F1 Lap Time Heat Map by Race

About this chart

What it shows. Every lap of a race for every driver as a grid of coloured cells, so the whole race's pace can be seen at once. A second version applies a simple fuel correction so laps early and late in the race can be compared.

How to read it. Each row is a driver, in alphabetical order by driver code, and each column a lap, labelled every five laps. Dark red cells are the quickest laps, white cells are about 3.5% slower than the race's quickest, and blue cells are slower still; anything 7% or more off the quickest is the same dark blue. Blank cells are laps a driver did not complete. In the fuel-corrected chart, each lap has 3.3 seconds multiplied by the share of the race still to run taken off its time, as an estimate of the fuel effect.

What to look for. Vertical blue stripes across every row are safety car or VSC periods. A single blue cell in a driver's row is usually a pit stop, so you can read strategies from the grid. In the fuel-corrected version, a row that turns from red to white over a stint shows tyre wear, and a row that stays red shows a driver managing their tyres well.

Data and caveats. Race lap times from the Ergast-format results archive published by TracingInsights. No laps are removed, the fuel correction is a fixed straight-line estimate rather than real fuel data, and the colour scale is set by the race's quickest lap.