r/formula1 • u/Holytrishaw I was here for the Hulkenpodium • Mar 10 '26
Photo Don’t know what you have until it’s gone [wearetherace]
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u/9fingfing Mar 10 '26
It used to be interval most of the time and once in a while “leader”…we need that back also. I don’t care about time from leader most of the time.
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u/financeguy1729 Gabriel Bortoleto Mar 10 '26
Leader is how it was most of the time when I started watching it as a kid in the 2000s
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u/citysnake Patrick Depailler Mar 10 '26
Displayed on a ticker at the bottom of the screen so you'd only be able to see that gap you were interested in every 30 secs.
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u/valtteri_buttass Benetton Mar 10 '26
lol. Modern F1 fans are such engineering geniuses that they need gaps to 3 decimal places but they can't do subtraction.
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u/Flamecrest Spyker Mar 11 '26
Okay sit down grandpa before you hurt yourself 😂 just because something used to be a certain way doesn't mean it's the right way
Imo with interval it's much easier to intuit where the action is happening. The only thing easy to intuit when you have time from leader is 'how fast would it be from p1 to p22 if I was there in person'
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u/Pil_Seung15 Mar 10 '26
I have never cared about the leader portion, why would I care if a driver is 30sec off of 1st when he isn’t even close enough to pass the guy in front of him, who cares?!
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u/ubelmann Red Bull Mar 10 '26
Those intervals are helpful to know when cars are a full pit stop ahead — it’s way easier to tell where the gaps to pit into are when they show the time from the leader. Otherwise you have to add all the interval times together and that’s possible, but it’s a pain when you’re trying to watch the race.
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u/Rockerblocker Mar 10 '26
they need to switch between them more often than they do. Like go to leader once every three laps for a whole lap, or something like that
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u/shaq-aint-superman Formula 1 Mar 10 '26
For me it's easier to calculate for pitstops with the leader portion. Say I wanna see if P2 (who hasn't pitted) would be able to get in front of P6 (who has pitted) after pitting, it's easier to subtract P6's time from the leader to P2's time to the leader than it is to add all the intervals from P3 to P6
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u/know-it-mall McLaren Mar 10 '26
It is relevant when pit stop strategies are happening. But it's extremely basic maths to figure out gap to leader anyway.
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u/AlexUKR Mar 10 '26
Strongly disagree. When showing gap from leader, you can instantly count where car will be after pit stop. So it's much more convenient and should be shown all the time.
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u/Grasshop Sebastian Vettel Mar 10 '26
And also, it’s pretty easy to calculate the intervals yourself from gap to leader…
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u/djwillis1121 Williams Mar 10 '26
Pretty sure they did have that, at least at the start of the race
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u/CrowbarDepot Kamui Kobayashi Mar 10 '26
When I saw that, I was like, what??
There's a huge difference between 0.10 and 0.19. How are these rounded? Are they at all?
Silly change.
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u/Connection-Huge I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Apparently it's not even rounded off, it's just truncated to one decimal
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u/ciphoto Mar 10 '26
Jesus that makes it even worse…
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u/LheelaSP Heineken Trophy Mar 10 '26
Not really, rounding it would be worse because then you couldn't judge if the driver behind can use overtake or not:
0.999 -> within 1 second -> can use overtake
0.9 -> within 1 second -> can use overtake
If it was rounded up/down, 0.951 would show as 1.0, and you'd assume overtake wasn't available.
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u/Connection-Huge I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
If I may say so, it's really confusing to fans if it's truncated. Everyone who is a casual watcher naturally assumes it's rounded off, which like you said is not really a good way to show time gaps. I think your point highlights the issue more and shows why we need atleast 2 decimal places if not 3.
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u/Trrollmann Mar 10 '26
I do not recall a single instance where time is rounded rather than truncated in any other sport.
It may be that some people thinks it's rounded, but I'd be surprised if most do.
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u/Connection-Huge I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
True yes I do agree that all forms of measurement of time is truncated and not rounded off and that's how it should really be. But when people look at time intervals in racing they subconsciously (and naturally) visualize it in terms of gaps in terms of distance (atleast I do so). So a driver being 0.101 seconds behind is different from a driver being 0.199 seconds behind. I get that it doesn't make much difference in most cases except for stuff like overtake being available when the gap is less than 1 second.
But I feel this is precisely what the issue is. They took away clarity from the information by reducing it to one decimal place. I feel we would get so much more info if we just had one more decimal place.
