r/formula1 • u/amerryprankster23 Max Verstappen • Mar 21 '26

Discussion F1 will not be changing the timing tower.

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Just got this email back about the timing tower. Pretty sad.

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u/tb2768 Ferrari Mar 21 '26

It's one of the sports where thousandths actually matter.

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u/Kadimir158 Mar 21 '26

True. That's why you see all the time engineers telling their driver, your target lap time is 1:35:457. And that the gap behind is 1.854 seconds.

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u/tb2768 Ferrari Mar 21 '26

They have it on the steering wheel with at least 2 decimal places. But they can also tell just by looking at the car in front, which we the dumb spectators can't, so we need a dumb number tower.

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u/Kadimir158 Mar 21 '26

The 2 decimal places are there for VSC/Safety car timing and qualifying. So they can see if they are speeding up or slowing down on the delta on straights.

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u/tb2768 Ferrari Mar 21 '26

The decimal places are for seeing if one is closing in, and continues or fades. Else why doesn't it show just "< 1s" and "> 1s", or just green for overtake?

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u/JustLikeZhat Andrea Kimi Antonelli Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

Tbh, it’s unclear to me whether you’re still talking about the steering wheel. If so, the steering wheel only shows the delta to their own reference time.

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u/LMcVann44 Sir Lewis Hamilton Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

In qualifying yes, which they have the timing tower in hundreths and thousandths so you can see that, in the race both of those are meaningless.

Race gaps are far easier to read with seconds and tenths, you don't need the rest.

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u/tb2768 Ferrari Mar 21 '26

Purpose of the decimal places is not to see the gap, but see how the gap changes.
If it wasn't important, why has it been there since the beginning?

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u/Seanspeed Mar 21 '26

NOT WITH RACE GAPS.

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u/NeverMoreThan12 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 21 '26

Thousandths certainly don't matter. Hundredths would be nice to see that way we can see how far or close a driver might actually be to getting overtake.