The Delta Time Chart
The delta chart shows where on track you are gaining or losing time compared to another lap. Green means you are gaining time (faster than the comparison
lap at that point), and red means you are losing time. It answers an important question at a glance:
Where exactly am I leaving time on the table?
What to look for
- Red zones tell you which corners are costing you the most time. These are where you should focus your practice. Even small improvements in your worst sections add up fast.
- Green zones show what you are doing well. Try to understand why you are fast there so you can apply the same approach to other corners.
- Notice whether you tend to lose time on braking (corner entry) or acceleration (corner exit). This tells you which fundamental skill needs the most work.
Do not try to fix everything at once. Find the biggest red zone on your delta chart, then look at the speed, throttle, and brake charts at that same point on track to understand exactly what went wrong. Fix that one corner first, then move on to the next biggest red zone. Systematic improvement beats random experimentation every time.
The Racing Line (Track Map)
The racing line view shows a bird's-eye outline of the track with your actual driven path drawn on top of it. Instead of looking at charts that plot data against lap distance, you are looking at the physical shape of where your car went on the circuit. Two lines are overlaid: blue for your lap, red for the comparison lap. Where the lines diverge, you took a different path through the corner.
This is the most intuitive view because it looks like the track you just drove. You can immediately see if you are using a wider entry at Turn 1, clipping the apex closer at Turn 3, or running a completely different line through a chicane. It also makes it easy to spot where you are using more or less of the available track width compared to the faster lap.
What to look for
- Where the two lines separate from each other. If the blue line swings wide at a corner and the red line stays tight (or vice versa), that is a different racing line choice that directly affects your speed through that corner and onto the next straight.
- Apex usage: is your line actually clipping the inside of each corner, or are you leaving space on the inside? The faster line usually gets closer to the apex.
- Track width on exit: a faster lap often uses all of the track on corner exit (letting the car drift out to the edge), which allows you to straighten the steering wheel earlier and get on the throttle sooner.
- Consistency: if your line wiggles or has small corrections, that matches the steering chart showing corrections. A smooth, confident line looks like a clean arc.
The racing line view is best used alongside the speed chart. If you see that the blue and red lines diverge at a corner, switch to the speed chart and check whether that different line was faster or slower. Sometimes a wider entry gives you a better exit, and sometimes a tighter line carries more mid-corner speed. The data tells you which approach actually worked for that specific corner.
The Speed Chart
The speed chart shows how fast your car is traveling at every point of the lap, from start to finish. The horizontal axis represents your position on track (0% to 100% of the lap), and the vertical axis shows speed. When you overlay two laps, you can instantly see where one lap carries more speed than the other.
What to look for
- The dips in the chart are corners where you brake and slow down. Compare the bottom of each dip between the two laps: a higher minimum speed means you carried more speed through that corner, usually from a better line or more confidence.
- Where braking starts: the speed drops sharply at the beginning of each braking zone. Compare the two laps to see if one brakes earlier or later.
- The gap between the two lines shows exactly where you are gaining or losing speed. Blue above red means you were faster at that point on track.
Focus on the lowest points in each corner, not the top speed on the straights. Minimum corner speed has a much bigger impact on your lap time because it affects how fast you accelerate out of the corner and down the entire next straight.
The Throttle Chart
The throttle chart is a recording of your right foot. It shows how much throttle you are applying at every point of the lap, from 0% (completely off the gas) to 100% (pedal to the metal). On a straight, you will see a flat line at 100%. In braking zones, it drops to 0%. In many corners, especially in lower-power cars like the Mazda MX-5 or Formula Vee, you will see a phase of partial throttle (15-40%) through mid-corner where the driver is maintaining speed without asking for more grip than the tires can give. The interesting part is what happens on corner exit: the transition from that partial throttle or from 0% back up to full power.
What to look for
- How smoothly the throttle comes back on after each corner. A smooth, progressive ramp back to 100% is fast, whether it starts from 0% or from a partial-throttle mid-corner phase. A jagged or stepped line means the driver is stabbing the throttle or making abrupt corrections.
- How early you get back to full throttle compared to the faster lap. Getting to 100% sooner on corner exit is one of the biggest time gains you can find, but notice how the faster driver handles mid-corner throttle too.
- Whether you are fully at 100% on the straights. If there is a small dip below 100%, you might be lifting without realizing it.
Smooth, progressive throttle on corner exit is almost always faster than stabbing it. When you mash the throttle too early, the tires break loose and you lose traction, which actually costs more time than being patient and rolling on the power gradually. The faster lap almost always has a smoother throttle trace on exit.
mental apex racing captures your telemetry automatically and syncs all these charts together. Your coach then helps you make sense of the data and turn it into real progress.
Get StartedThe Brake Chart
The brake chart shows how hard you are pressing the brake pedal at every point of the lap. You will see sharp spikes at each braking zone and flat lines at zero on the straights. The height of each spike tells you how much brake pressure you applied, and the shape of the spike tells you how you released the brake into the corner.
