Yes! Even the very best drivers in the world compare their data with teammates to go quicker.

For example, at Abu Dhabi, one of the very best F1 drivers in the world, Mark Webber, used Sebastian Vettel's data to find 0.5 s in sector 2, whilst he was fighting for the world championship!

If his teammate were not quicker than him, the engineers would have assumed they were getting the best out of the car. To find 0.5 s a lap improvement would cost Red Bull millions of pounds and take a lot of effort, whereas Mark found this time in a 10-minute analysis session.

No! It used to be the case that to perform effective driver analysis you needed complicated equipment and specialised training to get the most out of it.

However, technology has progressed to the point where the equipment is now small, inexpensive, and easy to set up with no beacons required to get lap times. The integration of video and GPS data has made the process of improving lap times much easier.

One of the biggest improvements has been in driver training software. By designing the software to be used by the driver instead of the engineer, the hard work of finding improvements can be done by the computer, which can be presented to the driver in a clear and concise format. Race car data logging is no longer the sole preserve of the specialist data engineer.