they wore. But then wondered if tire temperature issues offset any benefits gained in contact area. I am sure if they did get faster, there had to have been a crossover point where they fell off.

Sorry for the ramble, I’m stoned. Did they get faster as they wore though? Up to a crossover point. Or did they just get progressively slower from the beginning like slicks?

As we all know, every car is limited in how many PU components it can use each year without incurring a penalty. How is that going to work with ADUO?

I assume the engine manufacturers will be creating power units that have fundamental, internal differences, so the teams won't continue to use the same PU components.

Do the PU allotments reset after ADUO? Or will teams have to choose when to take an ADUO component as part of their regular allotment?

Looking at photos of the 499P (2027 version) reminded me that prior to 2017, sidepods on LMP cars generally weren't visible from top-down view. Then, suddenly in 2017, the sidepods of TS050, 919, and R18 (which never raced) shifted to a design resembling the front section of Formula 1 sidepods; the R18 and TS050 even adopted the "coke-bottle" shape, a trend that persists today.

I looked up more photos and noticed that the intakes on early 2010s cars like the R18 and 908 don't seem significantly different from those on modern LMDh&LMP cars; rather, it appears they were intentionally coverd by bodywork, only the front diffuser outlet's turning vanes visible from the side and above.

Was this a regulatory requirement? Or are there specific aerodynamic advantages that lead manufacturers like Ferrari(until 2026) BMW Alpine to use hidden sidepod intakes instead of the exaggerated "Formula-style" intakes seen on the Porsche 963?