How To Improve Your Lap Time With F1 26 Telemetry

F1 26 may show you a few key indicators to how fast you’re lapping, but there is no real data that can actually help you improve. Yes, we can see relative lap times and sector delta, and that is about it.

But look at all of the data that is actually available to analyse. This is our Sim Racing Setup F1 Telemetry Tool, and it unlocks all of the hidden data about every lap you drive.

You can use this data to truly analyse any lap, compare your laps to some of the fastest Pro Esports drivers in the world, and see exactly where you can improve your lap. Our F1 telemetry can show you exactly where you’re braking or accelerating compared to Pro drivers, and even has built in coaching analysis to tell you where to focus.

So lets take a look at exactly what our F1 Telemetry does, and how you can start using it completely free.

Watch our video guide on how to use F1 Telemetry

What is Sim Racing Setups F1 Telemetry

To put it simply, our F1 Telemetry unlocks all of the hidden data that F1 26 simply does not show you. Every input, every gear change, your racing line, ERS usage, tyre wear and so much more.

While this data on its own is useful as you can analyse any lap in detail, on its own it doesn’t really tell you much. However, comparing your data to drivers that are faster can transform how you approach a track.

For example, I’ll overlay Pro Esports driver Istvan Puki’s telemetry over mine. I can immediately see exactly where around a lap of Austria where I’m losing time, and when we delve deeper I can see why.

I can immediately see that Istvan is lapping 4 tenths faster than me across the whole lap. Looking closer, I can see I’m losing almost a tenth through many of the braking zones. Turn 3 and the final corner are the two areas where I’m losing the most time, so let’s take a look why.

I’ll zoom into turn 3 which is right here, and I can see a few telling signs. First of all I can see from the delta comparison that while I lose a little time through the braking and minimum speed, the majority of time loss is on the corner exit. My overall lap delta jumps from +0.153s before the acceleration zone to around +250s at the exit.

Looking at the throttle trace, I can see that I’m lifting earlier than Istvan and trailing off the throttle longer, while also getting on the throttle slightly later. Moving to the brake trace, I can see Istvan brakes slightly earlier, while trailing off the brake pedal more than me.

Now, jumping into the final corner, lets see why I’m losing +0.150s. Looking at the throttle and brake traces shows immediately why. I’m lifting off the throttle entirely for a much longer period than Istvan, while he is only lifting to 10%. Also, I’m applying more brake pressure at 58% compared to just 48% by Istvan.

If we scroll down to the speed trace, this is apparent as at the exit of the corner I’m down by roughly 10km/h.

Using track map markers to identify time loss

Now, if reading telemetry traces looks a bit overwhelming and time consuming, we have some really neat ways of identifying why you’re slower than another driver without looking at the input traces.

Heading up to the track map, you’ll see at every corner, we have these markers. These show the braking point, minimum speed and full throttle timing.

Looking at the first corner at the Red Bull Ring, just using the track map, I can see the difference between my lap and Istvan’s. Hovering over the markers shows I braked later into the first corner by 2m which is pretty good as it’s super close to Istvan.

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However, looking at the minimum speed, I was down by 9km/h. Looking down at the throttle trace, we can see why. Istvan started accelerating a little earlier than me. Finally, the time that we both reached 100% throttle was pretty identical, shown on the throttle trace and by the final green track map marker, with Istvan reaching full throttle just 3m earlier than me.

However, that minimum speed gap resulted in a time loss of +0.065s through the first corner.

AI Coaching Insights

We’ve looked at the traces and track map markers, but there is still an even easier way to quickly get feedback on why you’re losing time. And that is using our coaching insights.

In the left sidebar, you’ll see every track broken down into corner segments. These show you at a glance where you’re losing or gaining time compared to the reference lap.

With the final corner being the biggest time loss, I’ll select it to bring up our coaching insights tab. This opens a new window to the right of the track map. It also conveniently moves the track map to this corner, and zooms all telemetry traces to the selected area so we have everything we need to quickly analyse the corner.

The coaching insights provides very real feedback into each corner, with the feedback grouped by severity. The first piece of feedback highlighted is that I’m actually deploying less ERS than Istvan through turn 10, and that is something we hadn’t even looked at or considered until now. If I look at other insights it also shows I deployed boost mode 15m later.

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If I scroll down to the ERS deployment trace, I can see that on the approach to the corner Istvan has more ERS available with 12% battery compared to my 5%. This means on the corner exit, he can actually deploy more onto the start finish straight than me. You can visually see that I run out of ERS much sooner than Istvan.

Now to the second piece of feedback. I’m 8km/h down on Istvan at the exit, while my minimum speed is 7km/h down. This is something we highlighted earlier when we looked at the traces, but by just using Coaching Insights, I would immediately have known this before any further examination.

Also, it tells me I turned in earlier by 14m. Again, something we hadn’t considered until now, but something we can work on during our next laps.

Comparing any drivers lap

Comparing my lap to Istvan’s in this scenario is genuinely helpful as my time delta is only off by around half a second. So implementing any of the feedback I’ve learnt could help me close this gap. But what if my time was slower than Istvan’s by a few seconds. In that case, comparing my lap to a much much faster lap may not be ideal as the style of driving is vastly different.

Not a problem though as I can compare any lap, set by any of our users. This lets me compare a lap that is much closer to my lap time to see where similarly paced drivers are finding lap time that I’m not.

Using the compare lap module, I want to filter laps by race weekend as thats the game mode I’m racing in, so a time trial lap may not be as relevant.

Now, I can actually see that creator Formula Kai has a lap set at Austria. His lap is still faster than mine, but slower than Istvan meaning it is much closer to my lap. I’m select Kai’s lap and everything on the lap telemetry page will now update. All references will be between me and Kai, and even the coaching insights will update automatically to analyse my lap against Kai and not Istvan. And this is true of any comparison lap you load.

Again, with Kai’s lap loaded I can run through any of the processes above to find feedback and lap time gains.

Conclusion

That was a deep look at just how our F1 telemetry can be used to analyse your laps in a way that the F1 26 game simply doesn’t allow. And I’ve just scratched the surface of what our Telemetry tool can do.

We also have full race session tracking, career mode progression and tracking, AI difficulty tracking, access to our Pro setups from inside the dashboard. And something incredibly exciting with our real-time overlays, which bring the power of our telemetry to overlays while you drive.

But all of that can wait until another day. For now, you can get started with our F1 Telemetry tool completely free and start analysing your own laps. I’ll leave a card in the corner and a link in the description below, but the URL to get started is dashboard.simracingsetup.com

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• Written by Rich Article updated on August 24, 2026 Tags: Sim Racing How To Guides, Telemetry, EA Sports F1

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