Dutch Grand Prix

Open-Meteo, fetched at last regeneration (baked in, works offline).

No completed sessions yet this weekend.

The circuit layout for Circuit Zandvoort will appear here after the next automatic data refresh (it is fetched once, without any telemetry download).

Budapest qualifying — reference lap NOR 77.207s. Across this session 89% of all time lost was mechanical, 4% was lost on straights, and 8% is unattributed — full throttle through faster curves, where grip and power limit the car at once. Mechanical plus energy is therefore not the whole story.

Sections are classified by lateral load, not by curvature — a corner taken at 0.7g is not grip-limited when the car can pull 5g. The climbing-power term is removed using track altitude. See reports/grip_energy_split.md.

All computed from our data (5 races with lap/results on file). Small samples flagged.

Safety cars: 0 SC 42% · 1 30% · 2 16% · 3+ 12% from 5 races — small, UNVALIDATED

Pit strategy — how this track rewards stopping early

Undercut / overcut: undercut-strong — the driver who pits FIRST gains +0.74 places on average (175 pit cycles, 5 races; F1-wide average +0.47)

Under a safety car: HIGH — a safety car rewrites the strategy here — first-stopper gain becomes +0.14 (a swing of -0.60) (355 caution cycles, 67% of all cycles here)

Descriptors, not predictions — built from every season we hold, and read for insight. Neither has been tested as a model component. Caution cycles are excluded from the grade because a safety-car stop is a different thing (the field compresses and stopping becomes cheap).

Circuit character — the five dimensions

Expert archetype: Hungary-type — narrow tight permanent, slow

DESCRIPTIVE, not a prediction, and not wired into anything. Circuits form a CONTINUUM on all five dimensions — the apparent groupings were single detached circuits at the edges of the range. So the continuous values and the position bar are the content; the band label is a reading convenience and is marked BORDERLINE when it sits close to a cut-off (70% of all labels do). Higher downforce means LOWER trap speed, so a low number = more wing. Grip is the weakest dimension — its two signals disagree on 17 of 31 circuits (here: both signals agree).

Best current drivers here (avg finish)

Regulation first — it can invalidate our data. Gossip and other series already stripped.

Weekend column source: awaiting practice.