Raw Data: It’s clear from this data set that the driver was able to improve the lap times up to a point. Then the car started to slow down. Why? It’ll be difficult to assign a cause without the notes and the driver debrief. It may have been a very typical or normal occurrence and you just didn’t know it was happening until you started taking notes and measuring the car and driver’s performance. Then again it might not be normal.
| Session 1 |
| Lap # | Lap Time |
| 1 | 15.289 |
| 2 | 15.108 |
| 3 | 15.088 |
| 4 | 14.995 |
| 5 | 14.997 |
| 6 | 14.884 |
| 7 | 14.881 |
| 8 | 14.801 |
| 9 | 14.766 |
| 10 | 14.669 |
| 11 | 14.588 |
| 12 | 15.023 |
| 13 | 15.123 |
| 14 | 15.448 |
A Graphical View: With the data in a more graphical perspective it was very clear that the car was getting faster each lap than there was a drastic change that occurred on lap 12 and the car started to slow. The graphical perspective makes the change very clear and dramatic. What happened to make the car start slowing down? Was the car starting to fall off due to a mechanical reason? Did the tires over heat or was there traffic that was causing the car to slow. Whatever the reason we had a 0.8-second fall off and that wasn’t good. The other question we need to ask is why it took 11 laps to get the car up to speed? The challenge for the tuner and the team is to understand how to make the correct adjustments to get the car up to speed faster.
Raw Data Session 2: The changes the team made worked, but the car still took 8 laps to get up to speed. The team is going in the right direction; and the measurement process was helpful for the team to ask better questions and get answers.
| Session 2 |
| Lap # | Lap Time |
| 1 | 15.022 |
| 2 | 15.012 |
| 3 | 14.965 |
| 4 | 14.655 |
| 5 | 14.883 |
| 6 | 14.881 |
| 7 | 14.593 |
| 8 | 14.501 |
| 9 | 14.503 |
| 10 | 14.45 |
| 11 | 14.507 |
| 12 | 14.655 |
| 13 | 14.998 |
| 14 | 14.907 |
Graphical View Session 2: The graph of the second session tells a very different story of the car’s performance. It started out faster but the transition to the quickest lap still took 10 laps. It was clear that something wasn’t happening quickly enough with the car.