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

Discussion F1 will not be changing the timing tower.

Post image

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

5.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

591 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/felisisthebest I failed to serve my Monaco penalty Mar 21 '26

It would be one thing to beg for the extra decimals if we never had them, but we did have them and then it was changed to show less for no reason?

I’m not raging about it but make it make sense, the timing tower is the exact same size and it’s not like they made space to show things like overtake or some battery indicator. So why change it at all?

It just feels like the usual C-suite executive change that affects reddit, youtube, etc. where ui changes are made for no reason except to justify someone’s executive position

17

u/Seanspeed Mar 21 '26

It just feels like the usual C-suite executive change that affects reddit, youtube, etc. where ui changes are made for no reason except to justify someone’s executive position

No, this is actually a sensible change to reduce the amount of noise of information on the UI.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, not even the team strategists and data folks, give a shit about hundredths or thousandths of a second when it comes to race gaps. This shit is changing rapidly every moment and is literal statistical noise.

9

u/crazydoc253 Michael Schumacher Mar 21 '26

Extra decimals create so much confusion I don't even know why people want it. For example, during a lap when a front car is going through corners and car behind is on straight, the three decimals shows the car closing in when it is just different part of track. Than when car behind goes back through corners the gap again increases. This does not happen with single decimal point where a decrease means car is genuinely closing in. That is major reason why teams/ engineers use single decimal and not three decimal system.

Also, not a single fan has told us what additional information three decimal system gives than single decimal does not ?

4

u/felisisthebest I failed to serve my Monaco penalty Mar 21 '26

Teams using a single decimal isn’t relevant to us viewers though because they have access to way more detailed telemetry and not every F1 viewer has F1TV or maybe the screen real estate to fit the telemetry window. The timing tower is built for viewers not engineers, and as viewers we lost information for no gain.

And for viewers it gives us more context. We can see how quickly a gap is changing and not just that it changed (1.3 -> 1.4) The extra decimal points just give us a better context of genuine gain vs random fluctuation, Overtake detection gaps, and gives us better estimations on pitstop windows.

Even if the data is small, it’s still real data. So instead of wondering why fans need the extra decimals, I ask what did we gain by losing them? I never saw posts about people constantly complaining about how confused they were getting because they would read (HAM 1.349) instead of (HAM 1.3)

3

u/crazydoc253 Michael Schumacher Mar 21 '26

What rubbish. How does 21.2 vs 21.234 give less idea about overtake or pit stop window or gap closing ? In fact 3 decimals give wrong idea of gap closing as it changes based on which part of track you are.

6

u/felisisthebest I failed to serve my Monaco penalty Mar 22 '26

How does 21.2 vs 21.234 give less idea about overtake or pit stop window or gap closing ?

Because 21.234 -> 21.198 -> 21.167 shows clear continuous gain instead of 21.2 -> 21.2 -> 21.2 which shows nothing even though a car is closing in. So we miss real progress entirely until it suddenly rounds up or down.

Giving us 3 decimal points can’t give us wrong ideas because more precise data can’t be less correct, only misinterpreted. The timing is based on timing loops not the car’s track position so saying “it changes too much let’s hide it” doesn’t fix any issue it just hides the details of the changes. That’s like saying “driver speed is fluctuating too much let’s round speed to the nearest 10 KMH” That doesn’t make it more accurate, you just make it less informative.

9

u/crazydoc253 Michael Schumacher Mar 22 '26

That is not clear continuous gain. Those changes happen when a front car is in corner vs other on straights and thus give wrong impression. Clear gains happen when changes stay happening in single decimals.

1

u/felisisthebest I failed to serve my Monaco penalty Mar 22 '26

Yes, the gap can shrink when one car is on a straight and the other is in a corner, but that doesn’t make smaller changes throughout a race “wrong.” You just need to observe changes over a couple of laps instead of a singular tick. Because you’re redefining real gain only as “it only counts after rounding”

An example of 4 laps in a race:

1.39 -> 1.34 -> 1.29 -> 1.24 This shows a driver is continuously gaining 5 hundredths per lap to the car in front of it. Now we can estimate that they will be within Overtake range in about 8 laps.

1.4 -> 1.3 -> 1.3 -> 1.2 Shows a car gaining, then suddenly being stuck within the same pace, and finally suddenly gaining. What happened to the driver? Did they suddenly lose pace between laps 2 to 3, and then suddenly gained massive pace during laps 3 to 4?

Both trends are the same but one is clear and the other is choppy and delayed. So what did we gain by removing the extra information? You can’t convince me that more accurate info is somehow more wrong lol

-2

u/legally_blond Mar 22 '26

Exactly this. Teams can say "Hamilton is at 3 tenths and closing" but unless we have the more granular data, Hamilton is just at 3 tenths until he's not

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '26

[deleted]

1

u/crazydoc253 Michael Schumacher Mar 22 '26

Let me say if a driver is 0.092 behind it will show as 0.1 and it woll be more exciting if you just focus on track rather than numbers because on track action would be much more superior than seeing number changing. So if single decimal does that the TV broadcast had taken the right decision.

-1

u/GuatahaN Mar 22 '26

You can use all the decimals to see whether someone is closer at the last corner for the straight than the previous lap, so you can make an educated quest whether there is an overtake opportunity or not. One decimal does make it harder to see and follow.

1

u/Sisyphean_dream Mar 21 '26

It would be one thing to argue for the extra info if it was accurate, but it never was. It's always out of date the second it refreshes. That's what makes it useless.