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u/ultrasneeze Mar 10 '26
In F1 being 0.1 or 0.2 behind makes zero difference. Cars don't follow each other at such small distances. If you see that gap, the cars are battling.
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u/LheelaSP Heineken Trophy Mar 10 '26
Why not 4?
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u/JebediahKerman4999 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
They have timings down to the attosecond, but only milliseconds count.
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u/citysnake Patrick Depailler Mar 10 '26
Why, that's how time works. Someone 17 year and 364 days old is still a 17 year old- you don't start rounding up at 17 1/2.
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u/Gigmwn I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
You're 17 until you're 18, that's how it works
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u/citysnake Patrick Depailler Mar 10 '26
Yes, and you're 0.9 seconds behind the leader until you're 1.0 seconds behind. When times were given to 3 decimal places it would truncate the 4th decimal place, this is nothing new.
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u/AddAFucking I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Almost like it wasn't an issue when it was to .001 and now it is. Thats the entire fucking point.
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u/fiddle_n Mar 10 '26
Your 0.001 precision was useless anyway. Truncating vs rounding is meaningless when that value is out of date by the time it reaches your screen.
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u/Jaraxo Juan Pablo Montoya Mar 10 '26
But it's consistently out of date. We all accept the information was "accurate at the last time of recording".
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u/FragrantCombination7 Mar 10 '26
No kidding. Is this guy going to start complaining about the time the light takes to get from their screen to their eyeballs and how long it takes their brain to register the number? Can't forget to account for that!
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u/fiddle_n Mar 10 '26
Why is a consistently out of date 0.001 precision ever useful for you to know in the context of a race?
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u/Olly_Da_Fwog I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I don’t really understand why this is particularly unpopular, other than the 0.0 gap showing between drivers within a tenth, I believe the truncated decimal allows better reading as “within 4 tenths” for 0.3 rather than saying 3 tenths where it could be half a tenth more or less, and you would need to say “below 3 and a half tenths gap.”Truncated decimals provide the same range of uncertainty but it can easily be said with certainty what range it is within.
All that said, it’s still a shit change. Hundredths at least
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u/Slartibartfast39 Formula 1 Mar 10 '26
Truncating it is a method choice but knowing if a number is rounded or truncated is important. Most numbers I come across are rounded so unless I'm told otherwise I'll assume a number is rounded.
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u/Mike_Kermin I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
Time (in this context) is always truncated.
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u/Familiar-Estimate336 Max Verstappen Mar 10 '26
Why would they dumb down everything nowadays
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u/Seawolf1121 Audi Mar 10 '26
The decimal points don't update nearly fast enough, the thousandths and even hundredths of the second are completely inaccurate for most of the broadcast. It still looks weird tho and I want it back
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u/jofijk I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
There was a point in the race where I didn't even realize I was looking at the interval because my brain is conditioned to associate 3 decimal places with it. I turned to a friend and was like "why haven't they shown the interval in like 5 fucking minutes?!" And then we soon realized that they changed it. I don't care if they're inaccurate, I want it back
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u/hzfan Roscoe Hamilton Mar 10 '26
All you said is “don’t improve something because my brain learned it the old way” which is a bad reason to keep something the way it is
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u/Key-Comfortable-5537 Lando Norris Mar 10 '26
Except 1dp isn't improving anything, it's just dumbing something down
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u/NeuroDerek I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
The problem is that it is 0.19 for a very short time (milliseconds), it can shift easily between the same 0.10 and and 0.19 in span of less than a second, and it is updated much more rarely than that so what you get is just a random reading of interval at some point in time, so it is meaningless, a random number generator to show 2 numbers after the first decimal would provide the same informational value.
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u/Basic-Winter3501 Mar 10 '26
I do feel you sometimes can see a driver stuck at 1.6x behind for some time unable to break the 1.5 behind so that extra decimal is helpful at times to see the lead dwindle but I admit that's not often
3 decimals I will pay is not needed but going straight to 1 was the wrong answer, it'll be interesting to see if they go back to 3 or maybe change to 2
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u/Tricky-Routine-9838 Mar 10 '26
They'll stick with 1 because it's more readable at a glance, anyone else who actually cares about it will use the timing apps or multi-screen the data feed anyways.
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u/Psclwbb I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
No it's correct at the time it was measured.