What to look for
- Trail braking: good braking looks like a sharp spike up (hard initial pressure) followed by a smooth, gradual taper as you turn into the corner. If the pressure drops off suddenly to zero, you are probably not trail braking.
- Brake pressure consistency: are you braking hard enough? Sometimes the faster lap has significantly more initial pressure, which means shorter braking zones and more time on the throttle.
- The width of the spike tells you how long you spent on the brakes. A wider spike at the same corner means you braked earlier or did not release fast enough.
The ideal brake trace looks like a sharp cliff going up (hard initial hit) and a gentle slope coming down (gradual release as you turn in). This is trail braking, and it keeps weight on the front tires through the corner entry, giving you more grip exactly when you need it. If your trace looks like a rectangle (on/off), that is the first thing to work on.
The Steering Chart
The steering chart shows your steering wheel angle throughout the lap. The center line represents straight ahead (zero degrees). Peaks above the line are turns in one direction, and peaks below are turns the other way. The height of each peak shows how much steering lock you used, and the smoothness of the line tells you a lot about your confidence in the car.
What to look for
- Smooth steering inputs versus corrections. A smooth, single arc through each corner means you are confident in the car. Jagged, saw-tooth patterns mean you are fighting understeer or oversteer and constantly correcting.
- How much steering lock you use compared to a faster lap. Less steering angle at the same corner often means a better racing line or better corner entry speed.
- Small wiggles on the straights can indicate the car is unstable or you are making unnecessary inputs. On a straight, the line should be almost perfectly flat.
Fewer steering corrections means more confidence in the car. If your trace is jagged and the faster lap is smooth at the same corner, the issue is usually corner entry: either too much speed, wrong braking point, or turning in at the wrong spot. Fix the entry and the corrections go away on their own.
The RPM and Gear Chart
The RPM and gear chart shows your engine speed (the smooth, flowing line) and which gear you are in (the stepped line that jumps between discrete values like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Together, they give you a picture of how you are using the drivetrain. The RPM line rises as the engine revs up in each gear and drops when you shift or brake.
What to look for
- Whether you are hitting the rev limiter before shifting. If the RPM line flatlines at the top, you are bouncing off the limiter and wasting time. Shift a fraction earlier.
- Gear choices through corners. Compare your gear at the apex with a faster driver. The right gear depends on the car and the corner, so just note where your choice differs from theirs and test the alternative.
- Downshift points on braking. Shifting down too early can unsettle the rear of the car. The faster lap might hold a higher gear deeper into the braking zone.
Compare your gear choices corner by corner with a faster driver and try matching theirs. A higher gear gives less engine braking on entry and smoother power delivery on exit, while a lower gear can put you in a better part of the torque curve for stronger acceleration out of the corner. Neither is automatically faster, and the right choice depends on the car and the corner. When you see a gear difference in the data, test it and see what happens to your exit speed and lap time.
Sector Selectors: Your Lap at a Glance
Sector selectors give you an instant overview of where you are faster and slower compared to another lap. Each track is divided into sectors defined by its layout, typically three or four. Each sector shows a time delta: green with a negative number means you were faster in that sector, red with a positive number means you were slower. You can click on any sector to zoom into just that portion of the track.
Example: you are faster in S2 but losing time everywhere else. S3 is the worst at +1.327s. Click it to zoom all charts into that section and investigate.
This is the fastest way to figure out where to focus. Instead of scrolling through an entire lap of telemetry data, you glance at the sector bar and immediately know which part of the track needs attention. In the example above, S3 is costing you +1.327 seconds, which wipes out the gains from S2 on its own. That is your priority.
What to look for
- Which sector has the biggest red number. That is where most of your lap time is hiding, and where you should focus your practice laps.
- Whether you are consistently faster or slower in the same sector across multiple laps. A pattern like "always slow in S3" points to a specific set of corners you need to work on, not a one-off mistake.
- The total of all sectors equals your overall delta. Sometimes you can be green in one sector and still lose time overall if a single red sector is bad enough.
Use the sector selectors as your starting point every time you compare two laps. Click on the worst sector first, and all your charts will zoom into just that section of track. Now you can look at speed, throttle, brake, and steering for those specific corners without getting distracted by the rest of the lap. Fix the worst sector first, then move on to the next one.
Putting It All Together
The real power of telemetry comes from reading charts together, not one at a time. All charts are synced to the same lap position, so you can cross-reference any moment across every data channel simultaneously.
For example, maybe the delta chart shows you losing 0.3 seconds through Turn 5. You look at the brake chart and see that you braked 10 meters later than the faster lap. That sounds good, right? But then you check the throttle chart and see that you stabbed the throttle on exit, lost traction, and had to lift. The net result was slower, not faster. Without looking at all the charts together, you would only have part of the story.
That is how you stop guessing and start actually improving. The charts give you the evidence, and comparing laps side by side gives you the context to understand what the evidence means.