F1 telemetry: what it is and how to read it

What is F1 telemetry?

Telemetry is data from the car’s sensors that is sent by radio to the team’s garage during a session. Engineers can see speed, revs, gears, pedal inputs, temperatures and pressures while the car is still on track.

Under the 2026 regulations, the car-to-team telemetry system is made by a supplier designated by the FIA, to an FIA specification, and it may only operate on frequencies approved by the FIA. According to Mercedes, it is a common system used by all teams. The data is time-synchronised, encrypted and sent to the garage, and from there to the team’s factory.

According to Mercedes figures from 2022, at European races live data reaches the team’s base in the UK within 10 milliseconds, and from Australia or Japan in about 300. When the car comes back to the garage, a cable is plugged in, and two to three times more data is downloaded than came over the radio.

What data does the car collect?

A car carries hundreds of sensors. According to Formula 1 figures from 2020, there are more than 300, and together they produce 1.1 million telemetry data points per second. Mercedes wrote in 2022 that there can be more than 250 sensors on a car over a race weekend. It divided them into three groups: for controlling the car, for measurement and for monitoring its systems.

The sensors measure pressure, temperature, acceleration and movement. Most can’t be seen from the outside, but a few can — for example, the small thermal imaging sensors on the front wing.

According to Mercedes, in 2022 about 30 megabytes per lap went out in the live stream, and over a weekend one car produced more than a terabyte, including video and ancillary files.

What does the FIA see?

Under the regulations, the FIA has unlimited access to the data of the FIA standard ECU, the car’s electronic control unit: its settings, logged data and live telemetry, before, during and after any session. Teams must pass live telemetry to the FIA network in the format the FIA sets. Only an FIA engineer may clear the standard ECU’s logs during an event. Before the race and the sprint, the unit is set up so that its memory can hold at least 2 hours 15 minutes of logging.

All signals from the driver’s pedals, paddles and buttons go through the FIA standard ECU. Under the regulations, the logged signals must give a true picture of what the driver did.

For accident analysis and to help rescue crews, every car carries an FIA accident data recorder, an external accelerometer and a high-speed camera, and the driver wears in-ear accelerometers.

Can the team control the car from the pits?

No. Under the regulations, sending data from the pits to the car is prohibited. The exceptions are race control’s communication system with the car and the handshaking that the telemetry itself needs in order to work.

Under the Sporting Regulations, the driver must drive the car alone and unaided. The signals from the pedals, paddles and buttons may only be altered by a direct, deliberate action by the driver. So an engineer can only advise the driver over the radio, and the driver switches the modes on the steering wheel themselves. Under the regulations, the voice radio may not carry any other data and is open to the FIA and broadcasters, which is why you can hear the messages on TV.

Race control, for its part, sends track signals to the car: there are red, blue and yellow lights in the cockpit, directly in the driver’s line of sight.

How to read a telemetry graph

A typical telemetry graph is a lap unrolled into a line: distance from the start of the lap along the horizontal axis, and speed, throttle, brake and gear on the vertical. Here’s how to read it:

1. Find the straights: speed rises, the throttle is at 100%, and the gears go up.
2. Find the braking points: speed drops sharply, the brake comes on, and the gears go down.
3. Look at the lowest point of speed in each corner — that is the minimum corner speed.
4. Note where the driver goes back to full throttle on the way out of the corner.

The most interesting thing is two laps on the same graph. Rob Smedley, Formula 1’s Director of Data Systems in 2021, explained it like this: if the speed in the middle of a corner is the same, the driver who brakes later gains time. How hard the driver brakes matters too: peak and average deceleration.

For the 2020 TV graphics, Formula 1’s engineers divided the lap into slow, medium and fast corners and straights, by lateral acceleration and speed. They then looked at how much time the car spent in each part. According to Mercedes, drivers compare themselves with their team-mate after every session, looking at braking data and corner speeds.

Sectors and the circuit map on its page help you work out which corner is where on the lap.

Where can you see telemetry?

Gridlap doesn’t have live telemetry during sessions. Real-time data from the cars is seen by the teams and the FIA, and Formula 1 shows viewers part of it in the TV graphics. In 2021, for example, a new braking graphic appeared in broadcasts: where drivers start braking, from what speed, who brakes harder and what g-forces they pull.

Gridlap’s circuit pages have pole lap telemetry: speed, gears, throttle and brake all the way round the lap — for example, on the Monza page. It opens once you sign in with the bot, for free, and appears about half an hour after qualifying.

Open data gives you less than the teams see. OpenF1, the unofficial project we take pole lap telemetry from, publishes speed, revs, gear, throttle and brake for each car about 3.7 times per second. The brake there is only on or off, with no pressure. According to its documentation as of September 2026, OpenF1 gives historical data from 2023 onwards for free, and real-time data with a paid subscription.