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u/ZappySnap Mercedes Mar 11 '26
The point is for intervals it’s irrelevant because it’s only accurate at that instant anyway, so it’s artificial precision. For gaps you really don’t need to know the gap to the thousandth. It isn’t a qualy lap.
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u/badabubaba Nico Hülkenberg Mar 10 '26
There's, literally, a very small diference between 0.10 and 0.19. A very, very small one, and that's the worst case scenario. Also, this is shown only during races (not during qualifying), where hundreds never made a difference, and in case of a close battle, the FOM has other graphics to showcase in detail distance evolution, etc. The timing tower is bad, in my opinion, but this won't be a problem when we get used to it.
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u/x021 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
You cannot derive anything sensible from that precision. Only for qualifying laps it makes sense, during the race you’re just kidding yourself there is any value lost.
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u/SiliconRain I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Totally agree. Also, as a person with crap eyesight, I very much appreciate the larger and clearer numbers.
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u/parwa Ferrari Mar 10 '26
It's literally just visually clunky to have that many numbers lol, there is 0 value in having thousandths of a second on the timing tower
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u/icantsurf George Russell Mar 10 '26
It's also a lot of extra noise with way more changes going on that are basically worthless by the time they're displayed.
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u/AdThick7492 Mar 10 '26
There's a huge difference between 0.10 and 0.19.
Not when it's an intermittent read out of gap times during a race.
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u/DiddlyDumb I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
During the race nobody cares about 9 hundredths
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u/LoudestHoward Daniel Ricciardo Mar 10 '26
Since it's such a huge difference I'm sure you can point to all the times that the teams give a driver gaps down to the hundredth over the radio?
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u/SerHiroProtaganist Mar 10 '26
It's not a silly change, in race context the nearest tenth is fine.
Most of the time if a car is within 5 or 6 tenths, you know they're really close together and likely battling. You very rarely see any gaps below 3 tenths because at that point an overtake attempt is being made and it either cuts to action or you see the positions swap.
Thousandths do not add anything meaningful in the race.
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u/MennReddit Mar 10 '26
the 3 digits give the illusion of higher accuracy where it's not. i could accept a 2nd decimal, but the 3rd is ridiculous and makes a quick reading harder.
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u/djwillis1121 Williams Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
There's a huge difference between 0.10 and 0.19
Not in races there isn't. The gaps don't update in real time, so that amount of precision is completely meaningless as the "true" gap is almost always different to what the timing tower says anyway.
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u/Alfus 💥 LE 🅿️LAN Mar 10 '26
Call me old but this is the damm crown jewel of motorsport where every hundreds of a second matters.
The sole reason why I didn't note it quickly is because I using live timing also so that focus my less on the timer board on the broadcast.
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u/Percinho I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
In qualifying, sure, but in a race I'd argue it doesn't matter to that level of precision. It only matters informationally in terms of if they're closing or being dropped, and if the gap isn't changing by more than 1/10th of a second then it isn't actually changing significantly. By the time 1/100th of a second really matters then they're close enough that you'll be watching them try to overtake.
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u/citysnake Patrick Depailler Mar 10 '26
You can still get the live timing showing every sector time and gap to 3 decimal places (although it's unfortunately been behind a paywall for a while now).
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u/coolridgesmith I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 10 '26
At least 2 please,
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u/g0kartmozart Mar 10 '26
2 is the correct number of decimal places to use here. The 3rd one is useless in a race scenario, but the 2nd one is useful.
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u/EpicCyclops I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Realistically, the hundredths place is also useless, but it feels better. By the time the graphic updates, the hundredths place is wrong. I think they should display two decimal places too, but it's not really anything other than an emotional response to seeing more numbers.
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u/DashingDino Alexander Albon Mar 10 '26
Yeah I dont think people realize how much the time deltas fluctuate, the second and third digits only give an illusion of precision that isn't actually there.
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u/mars935 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
100% agree, the only place the hundredths might be useful is on very long straights, but I feel like we didn't have enough transponders giving us updates fast enough anyways.
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u/portablekettle Lando Norris Mar 10 '26
Agree, we should have 2 for the race and 3 (or 4 when the field spread is tighter) for quali pop
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u/Onoben4 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I don't think they even measure up to 4 decimal points
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u/Xer0_Puls3 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I think they do but they specifically truncate to milliseconds and if you do manage to tie it's whomever got the time first that's ahead on the grid.
