Chinese Grand Prix

Single-lap pace

Best lap regardless of fuel load or compound — a sighting shot, not a form guide.

Long runs, fuel-corrected

Each driver's longest clean stint, using green-flag laps only. Cool-down laps go first (anything more than 7% slower than that stint's best), then laps sitting well above the stint's own trend — traffic and mistakes — and a stint is discarded entirely if what remains isn't one continuous run. Times are corrected for fuel burn at 60 ms per lap, measured from 2024 race stints rather than assumed. Runs under eight laps (marked *) get no degradation figure, because a trend through so few laps is noise. Teams don't publish fuel loads, and 15 kg is worth about 0.4s a lap, so read these as driver groupings rather than exact gaps, and compare runs on the same compound.

Sectors and the lap they could have done

Best sector times are usually set on different laps, so their sum — the ideal lap — is quicker than anyone's actual best. The last column is the time left out there. Purple marks the session's fastest sector.

What the tyres are worth here

Measured within each driver — only drivers who set a representative time on both compounds count — then averaged, so this isn't distorted by who happened to run which tyre. A lap counts only if it is within 2% of that driver's own best of the session, which keeps genuine runs on a slower tyre while dropping in-laps and aborted runs that would otherwise masquerade as a compound's best. A compound fewer than three drivers tried is listed but not priced. Even so, these laps aren't all qualifying simulations, so read this as the order of the compounds rather than an exact price.

Team-mates, head to head

Same car, so the gap on their best lap is the clearest read on the driver available.

Stints and compounds