Welcome
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Live timing how to use and understand the data
-
Thought I'd post some info on here for teams who haven't taken advantage of the info on the net yet!
For analysis purposes the best data is accessed by clicking the "laps" tag at the bottom
normal transponder (or manual backup) laps are shown in yellow
pitstop laps are shown in white
obviously wrong laps are shown in red!
trailer recovery laps are shown in grey
a plus sign after a time indicates a missed lap (transponder and manual backup) can also mean more than one lap!!
fastest lap for each car shown in green
fastest lap for all cars in the race shown in purple
If I have any mistakes above I'm sure bbkrob will correct me.
To get the data into XL:
select the data on the website using the cursor & left mous button
open a notepad window and press control
While in notepad use global search & replace to format things right for XL. A typical fix might be
replace all ' with :
replace all with ",0:"
now save the file as a .csv file
When you open the .csv file with XL you should get columns of times for each car. Note any "+" cells will need to be sorted out.
I like to draw time graphs of distance travelled for the cars we are closest to: I will post a picture of this for the top 8 cars at rockingham F24 - it's the closest thing to a "picture of the whole race" -
Just to clarify, the red laps are usually short laps caused when we notice a car that has not counted and put in a manual lap late. This makes a long lap followed by a short lap that would mess up the fastest lap display, so we mark it. If we have a track where the cars start ahead of the timing loop that will make a short first lap which will be similarly marked red.
During races the order is race order but in practice it is ordered by best single lap.
You may in the future see car number in yellow to signify that this is the cars first event.
There will be a "help" button on the live timing describing all this sometime during the summer break.
I haven't completed the timing system so you might see some more data in Live Timing later in the Season. -
i'm loving the timing system. if only my iphone battery would last longer. :)
-
Weather data: I take the track and air temperature at intervals during the day so they are reasonably accurate. Wind is a bit more variable (LOL). Worst case I use the Met Office forecast for the location. Where possible I get data from the track (eg Croft have a weather station). I'm sure all tracks have this data but getting it is not always easy. I have a long term goal to get a small weather station for the van and a wind/solar power system (12v batteries and a 240v inverter) so the generator doesn't have to be used all day, We have a laser printer (which has a high power draw for fixing the toner) so that we can print waterproof results but the success of the live timing is making printed results less important at some of the tracks.
If anyone has experience of portable weather stations primarily for wind speed it would be helpful. Also do you want wind speed in mph or meters per second? Any wind/solar charging experience would be welcome. -
bbkrob: thanks for the excellent timing system, I just need to get mobile internet to use it at a race now!
I've found that it's possible to save the web page from a browser as web page, html only and then open that file directly from Excel or Gnumeric without any further processing required (you do have to use search and replace or a formula to change the mm'ss format to something that the spreadsheet recognizes as a number though).
It looks like the system doesn't always roll over to the next minute until the 61st second: i.e. the sequence goes 0:59, 0:60, 1:01 which does confuse the spreadsheet (and me, at least to start with!). -
"It looks like the system doesn't always roll over to the next minute until the 61st second: i.e. the sequence goes 0:59, 0:60, 1:01 which does confuse the spreadsheet (and me, at least to start with!)."
I saw that in the "early days" but I thought I had nailed that one. Can you tell me where you have seen this and I'll check it is now corrected. -
Rob, can you explain why on the laps page for the F24 final, car 25 is shown on 39 laps but shown after car 61, who only has lap times for 37 laps, although I appreciate one of the car 25 laps was completed on a trailer? If you read the results page they say they did the same distance.
Thanks -
Recovery at Goodwood does give me a few problems. When a car comes in on a trailer it crosses the loop and gets a lap, when it leaves the pits it gets another lap. So cars that come in on the trailer have to loose a lap and when (and if) they come out of the pits they loose another lap. If the car is pushed over the loop to the paddock they don't loose a lap because they are completing the lap they were on but they loose the lap when they come out of the pits again. So................ If you see an R next to a lap there will be 1 or 2 laps less depending on the circumstances. At tracks where the loop is before the pits and the recovery can avoid crossing the line there is no need for this. Example are Castle Combe, Silverstone and Bedford. Rockingham needs manual counting for cars going into the pits.
I hope this clarifies things? -
Yep, makes sense. It didn't affect our race, just when processing the numbers I spotted it.
It's a very neat timing system, we were using it at the final to track speed progress and it helped decide pit strategy. It just doesn't display very well on a (basic) Blackberry!
For pasting into a spreadsheet it would be helpful to have a colon rather than an apostrophe but as Bob says, search and replace (and then divide by 60) works fine.
Thanks -
@PeterF should have got an iphone then ;)
-
ah fair enough
-
Hi You may like to search here http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=Goodwood (I've looked at Goodwood quickly) for weather recording ststions near the race tracks, there are hundredes of "private or pirate" weather stations in the UK all uploading data there are at lesat 3 within 4 miles of my house.
Ashley -
For 2012 I'm making some changes to the live timing information. I'm adding the time each car is behind the leader and each car is behind the one in front. If the leader has completed 16 laps and you complete your 13th it will show the difference in time between you and when the leader completed their 13th lap. This is probably a bit more useful that showing you are being 3 laps down. Question is what is more useful in the narrow screen format? Time behind the race leader or time behind car in front. I suspect time behind car in front. You will get both in the wide format. Any comments?
-
Rob, your timing screen added another level of interest and excitement to last year's races, sounds like it's going to get even better!
I think we're generally most interested to see how much we have to make up on the cars immediately ahead and the breathing space to the cars behind so I'd agree with the "time behind car infront" option.
-
Yes, I to would go with that.
Maybe another change that would be useful is to make the time in the Lap pages compatible with spreadsheet date/time formats ? -
I'll add a 3rd to that, I think knowing whos immediately in front is much more useful.
I'de also like to second Terrys suggestion of laps being spreadsheet compatible, I've spent a lot of time editing lap times so they can be used in excel. -
+1 for excelability, ideally live but you could post a .csv file or alternative just after the race? Lap times work best in h:mm:ss format although I realise that adds a lot of width. Colours are useful (rather than symbols) as the number underneath can still be understood. Another way of presenting the data could be a start time (24hr clock) then a lap completion time. As it would always be in hh:mm:ss format the spreadsheet could immediately understand it, then manipulate it.
Secondly, given that 95% of us probably access the website on the day using a phone, could you get access to a blackberry to check if it works on there that'd be very very useful... I can confirm it works on iphones and (at least some) HTCs.
Overall, an incredibly useful system that can only get better - thanks. -
Thanks for the comments. With luck I'll have an updated live timing running for the Southern Test Day next week.
For the lap Table I think a CSV file after the event would be best. Can't promise that for next week but it should be available before the Season Opener for your comments.
I can test on iPhone (I have one) and HTC Desire (other half's phone) but I don't have easy access to a Blackberry. I'll have a look at Jeremy's next week. With other systems that I have developed for phones the Blackberry has always proved a problem due to the nature of the screen and the browser it uses. Every browser behaves differently which is a real pain.