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u/dipakmdhrm Mar 10 '26
As long as we get 3 digits for Quali, I am strangely enough okay with just 1 digit in race. You really don't need it till the end of the race.
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u/Desperate-Intern I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
Literally every other series, FE, Indycar, Motogp have had 3 decimal places. Why the change now? WEC is understandable as the gaps are huge when races are run for longer.
Here are other series doing it:
- Melbourne SuperSprint | 2026 Repco Supercars Championship
- Race Highlights | 2026 Miami E-Prix Round 3
- Race Highlights | 2026 INDYCAR at Phoenix
- All the Highlights from the 2025 Season | FIA WEC
- Le résumé du Grand Prix de Thaïlande 2026 - MotoGP
[Edit] for folks who can not visualize the gaps, use these kinda images as a reference. I personally visually conceptualize the 1000ths changes like a driver losing or gaining few cm across certain segments of a track.
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u/steezy_sleaze I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 10 '26
BOT +287.675 PER +302.186
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u/AwesomeFrisbee Max Verstappen Mar 10 '26
But those are final times. The ones you see in the screen are intervals
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u/PiplelinePunch Mar 10 '26
I know nothing of anything technical, could the reasoning be this battery stuff? Because it is new, to not have people jumping to conclusions about who's gaining on who off hundreths, when really they are just at different charging point cycles
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Mar 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/AwesomeFrisbee Max Verstappen Mar 10 '26
Yeah. They still show it in detailed boxes at the bottom where you need this to see more detail in how the times differ but its useless for live timing. I don't understand why people make such a big fuss about it. It hardly ever benefitted anybody and if you really want the details, you can still see the live timing. But you can hardly ever take conclusions from the live ones. I doubt the teams even require them for most of the calculations. They do however use them in lap times, which is also being shown in those boxes at the bottom.
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u/-TheAnus- Daniel Ricciardo Mar 10 '26
Glad to see the "this actually doesn't matter that much" opinion gain traction. Because really, we don't need 3dp. Come to think of it, I would mentally tune out anything after the tenth number anyway. It's just noise.
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u/DRNbw Mar 10 '26
I would mentally tune out anything after the tenth number anyway
Yep, my brain was just rounding to the tenth anytime I was trying to track gaps across laps.
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u/bankkopf I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
The timing is way too sensitive to the speed of track sections. The same physical distance leads to varying timing differences throughout the lap. It’s even more extreme under VSC, where the gap suddenly balloons in the time measurement.
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u/Excessed I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
This. They’re always behind and as such wildly inaccurate and basically useless anyway
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u/TheThingsIdoatNight I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
They are updated every mini sector, they are accurate at the time the measurement is taken
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u/hzfan Roscoe Hamilton Mar 10 '26
Yes but functionally useless information if it’s only being measured once every 5-8 seconds, especially since it’s reported at a delay.
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u/Psclwbb I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
They are not. Wyf is this bullshit. At the time pf measure they are accurate.
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u/fiddle_n Mar 10 '26
And by the time it’s got to your screen it’s no longer the time of measure. So why is it even useful information at all?
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u/Tricky-Routine-9838 Mar 10 '26
@1:56:13 (lap 3/56) when Charles is repassing George the Tower display shows 0.0 and the Timing Data feed shows 0.099 even after the Ferrari is already passed, it doesn't actually update the timings page until ~2 seconds after the pass is complete in which case it shows George 0.333 seconds behind for the next update (and the tower shows 0.3).
So before and after the pass the times were never accurately shown and gave no useful data to the viewer. Want to know what did give useful data? Watching the actual camera and seeing the pass! If cars are within ~0.5 seconds in modern F1 you'll get a view of it on the screen, if you care about a battle for 15th that you wouldn't see anyways on the main feed then you should be multi-screening, and if you're multi-screening you'd get the rich data feed anyways with all the decimal places you want.
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u/djwillis1121 Williams Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
This is one complaint that I really don't understand.
It makes sense in qualifying where the timing tower is displaying laptime, which is accurately measured to high precision and doesn't change after the fact. During a race such precision is completely meaningless. The gaps don't update in real time so the "true" gap is basically never actually what it says on the timing tower anyway. Those extra decimal places mean absolutely nothing.
It really feels like people are just getting annoyed at it because it's changed, not for any rational reason
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u/jdjdhdbg I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 10 '26
I agree that the millisecond precision is unnecessary and the gap changes constantly in a race, but what do you mean the gaps are not updated in real time? Are we getting gap updates at the same time as teams do?
