← Sabah Rahman
@ L12 PROJECTED CLIFF FORECAST
For fun · F1 strategy tool · 2026

Pit Wall

Race engineer's decision surface. Forecasts when tyres fall off, when undercut windows open, and which call a strategist would make in the next eight laps — derived from FastF1 telemetry, packaged into a cockpit a non-engineer can read in three seconds.

Three-column cockpit · Context · Data · Forecast — race-time read in 3 seconds
Live forecast layer · projected cliff laps + undercut windows from observed laps only
FastF1 community palette · warm-dark engineering aesthetic, not SaaS dashboard
Sample data ships in-page · scrub the slider below to play the race forward
▟ PIT WALL
DATA: SAMPLE
representative — not live timing
@ LAP /
1 · Contextwhere we are
2 · Datawhat's happening
3 · Forecastthe call · wedge
↓ Dig in · debrief view · pace chart, track map, corner fit, telemetry, qualifying read
Race · stints, pace & forecast
lap time (s) per lap · lower is faster · forecast extension dashed · safety-car laps spike
Where the gap is won & lost · qualifying
Driver A faster Driver B faster
Hover the speed trace to scrub the lap.
Driver–car fit · by corner family
Hot-lap telemetry · overlaid
A B — speed (km/h) · throttle · brake · running gap below
Qualifying · setup read
DESIGN RATIONALE · why this looks the way it does

PAGE FLOW · CONTEXT → DATA → DECISION

Real pit-wall flow isn't "recommendation up top, evidence below." A team principal won't trust a call they haven't already half-formed in their head from the data. The page reads top-down as: where am I (status strip) → what's the evidence (race pace, stints, qualifying read) → what's the call (the hero card at the bottom). The recommendation lands as confirmation, not ambush.

COLOR · THREE SEMANTIC CHANNELS, NO OVERLAP

Each channel serves one purpose so the eye learns the mapping after one card. Hue separation matters most for the two drivers — they share the same panel and overlay each other on every chart.

Qualitative · entitiesTeal ↔ indigo for the drivers. Mercedes brand teal stays teal; Red Bull's brand blue shifts to indigo because pure cobalt and teal occupy the same hue lane and read as one color when overlaid.
Sequential · urgencyRed → amber → faint gray. PIT > WATCH > PREP. Lightness and hue ramp together so colorblind viewers still see the gradient.
Neutral · contextMute gray for "no winner" segments, ghosted forecast paths, dim labels. Anything that isn't an emphasised signal.
One amber, not twoSlider thumb, event markers, mid-urgency cards, verdict highlight — all share one warm hue. The rule is "no two same-hue colors with different meanings."

LIGHT + DARK · BOTH SHIP

Dark mode wins on saturation-heavy displays in dim rooms (Bloomberg, mission control). Light mode wins on sustained reading of dense prose — relevant for the recommendation "why" lines. The toggle persists via localStorage. Driver brand colors blend 45% toward black in light mode because the bright teal that pops on near-black washes out on near-white. The HARD-tyre swatch flips from FIA-white to dark gray on white backgrounds for the same reason.

ONE DOMINANT CALL · NOT THREE EQUAL CARDS

The Decision Queue sorts by urgency. The #1 item gets the hero treatment — large title, dominant accent border, max contrast. The rest stack under "Next up" with smaller cards. Three equal-sized cards force the user to read all three; one hero delivers the answer in a single glance, with secondary calls available without competing for attention.

WHAT THIS PRODUCT REFUSED TO DO

No rainbowColor earns its meaning. Most things are gray; vivid hues are reserved for signal.
No red/green for driversColorblind-hostile. The two main entities are always teal ↔ indigo.
No marketing copy above the foldThe product describes itself. The pitch lives in the methodology block below.
No alerts for noiseDecision cards only fire when the underlying math crosses a real threshold — undercut window opens only when stint timing makes it strategically real, cliff alerts only when projected degradation crosses +1.5s of stint baseline.

HOW THIS WORKS & WHAT'S REAL

Most tools show you what happened on a lap. This one explains why a car–driver pairing is fast or slow — the corner families a setup rewards, where the lap time actually lives, and what to do about it. Built to be read in 30 seconds by someone who has to make a call.

This page is currently showing representative sample data for a Hamilton (Mercedes) vs Verstappen (Red Bull) style head-to-head — generated to demonstrate the product, not real timing data. Nothing here should be read as actual F1 telemetry yet.

To load the genuine article, run the included pipeline on your own machine (where the F1 timing API is reachable) and drop the result next to this file:

pip install fastf1  →  python fetch_race_data.py --year 2021 --gp "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix" --a HAM --b VER

That writes race_data.json. Reload this page (served over http, or locally via python -m http.server) and the badge flips to LIVE, every panel re-renders from the real lap. Corner pace, the track delta map, and the fit profile are computed directly from telemetry; the written verdict is a transparent heuristic over those measured deltas — labelled as inference, never dressed up as fact.

PIT WALL · decision surface · demo build data via FastF1 (when live) · © 2026 Sabah Rahman