The legendary System 1 is studying from certainly one of its long-time imitators. A function that has been an integral a part of video video games for many years has just lately been launched.
Each gamer is conversant in so-called ghost vehicles – whether or not from Mario Kart, Gran Turismo, Forza, or Assetto Corsa. These clear rivals within the pursuit of the very best occasions are omnipresent in racing video games.
In System 1 video games, too, they function racing benchmarks in quick qualifying rounds. Because the 2025 season, the true racing sequence has been utilizing this software to visually seize the tiny gaps of typically solely fractions of a second on the display.
After a long time, the prospect to essentially perceive the tiny variations that set the highest drivers aside is inside attain for the primary time.
Ghosts convey the clock to life
Even in its 76th yr, System 1 qualifying nonetheless represents the pursuit of absolutely the restrict. Solely right here can we see the utmost symbiosis of man and machine. With solely the clock as their opponent, every of the present 20 (22 from subsequent yr) drivers makes an attempt to set the quickest lap of the weekend.
However what do variations of 0.30 seconds (three tenths of a second), 0.02 seconds (two hundredths of a second) and even 0.001 seconds (one thousandth/millisecond) really imply?
It appears to be like clear in a desk, however what would it not seem like on the monitor if each drivers began on the similar time with out hindering one another?
How lengthy are…?
0.30 seconds is roughly how lengthy it takes a chameleon to totally prolong its tongue.0.02 seconds is roughly equal to the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. No different species flutters sooner, at round 50 to 80 occasions per second.0.001 seconds is 300 occasions sooner than the typical human blink (0.3 seconds).Typical gaps between the quickest laps in a System 1 area are often effectively under 0.5 seconds. After all, this additionally relies on the monitor, however a full second has at all times been thought-about an (obvious) eternity in System 1.
Precisely, to assist with this, the “ghost automobile” software was launched to System 1 broadcasts firstly of the 2025 season. It’s designed to show intuitively incomprehensible numerical variations into tangible tales that assist form the race weekends.
It really works precisely as players realize it from video games: Parallel to the car really being tracked by the onboard digital camera, one other car drives alongside it on the monitor. Relying on the hole, the automobiles race nearer collectively and even actually merge into one another across the circuit in Melbourne, Abu Dhabi, Spa-Francorchamps, or wherever else on the earth.
If the lead car is forward, the ghost naturally stays invisible, however due to the shut competitors on the prime of the sphere, a cat-and-mouse sport often ensues.
On the straights, the principle automobile is actually proper on the tail of the ghost automobile, solely to then take the nook higher and pull forward. Nonetheless, the benefit shortly reverses, because the clear competitor accelerates barely earlier and visually pulls away by just a few meters on the best line – that is how spectators expertise ghost vehicles.
Ghost Automobile reveals how insanely shut the battle for pole was 🤯🍿#F1 #DutchGP @McLarenF1 pic.twitter.com/GGOmMZC8bF
— System 1 (@F1) August 30, 2025
The positions at all times correspond to the road adopted on the precise lap across the monitor. The sources of data are GPS knowledge and the onboard digital camera(s) hooked up to the automobiles. The very best recognized of those is actually the everyday perspective over the helmet, wanting barely down towards the nostril of the car.
Regardless of flood of information, guide work
With exact GPS and timing knowledge, two vehicles could be superimposed within the replay, as Dean Locke, F1’s Head of Broadcast, explains in an interview with Motorsport.com:
We take the GPS knowledge and overlay it on the video footage, tag it, after which evaluate it with the onboard footage. That is principally guide work accomplished by excellent editors who’re quick and pay shut consideration.
Though this sounds easy, there are a number of pitfalls which have prevented the thought from being applied prior to now. For one factor, the info was too inaccurate for a very long time, and the processing took far too lengthy for it to be of any use to System 1 tv stations or social media groups.
In spite of everything, a number of days after qualifying, nobody feels the necessity to watch such a particular replay of a lap.
The hurdle was overcome due to new software program developed particularly for System 1, and now it takes a most of two hours from the top of the quick laps. “A few of our broadcast companions say that’s high-quality as a result of they’ll use it of their pre-shows the following day,” Locke reveals, giving an perception into the considering behind the scenes. “However I’d wish to have it sooner. Our purpose is half-hour after the top of the session.”
The explanation for this ongoing means of comparability remains to be variance. As a result of:
We’re very assured concerning the GPS positioning of the automobile entrance to again, however our left-right positioning is much less dependable.
Moreover, the digital camera angles usually are not an identical from automobile to automobile: “There’s a tolerance of 5 p.c for horizontal and vertical picture variations within the onboard cameras. That sounds small, however it makes an enormous distinction if you evaluate knowledge.”
That’s why each single meter of the lap nonetheless must be recorded manually with the intention to synchronize the GPS and digital camera photographs when it comes to time and placement. This enables the deviations within the GPS coordinates to be compensated for right down to the centimeter.
Nonetheless, in keeping with Dean Locke, the info groups on the Grand Prix are continually engaged on enhancements, for instance, to scrub up indicators from interference and thus present the workers accountable for the ghost automobile with even greater knowledge high quality as quickly as doable.
As well as, System 1 officers may additionally take a look at AI within the close to future to automate not less than a part of the method and thus cut back the ready time between the end line and the published of the ghost lap.
Only a borrowing from video video games
In the meantime, the ghost automobile is in no way the one reminder of video video games. Concepts from gaming now additionally play a decisive position in how viewers on TV or on-line comply with the person periods, from apply and qualifying to the race.For a while now, System 1 broadcasters have been displaying a game-like HUD in the course of the viewers’ field of regard, extra exactly on the halo safety ring, which kinds a form of dome over the driving force’s cockpit. This shows far more info than simply the pace. It additionally exhibits positions, throttle/brake, DRS standing, and RPM, for instance.
The distinction between the visible presentation and the official sport (F1 2025 from Codemasters), which is reissued yearly, is changing into more and more blurred. What would as soon as have been thought-about absurd is now the usual. It’s because viewers merely count on extra info and extra storytelling than they did within the heyday of Michael Schumacher.
Subsequent chapter 2026 – the System 1 of tomorrow
In the meantime, the following main technological revolution in System 1 is scheduled for 2026. When the season begins in March subsequent yr, utterly new vehicles will likely be racing across the tracks – recognizable, after all, however with quite a lot of new options each in and out.
For instance, within the engine, entrance and rear wings, and the automobile’s electronics. It will give drivers entry to a time-limited enhance mode. Showcasing this successfully would be the subsequent problem for the minds behind the trendy photographs.
These adjustments create new challenges, however in addition they open up contemporary alternatives to play with digital shows. Further motivated by Apple’s F1 movie, which was successful in cinemas this yr, the route is evident:
We’re already sitting in workshops to search out out what knowledge we may have and what tales we are able to inform from it.With higher connectivity within the automobile, we are able to present greater than we’re in a position to at the moment.The goal at the moment is to enchantment to each die-hard followers from previous a long time and a youthful, broader viewers. This begins with the Halo HUD and now ends with the ghost automobile for qualifying rounds – not less than to date.
A ghost automobile works for everybody. Die-hard followers can see who was barely off the best line, whereas informal followers can perceive why the McLarens aren’t on pole this time.
