PitWall Devlog 2 — Charts and Visualization

Spent this week visualising the data itself and turning it into interactive charts.

What I built

chart_race_pace shows a driver’s lap times across the entire race with each stint colored by tire compound. Pit laps are shown as grey X markers so you can see the inlaps and outlaps.

chart_head_to_head overlays two drivers’ pace on the same chart using their official team colors pulled directly from the session data. When comparing teammates who share a color, one line becomes dashed automatically.

chart_consistency compares multiple drivers’ consistency scores as bars. A lower score means that the driver is more consistent.

chart_quali_comparison breaks down each driver’s best qualifying lap into the three sectors side by side, instantly shows where one driver gained or lost time compared to another.

chart_position_change tracks each driver’s position lap by lap through the race, starting from their actual grid position as lap 0 so position gains and losses are accurate.

Problems I hit

The position chart was showing drivers starting from the wrong position because FastF1 doesn’t always record lap 1 position data cleanly. Fixed it by pulling the grid position directly from the session info and showing it as lap 0.

The teammate color logic also had to be rethought twice before landing on a simple used_colors list approach that works cleanly.