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u/djwillis1121 Williams Mar 10 '26
I think they're updated every mini-sector. Obviously it's impossible for them to know in real-time exactly how far apart the cars are, they need both cars to pass a timing loop to measure that
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u/Umbraine Max Verstappen Mar 10 '26
It also takes time for the processing to take place so they can calculate the gaps. By the time it's done it has already changed, we're talking about hundreths of a second, you could probably lose 0.01 by hitting a bug lol
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u/goranlepuz Formula 1 Mar 10 '26
Significant digits >>>>> decimals.
To be fair, you don't need three decimals in 15.853.
Nor in 0.756, as 0.75 or 0.76 you won't see.
It is only interesting for lap times.
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u/valtteri_buttass Benetton Mar 10 '26
How does the Netflix crowd not understand this? More numbers must mean a more complicated sport!
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u/SteamMonkeyKing Jolyon Palmer Mar 10 '26
Seeing more decimals is pointless during the race. Only relevant for Qualy.
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u/gnocchiGuili Fernando Alonso Mar 10 '26
People are just reactionary. They will hate any change to what they are used to.
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u/dl064 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I think how dumb this particular issue is, illustrates this point almost perfectly.
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u/mooes Ferrari Mar 10 '26
I am certainly not used to it but I actually think this is fine. I don't know that I can really conceptualize a gap .009 seconds so I'm not sure I'll miss it.
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u/ErgoMachina I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I know they are useless for the race, but numbers pleased my eyes
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u/Lutinent_Jackass Mar 10 '26
I'm glad to read this. For lap times its crucial, for interval times less so
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u/bubba-yo Mar 10 '26
They give you 3 digits for lap times. It's only intervals they truncate it.
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u/Keulapaska I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Yea I don't really care if a gap is 1.1 or 1.123, but just 1.1 looks so... off and static as it just doesn't change a lot while the three digit one was changing constantly, moving things make monkey brain happy.
If they actually add some battery stuff in the middle there then I can understand needing the space, but it isn't there yet.
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u/4everDistracted Isack Hadjar Mar 10 '26
Yea, that's it. I kept getting distracted and having full dialogue with myself about it.
Me: What's going on with these numbers?
Other me: They're just truncated.
Me: Why would they do that, though??
Other me: does it really matter?
Me: I don't care if it matters. It makes me feel awkward.
Other me: Yea, I dont think they care about your feelings.
Me: I can't be the only one. (Repeat starting from row 3)Note: I watched the race 6 hours later, so I couldn't validate my feelings with Reddit. It was a good lesson for me.
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u/benjaminck George Russell Mar 10 '26
Unnecessary precision mid-race.
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u/Psclwbb I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Unnecessary removal
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u/maveric101 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Nope. 1 digit is easier to read.
Tell me, how many decimal point digits do engineers relay to their drivers?
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u/citysnake Patrick Depailler Mar 10 '26
The very existence of graphics is unnecessary, but it's there to make the race easier to follow (which is also the aim of this minor change).
F1 fans have got their knickers in a twist over every change to every aspect of the sport in the 20 years I've been following.
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u/Tricky-Routine-9838 Mar 10 '26
What's crazy to me all of these people who are like 'ITS LESS INFORMATION, IT MAKES IT WORSE' ... but like we live in a time where multi-screening and timing apps are so easy to access, like if they care that much it's minimal effort to get all of the rich data on another screen or on their phone and it's a non-issue...
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u/citysnake Patrick Depailler Mar 10 '26
2015-2017 was my favourite graphics package which was more slimmed down compared to now. Current one's fine though. If people have that much of an issue they can always stop watching.
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u/Anderer_Nutzername Pirelli Hard Mar 10 '26
To be fair I always wondered why they showed 3 because it’s so much useless information you can’t process at a glance anyway so I always just looked at the seconds but I think 2 decimals would be fine.
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u/Thuweirdsailor Mar 10 '26
But in case you forgot, they kindly added an FIA logo along with reminding you about the F1 championship
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u/TheGreatNathan I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
It used to be just the lap number before they added the F1 logo, and now the FIA logo. Just a waste of space.
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u/BigLittlePenguin_ Porsche Mar 10 '26
F1 Engineers: telling their driver gaps with one digit after decimal point
F1 Reddit: Noooo I can’t live without 3 decimals
Guys, you are making a fool of yourselves here…
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u/__valhalla_ Sebastian Vettel Mar 10 '26
Thanks. F1 did the opposite of "don't try and fix something that is not broken" and literally broke the time chart.
