F1 2012 United States Grand Prix Third Practice Summary

Sketches around P3 of the 2012 Formula One United States Grand Prix...

First, how to the deltas for each driver's best sector time compared to the best overall sector time stack up? Drivers are ranked by session classification, so we see that Button is out of position. WHilst he pulled in some good sector times, presumably he couldn't hook them up together?

If we look at the delta between best lap time and ultimate laptime, we should therefore see that BUT is way off...

...as indeed he is..

If we look at the ultimate vs. personal best laptime, we should see BUT out of postion - we can get a feel for the ultimate laptime ranking by look at how drivers are ordered along the y-axis:

 This is a little cluttered - let's zoom in:

Now we see that if drivers drove their ultimate laps, BUT would have moved up three positions.

How does each driver fare by sector? 

If we order by driver number, we can get a feel for how each driver fared as well as team behaviour:

One thing that jumps out for me in this chart is how much time can be lost in sector 2? The Red Bulls seem to be nailing it in sector 3 compared to everyone else?

If we compare sector rankings with overall classifications, we can get a feel for drivers who are particularly quick - or slow - in a sector:

So in sector 1, GRO is fast, and HUL slow. BUT is up in sector, wheres WEB is down. In sector 3, WEB picks up places, as does RAI, but MAL seems to be slow?

How do the deltas compare in each sector (delta from fastes sector time)? Again, lets order by overall classification so we can see folk who are out of sorts:

So in sector 1, we see HUL is slow and GRO picks up time. Sector 2 is all over the place, but WEB's bad time stands out. Similarly, in sector 3 we see MAL mess up, but RAI makes up time.

If we view the same sort of chart order by sector ranking, we can get a better feel for whether there are any breaks in the team performances, as well as as whether any sectors present any particular problems to any given team (you need to know driver pairings to detect team patterns though...)

Looks like sector 2 spreads them out...

By the by, how do speeds compare?

Red Bulls are *slow*, aren't they?

Does there appear to be any relationship between speed and ultimate laptime?

How about speed and overall classification?

Can we spot any relationships between speed and sector times?

Maybe we'll see something if we group the driver's deltas and plot them against speed?

Hmmm... I'm not convinced I can easily spot any patterns there...? Thought I'm not totally sure what to look for... (That is, this view may not be meaningful at all;-)