2020 Portuguese GP: Race – Fastest per micro-sector

Let’s take a look at the interactive map of the race of the 2020 Portuguese GP that shows the fastest driver in each one of my self-made micro-sectors.

Brief notice

If you hover over the micro-sectors (or click them if you’re using a mobile device), you will get additional information. In this case, the average speed (shown in km/h) of each driver over the course of the race is presented to you.

If you want to download or share a static image, you can either a) hover over the chart and click on the “download png” link that appears at the top right corner of the chart or b) click here.

Methodology

I started by obtaining data from the “telemetry” provided by the Formula 1 live app. The data contains information about the speed and position of each driver from the entirety of the session. I then decided to divide the track into 100 micro-sectors, each of about 100th of the length of the track.

After getting this data, I made a spatial analysis to classify each of the data points provided by the timing app into the just created micro-sectors. This meant that I would get the information from all 66 laps divided by micro-sector.

To get meaningful information, I ran an analysis to remove speeds that were considered as anomalies.This means that I removed laps where the safety car was deployed or laps when the virtual safety car (VSC) was activated.

For the next step, I grouped the data by micro-sector and calculated the average speed achieved by each driver in that micro-sector. This means that the number that you see is the average speed done by each driver over all the laps of the race.

Finally, I created a simple interactive chart that allows you to explore the resulting data.

Final remarks

Free to send me any questions that you may have regarding this chart. If you want to see a specific analysis just let me know. With enough time, I may be able to run your analysis.

I hope that you have enjoyed this chart which I feel provides some exciting information. If you did, please share it with your friends and let me know what you think in the comments below.