F1 2011 Italy Race Summary Chart and Laptimes Heatmap

I was at the Bestival this weekend, so got a bit out of synch with F1 data tinkering...

Anyway, here's a couple of quick charts - a race summary chart:



(Red dot: grid position; black dot - final position; plus/horizontal tick mark - position at end of lap 1; vertical line - range of positions held during race.)

I saw the chart before looking at any f the data (I missed the race and all news about it). First impression from race summary chart - what on earth happened on the first lap?

And from the laptimes heat map:



Did the safety car come straight out?!

Note Webber's time in particular raises possible issues with the colouring I use on the heat map; his times were similar to everyone else's but he never got his times down to the times everyone who completed the race did. The chart shows this (sort of); but would it be better if the heat reflected the overall laptime (rather than - as it currently does - the log difference between each driver's lap time and his fastest lap?)

Here's what the heatmap function I use in R comes up with if I just plot the raw laptime:



This clearly shows the safety car coming out for the second and third laps. I think I need to get a better feel for how the heat map colouring works, and see if I can come up with better within column, or cross column, colour ranges? (It'd also be nice to be able to overplot purple laps?)

F1 2011 Belgium - Race Position Chart

So who had the most "interesting" race at Spa this year?

The following chart tries to provide an overview of key position related information from across the race as a whole. In particular, it identifies:

- grid positions;
- race positions at the end of the first lap;
- final race positions (before any changes by the stewards);
- the range of race positions taken by each driver throughout the race.



Key:

- red dot: grid position;

- black dot: final position

- horizontal tick mark: position at end of first lap

- vertical line: range of race positions

The chart was constructed with a view to providing journalists with a snapshot overview of the race as an aid to intifying which drivers might have an an "interesting" race: blog.ouseful.info/2011/08/03/data-driven-storytelling-wor...

So:

- what sorts of information can you pull out of this chart (please let me know in the comments...;-) For example, we can see Senna had a lousy start, Button's race went all over the place, Schumacher had an amazing start, (and Ricciardo fared quite well at the start too, as did Rosberg), and five cars did not finish (five missing black dots).

- how can the chart be improved?

PS Any ideas on new and "interesting" ways of displaying information about the pit stop activity?