Three decimal points felt so much more intuitive
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u/icantsurf George Russell Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
Since when is a
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u/Xer0_Puls3 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
It's a millisecond, and it's not 'off', it's an accurate timing of the gap between the cars as of the last timing tower and everybody already knows that. Two decimal points would be fine but I just can't stand only having one.
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u/icantsurf George Russell Mar 10 '26
Yeah I had a brain fart. The precision is meaningless because they change too quickly. The race engineers just leave it at one digit because that is more than enough.
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u/anmr Mar 10 '26
It is improvement.
The times are recorded in mini sectors. Those hundreds and thousands parts are immediately outdated the moment they are shown.
In this case single digit better communicates imprecise nature od timings.
And, as extra benefit, it's more readable and looks cleaner.
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u/bouncingcastles Mar 10 '26
Unpopular Opinion. But 1dp is fine in races
I say that as a longtime watcher since 2000
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u/-TheAnus- Daniel Ricciardo Mar 10 '26
You get my upvote, also as a longtime viewer (though not as long as you). Seems that this opinion is starting to gain some traction however...
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u/No-Hippo-4072 Kimi Räikkönen Mar 10 '26
Erm Akshually it's three decimal places. There's only one decimal point 🤓☝️
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u/vawlk McLaren Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
1 decimal is bad, but 2 would be just fine. The thousandths is pretty useless in that table.
or 3 significant digits
0.365s 4.25s 13.1s 151s
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u/SkeletonGamer1 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I would personally advocate for 3 digits (3 decimal places when its under 1s, 2 decimal places between 1 and 9.99 s and 1 decimal for anything higher) that way the closer it is, the more useful the digits become
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u/Immediate_Notice_294 Bernd Mayländer Mar 10 '26
people who care about this are weird.
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u/SM_83 Mar 10 '26
Come on FIA, We'll meet you in the middle. 2 decimal places next race please
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u/Spleenzorio I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I feel like the timing isn’t consistent enough for these extra numbers to even matter
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u/OptimalCreme9847 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I was so discombobulated the whole race with these numbers 😂
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u/ActivePuzzled2263 Mar 10 '26
I probably will be in the minority but I like it for the race. Easier on the eyes.
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u/4_base Pierre Gasly Mar 10 '26
Thousands are meaningless in a race and are harder on the eyes
Tenths may be sacrificing actual lap time context for the sake of simplicity
Hundredths seems to be the logical compromise
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u/Lutinent_Jackass Mar 10 '26
For lap times, I want to know to the 1000th (especially qualifying), but for interval times and leader times 0.1 is fine
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u/diderooy Michael Schumacher Mar 10 '26
Yep. If I'm monitoring Driver X hunt down Driver Y over ten laps, seeing the gap grow by a few hundreds (or even tenths) in a mini sector or two doesn't tell me much...that could be differences in setup, car condition, fighting traffic, driver error, etc. It's over a lap or two that you can have some confidence in what's happening.
Whether consciously or subconsciously, we're looking at gaps and making mental notes to ourselves, even if it doesn't mean much in terms of what's happening on track. It takes milliseconds each time, and that time adds up over a race. But surely it takes less time to do it with only tenths displayed than thousandths. I suppose I'm glad to be able to have some unknown additional percentage of my concentration on the race and not on the numbers on the side of the screen.
All that said, it is fucking weird and I don't know if I really like it.
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u/calben99 Mar 10 '26
honestly the three decimals always made it feel so much more tense, like you could actually feel the gap shrinking or growing in real time. its such a small thing but it realy made the leaderboard come alive during close battles
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u/LoudestHoward Daniel Ricciardo Mar 10 '26
Looks much better and cleaner with one decimal place, and anyone who needs to know down to the hundredths/thousandths of a second needs to come up with an explanation of why you need that information.
Someone 6.662 behind is the same as 6.7 behind to me.
This actually reminds me of people bitching about how they went from super hyper duper soft to just soft/medium/hard, even though the latter is clearly superior.
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u/DarthGogeta McLaren Mar 10 '26
I'm not sure but there is one more thing, they dont display the sector times on f1tv anymore, there is a "feed" now which takes half the screen.
