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Plain-English explainers for the terms you'll encounter when reading F1 telemetry, strategy, and timing data. Each entry links to where you can see it live in the RacePace Analytics dashboard.
The undercut is a pit-stop tactic where a driver stops before the car ahead, uses the instant pace of fresh tyres to set faster laps, and emerges in front once the rival finally stops.
A speed trace is a line chart of a car's speed across one lap, plotted against distance around the track — the single most useful telemetry chart for seeing exactly where one driver is quicker than another.
The delta is the cumulative time gap between two drivers at each point of the lap — positive means you're losing time, negative means you're gaining.
Tyre degradation is the loss of performance over a stint — the gap between a fresh tyre's pace and what the same compound delivers twenty or thirty laps later.
DRS is a moveable rear-wing flap that opens on designated straights when a driver is within one second of the car ahead, reducing aerodynamic drag and increasing top speed by up to 12–15 km/h.
A stint is the period a driver runs on one set of tyres, from when they exit the pit lane to when they enter it again — or from the race start to the first stop.
A lap is divided into three sectors — timed checkpoints at roughly a third of the way around the circuit. Personal-best sector times in purple, overall-best in magenta; the combination reveals where each driver is quick and where they lose time.
Dirty air is the turbulent, disturbed airflow behind a fast-moving F1 car that reduces the downforce of the car following it — making it harder to corner quickly and increasing tyre wear.
Lifting off the throttle and coasting before the braking point to save fuel and reduce tyre temperatures — a race management technique invisible to the naked eye but clearly visible on the throttle trace.
The 'closed park' — the period after qualifying and during the race when teams cannot make significant changes to the car without taking a penalty, locking in the setup chosen before the session.
The optimal path around a circuit — usually wide-in, apex, wide-out — that minimises the distance through each corner and maintains the highest possible minimum speed.
The fastest lap is the single quickest complete lap recorded; the fastest sector is the best time through any one-third segment across any lap. The theoretical best lap combines the fastest of each sector and is almost always faster than any real lap.