COTA Friday Practice Sector Heatmaps and Takeaways

Two practice sessions took place at COTA today ahead of IndyCar’s first race at the circuit this Sunday. Practice one was relatively slow on track with all drivers doing ten or fewer laps, but the second session of the day saw more people come out and run quality laps.

Here are the heatmaps from the first two practice sessions:

The purple boxes are the above average sectors for a driver, and red is below average. The sector times were taken from each driver’s quickest sector time for the whole session. Sectors 5-8 are the esses (technical, high downforce at moderate/high speed needed) and Sectors 1, 11, 12, and 20 are the straightaways, with 11 and 12 making up the notoriously long back straight.

Here were some of my initial takeaways from Twitter:

Rossi, Hunter-Reay and Leist all looked quick through the S-curves, a great combination of high speed with high downforce is needed to be quick through there.

— Single Seater (@thesingleseater) March 22, 2019

Sector heatmap from P2: @FRosenqvist had blazing speed through the S-section. No drivers had especially impressive top end speed on the back straight this time around, and Sectors 14-17 seem to be creating a lot of separation between drivers. pic.twitter.com/bBkYTW0dVo

— Single Seater (@thesingleseater) March 22, 2019

This could all change as teams modify their cars before qualifying of course, but I think downforce in the esses and the third part of the track is being prioritized over squeezing out top end speed. @FollowAndretti looks like they’re going to be competitive Sunday as well.

— Single Seater (@thesingleseater) March 23, 2019

Practice three will take place tomorrow at 11 a.m. and then qualifying will be in the afternoon at three in the afternoon. I’m liking how Rossi and Rosenqvist have been looking in these first two sessions, expect them to be up there tomorrow!