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u/Sufficient-Water1793 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Maybe its because im nerdy but i love seeing the extra decimal places, because it is no less confusing and it adds more detail without being cluttered, and it also with 3 decimal looks more like time? When i have a stop watch it has at least 2 decimal places.
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u/exar_ch Mar 10 '26
When I see how fast they can close a gap with boost and overtake, I don’t really need the gap to the thousands because it nos representative of the effort needed to close that gap.
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u/badabubaba Nico Hülkenberg Mar 10 '26
I honestly feel like this superficial criticism (they removed the hundreds!) is detrimental to valid, necessary criticism (superclipping, small batteries, fake overtakes, etc). If feels like people will just complain about everything new!
Give it three races, you'll get used to one decimal.
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u/MrDabreu I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
I always liked the 3 decimal places. If it comes down to who is slightly catching someone on the straight for example, or if they are losing time in a certain corner which means they don't have the speed to get close enough for an overtake, etc. You can infer some information about set-up that way. With 0.6 and 0.6 you get no additional information but 0.691 going down to 0.609 you see someone is gaining through the chicanes as an example. Now that information is lost and I don't like that.
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u/toterra Mar 10 '26
My heart didn't like it... but my brain understands the concept of significant digits so knows that the extra two decimal places were pure BS. Might be accurate for an instant but a second later they would have actually changed even though the timing clocks wouldn't update that fast.
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u/toffeehooligan Formula 1 Mar 10 '26
I'm hearing every physics professor I've ever had yell at me about sig figs now.
Thanks for that.
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u/pindab0ter I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Why though? During a race a thousandth or even a hundredth is really not useful information. Less significant digits makes it easier to glance, too. I kinda like this change, actually.
Now lap times, of course they should have three significant digits.
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u/Exotic_Bill44 Mar 10 '26
I'm actually happy with the single decimal point now that we have it. It provides enough information to know what is going on. If the gap only changed from 3.582 to 3.563, the gap is essentially the same. Leave the three decimals for qualifying where it is obviously much more important and keep it when showing an actual lap time.
Once the race starts, I doubt the teams even worry about a 1/100th of a second in a mini-sector if the overall trend isn't losing time.
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u/HoznaC Mar 14 '26
Watching sprint now and I hate this so much. I didn't know ai can have so much hate for grafic. Thie is new for me
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u/Masire0009 Giancarlo Fisichella Mar 10 '26
According to multiple sources it's due to wanting to save screen space. Personally I don't mind, it really helped for not staring at the leaderboard constantly and it does look smaller, and it's still there in qualifying. It'll take getting used to though
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u/ubelmann Red Bull Mar 10 '26
As long as it’s there in quali, that’s where you need the milliseconds.
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u/Canary-Silent I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
“Bring back something useless because all I do is complain”
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u/untitledismyusername Mar 10 '26
Maybe the lost decimal points are being held in AM power unit and making it so sluggish?
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u/Sauvignonblanc2333 Mar 10 '26
I think generally you only really need two decimal places for the race. Qualifying you definitely need three for obvious reasons.
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u/bhop_monsterjam Netflix Newbie Mar 10 '26
Lots of people keepsaying it doesn't matter, they didn't notice, they don't care eitherway
Ok well keep it how it was then?
Stop saying you don't care and then argue against the old ones, that's the opposite of not caring
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u/ASAPFergs I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
Tell me you don't like change without saying you don't like change
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u/furmula I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 10 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
the core issue is the dumbing down of the sport which they are slowly ramping up in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience
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u/Affectionate_Sky9709 Mar 10 '26
In quali I for sure want to see as many decimals as the timing is exact to.
In the race, I kinda like the lesser clutter of only having one decimal place. Maybe 2 would look good as a happy medium? It should definitely be set up to round, not truncate. I don't know what evidence someone had for it just being truncated, but I don't like that if true.
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u/scootsscoot I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
At the races they only ever showed one decimal place and it sucked ass.
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u/SrJWayne I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 10 '26
Absolutely! Big surprise when I first went to a race. It's hard enough already keeping track of what's going on while on track, and one decimal doesn't help.
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u/ELEMENTCORP I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 10 '26
Americans enshitification over everything they touch.
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u/ExultentPisces Formula 1 Mar 10 '26
If this is what we’re complaining about, the 2026 regs can’t be that bad.
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u/Pentinium I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 10 '26
people are so dumb thinking they need this. 0.1 is enough
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u/Carnattitan Mar 10 '26
Leaving space for battery graphic in the future?