Here’s a new feature on the site which you should be seeing more of in the future.
I’ve had some great feedback on the post-race analysis charts including one suggestion from Nick Someone on how we could make them more interactive and useful.
Here’s my first attempt at implementing it. The graph below is the race chart for the Malaysian Grand Prix, showing how far away from the leader each car was on each lap.
You can hover over the lines to get the full data for each lap. You can also toggle different lines on and off and if you switch off the lines for the slowest cars the vertical axis shrinks so you can see the leaders’ progress in greater detail:
I plan to have a more polished version of the charts ready for the Chinese Grand Prix analysis features, including a full-screen version.
If you have any thoughts on how else I could improve this feature, let me know in the comments. Thanks again to Nick for the idea and also to Rich for helping me with the Javascript.
US_Peter
9th April 2010, 0:02
WOW! That’s really slick and very useful for comparing drivers! Great job Keith!
TommyC
9th April 2010, 1:22
i think ‘wow’ was the first word that came to mind for me. that’s just awesome keith.
SeattleChris
12th April 2010, 18:43
Syc! That’s pretty badacular Keith! I was with the other few dummies that had a hard time with the squares and triangles system so this is really great!
ColoradoF1
13th April 2010, 9:09
Very nice! Thank you! If I had to suggest one change, it would be that we all could manipulate the axes. For example, I could shorten the length between 100 & 200 seconds, and lengthen the length between 1 and 20 seconds.
Dj xo2
9th April 2010, 0:06
Cool !!! every day this site gets better and better
Cheers
lukeaa
9th April 2010, 0:07
Me likey, can see myself staring at these charts for hours after the race!
This Guy
9th April 2010, 0:23
Seriously amazing. It really is interesting to be able to compare times like this.
MPJ1994
9th April 2010, 0:32
Great job Keith, although would it be possible to either use a different colour for team mates or perhaps make one line thicker than the other. At the moment if you want to compare team mates, its hard to do so because the lines are identical and its hard to tell them apart.
mfDB
9th April 2010, 14:32
What about a dashed line and a solid line of the same color for each team to separate the teammates?
IDR
9th April 2010, 20:30
Yes, despite the first thing one can say is Excellent!, would be great if you can find a solution for the colors of team mates.
………………. Driver 1
____________ Driver 2
sodhal
9th April 2010, 0:52
Yes, I agree. It’s tough telling teammates apart.
epi
9th April 2010, 1:14
This is really good.
You can click and drag over a time period and it zooms on that area too.
AutoCritical
9th April 2010, 1:38
Hey this is pretty cool, I think it’ll be good to be able to zoom into areas that seem a bit tight.
Will compliment nicely with this other tool I’m sure some of you have already heard about: http://www.visionf1.com/
I love watching it in a faster speed to see how the concertina effect works with traffic etc.
Enigma
9th April 2010, 5:36
It’s not very realistic though. The dots of the drivers just move based on their lap times, but they should by some GPS tracking system…
AutoCritical
9th April 2010, 1:39
oops sorry, just figured out the zoom in bit! my bad!
tilarama
9th April 2010, 1:40
very very COOL Keith!! :D Superb!
Ace
9th April 2010, 1:49
Absolutely fantastic Keith. I hope this website makes you a very rich man ;-) You deserve it for all your effort and the wonderful service you provide us fans.
My thoughts… I agree with the comments about different colours for teammates.
I also think it’d be great to have a ‘clear all’ and ‘select all’ option for the drivers so if I wanted to compare two drivers i don’t have to uncheck 22 times!
Cheers, and keep up the exceptional work!
mfDB
9th April 2010, 14:34
Ace, I was going to say the same thing about the “select all” and the “un-select all” feature.
I think the teammates should be the same color with a dotted line and a solid line.
wasiF1
9th April 2010, 1:53
Awesome stuff, well is there anything left in your bag?
tilarama
9th April 2010, 1:56
very very COOL, Keith… :D Superb…
LC Coelho
9th April 2010, 2:07
Very nice! Congrats!!
Alpinestar
9th April 2010, 2:31
It may just be me, but I cannot see the majority of the graph or driver names. It’s odd because I only have this problem when I’m browsing using Firefox, but Google Chrome doesn’t have this issue. I found this was a minor issue also with the non-youtube videos on this site.
Do any other Firefox users have this problem?
Ace
9th April 2010, 9:57
No problems for me with Firefox. Maybe try updating/reinstalling Flash?
wasiF1
9th April 2010, 10:30
No trouble for me in firefox.
IDR
9th April 2010, 20:32
No Firefox problems and no Safari problems also. (Mac user)
sato113
9th April 2010, 2:59
very useful. compare ROS and VET and we see that ROS never really put any pressure on him at all…
Mike
9th April 2010, 4:07
You are a god! , my comp internet connection combination means I have some lag, but they are still useable…
José Baudaier
9th April 2010, 4:47
Very nice indeed, hope next race all chart have this feature.
Kirk
9th April 2010, 5:33
Very cool; how about you flip the chart around the horiztonal axis, so that the leading driver is the top line?
GeeMac
9th April 2010, 6:51
This is a fantastic service!
Travis
9th April 2010, 6:55
Keith ‘Chart Master’ Collantine
Einar AI
9th April 2010, 8:24
Fantastic work. Two suggestions though.
1) As some have mentioned above, it is difficult to tell team-mates apart. Maybe a pointed line for one of them?
2) It is rather annoying to switch 22 cars off when we just want to compare two team-mates (or 2 random drivers, for that matter). It’d be super useful if we had “switch everyone on/off” button at the bottom of the graph.
ajokay
9th April 2010, 8:39
Way to ruin the graph scale, Heikki!
Other than that, another lovely addition to the site!
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
9th April 2010, 8:49
Ah but you see, you can switch him off now!
PeterG
9th April 2010, 9:11
Hmmm this makes me curious. Don’t have flash at work so have to wait till I get home to see this.
maciek
9th April 2010, 9:24
Dang! Fan-tas-tic.
lightmas
9th April 2010, 9:48
thats very cool….brilliant
Cranberry
9th April 2010, 9:48
When comparing teammates you can hold mouse cursor over one of the driver’s name, making them easily distinguishable.
Awesome feature on a aweome site, now we need some impartiality in the articles…
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
9th April 2010, 11:21
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”
John Lydgate
Simon
12th April 2010, 8:13
There’s plenty of impartial coverage elsewhere if that’s what you’re after. I like the fact that you get a feeling for Keith’s personal views through the site; it adds to the appeal (in my view!).
And the charts are indeed awesome!
Miguel
9th April 2010, 9:49
The graphic is great. I have a suggestion though: Instead of comparing each driver to the leader, it’s better to compare *all* drivers to a ‘virtual’ driver. Imagine this virtual driver as one that completes the race in the exact same time as the race winner, but with all the lap times equal.
I regularly build an excel file with these kind of graphics, and by comparing all drivers with this ‘virtual’ driver, we can see in the graph not only the differences between drivers but also the pace throughout the race.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
9th April 2010, 11:15
I do already offer that in the post-race analysis articles:
How Hamilton and Massa raced to the front (Malaysian Grand Prix analysis) (second chart from bottom)
However for every one person who finds it more intuitive there tend to be ten who find it confusing.
I may do an interactive version of it but I have to be honest and say it’s not top of my priorities.
PJA
9th April 2010, 10:19
A great addition to the race analyse, they defiantly live up to their name of ‘funky new interactive charts’.
Ino
9th April 2010, 10:28
The idea looks brilliant but you might want to look into how it’s displayed on smaller screens.
This is how it looks on my 9″ netbook
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/4066/f1f1anaticchart.png
:s
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
9th April 2010, 10:36
Which browser is that?
Ino
9th April 2010, 10:38
Ah yes, it’s in Firefox 3.5.3!
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
9th April 2010, 11:16
I’m struggling to re-create the problem. What screen resolution?
Ino
9th April 2010, 12:59
Screen resolution is 1024×600
Sorry Keith, I haven’t got another browser on the netbook to check.
Let me know if you need any more details.
sato113
10th April 2010, 23:07
all you have to do is zoom out on firefox to make the graph fit.
(VIEW—>ZOOM—>zoom out) or Ctrl+ –
Sumedh
9th April 2010, 10:31
Cool stuff! Love it.
Just 1 more suggestion, right now I have to manually turn off every driver’s line in order to compare just 1 driver with the race leader. It would be good to have a button to turn off the entire grid on and off.
GektorS
9th April 2010, 10:44
Just fantastic!!!
It is my first post but definitely if I have to post once this is a very good chance to do it.
Keith I really much appreciate your effort with this web page for being so imaginative. Great info and entertainment.
Cheers from just another F1 fanatic.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
9th April 2010, 11:16
You’re welcome :-) and thanks to everyone else for the encouragement.
chris
10th April 2010, 23:17
if only Bernie would listen to the suggestions on this site as much as you do to your readers…
great stuff Keith!
Enigma
9th April 2010, 10:54
More and more graph and stats and everything on this site, I don’t think I’ll have to pay for FORIX anymore!
Josh
9th April 2010, 11:12
That is pretty cool!!! I like it alot!
Spud
9th April 2010, 11:24
That is brilliant.
You’re a talented man Keith. Brtilliant work.
bob
9th April 2010, 11:47
This is future of GP analysis :) Thx Keith
Younger Hamilton
9th April 2010, 12:11
Fantastic Work Keith and whoever came up with that idea,This is the Future GP Analysis for sure and i just recently looked at how far Lewis was from the leading red bulls and it tells which lap he pitted on and how close and far he was from and on the leaders
MajorMilou
9th April 2010, 13:12
This is just awesome…
LeRoy
9th April 2010, 14:01
Keith, this is awesome! There’s always going to be a ‘Heikki’ that screws up the scale, so maybe a break in increments would help that?
Your statistics, graphs, and analysis make this site my #1!
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
9th April 2010, 14:07
Thanks LeRoy – Click on Kovalainen’s name to turn off the line and the scale changes automatically.
LeRoy
9th April 2010, 16:41
Too easy… great stuff!!
f1wired
9th April 2010, 14:28
I like the concept! It gets a bit messy though with all of the drivers showing as default. How about starting with the top 10 drivers toggled on, and the rest toggled off?. It might make it a little clearer. In terms of workload – why not use Ergast’s excellent F1 API to update the charts for you? Less work!!! http://ergast.com
Fer no.65
9th April 2010, 14:31
EPIC WIN HERE!…
superb Keith!
Fer no.65
9th April 2010, 14:32
maybe you could start with only the top 10 toggled on tho?…
Hallard
9th April 2010, 14:42
Keith, this freaking rocks.
Patrickl
9th April 2010, 16:20
Keith, that’s just great. A deselect all (as suggest already) would be nice, but other than that it’s great.
Maybe it’s a bit hard to detect which driver is which. Can the lines be made clickable like in the lap charts on formula.com live timing?
Personally I like the “average laptime” charts better, but they can be more difficult to read too. Especially with the dropping lap times.
I was experimenting with an “adaptive median laptime” chart myself. I scale the laptimes towards a smoothed median laptime for each lap of the race. That way you can see who’s faster than the current pace at the moment. That should overcome dropping laptimes, safetycar situations, lap time changes due to rain and such.
Alex-Malta
9th April 2010, 17:38
keep it up mate it’s great
Dave
9th April 2010, 19:03
Wow! Absolutely brilliant.
Hairs
9th April 2010, 20:27
That’s a great feature – what it’s good at showing is how important tyres really are this year. Button said after the race that he couldn’t find a balance on the soft tyre, and you can really see that on the graph as his times dropped off compared to the other cars that later in the race he was pretty much matching on pace. I think Phil Prue said before the season began that Lewis and Jenson have totally different tyre wear patterns but that one isn’t necessarily kinder on the tyres than the other. Button apparently puts a lot of lateral load on the tyre due to the speed he carries into the corners, and perhaps that’s why on the softer tyres and the inters, he is scrubbing them to bits – the soft compound is apparently softer this year than last year. However, his race was lost mainly because of his longer pitstop than Hamilton and his failure to make headway when he had fresh rubber on the primes at the start of the race.
Last time the early pitstop made his race, this time it killed it. All from a graph! I feel like a race engineer!
ajokay
9th April 2010, 22:52
Ahh, there’s the other problem: “you need to update your Flash Player”, but I’m on an iPhone, so I can’t. At least I’m never very far from a PC.
chris
10th April 2010, 23:28
how do i get the chart on full screen?
JMExp
11th April 2010, 10:19
i have been following the site for a few months now. i have to say Keith, your dedication is fantastic. i love that so much passion goes into the site. keep it up!
three4three
11th April 2010, 22:24
Wow that’s just fantastic!! Great new feature, funky indeed, thanks!
Chaz
12th April 2010, 17:31
great stuff, cool beans…
Primo de Anónimo
12th April 2010, 19:03
Dear Sir,
The interactive chart is additive, more than the PS3
BasCB
12th April 2010, 21:43
It took me a few seconds to understand what it does, but it is great for comparing drivers. A tool for the fanatic!
You just keep improving the site. I really like the guest writers articles as well.
Looking forward to the next GP.