> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://playbook.smedleygroup.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Watchparty > The real-time Formula 1 data platform and pit wall webapp: watch live sessions or replay any archived weekend with identical behaviour. Watchparty is Smedley Group Advanced Technology's Formula 1 data platform and pit wall webapp. It turns live and historical F1 timing, telemetry and weather data into a windowed workspace of widgets: timing towers, lap-time charts, track maps, tyre degradation models and a strategy engine, all built on the same versioned data underneath. ![The GPS tab of the default workspace mid-race: Timing Tower, Track Map, Race Control, the tab strip and the transport bar (Madrid 2026)](https://mintcdn.com/smedley_group/WIVw2qoV9CmKwoUE/images/watchparty/workspace.png?fit=max\&auto=format\&n=WIVw2qoV9CmKwoUE\&q=85\&s=544cc0eddcb09cdc503d8692e7718d12) *** ## What You Can Do * **Watch a session live.** As soon as a session is underway, Watchparty ingests the live feed and streams it to you lap by lap, sector by sector. * **Replay any archived weekend.** Once a session has been captured (live or backfilled from historical data), you can open it again later. It behaves identically to a live session: same widgets, same insights, same interactions. * **Compare drivers, tyres and strategies.** Overlay lap times, compare telemetry traces, rank tyre degradation, and see how a race's strategy could have played out under different assumptions. > [!NOTE] > > Live and replayed sessions are indistinguishable to every widget. They arrive over the same channels in the same shape, so nothing in the app has to special-case which one you are looking at. *** ## How the Data Gets to You Live timing and telemetry arrive from OpenF1's live feed. Historical weekends are backfilled from FastF1. Both routes converge on the same pipeline before anything is stored: the raw payload is archived first, then a single normalisation step turns it into rows in the platform's TimescaleDB store, and publishes each normalised record onto a Redis channel for that session. From there, an insights layer subscribes to the same stream and computes the metrics you actually see: tyre degradation models, fuel-corrected lap times, running order, track evolution and more. Each metric is versioned, so you always know which version of the maths produced what you're looking at. A gateway service is the only door into any of this from outside: it exposes a REST API for historical queries and a WebSocket stream for live updates. The webapp you're using talks to nothing else, not the database, not Redis directly, only the gateway. Read the full story in [Data Journey](/software/internal/watchparty/concepts/data-journey). *** ## Picking a Session ![The session picker on the 2026 Madrid weekend card](https://mintcdn.com/smedley_group/zwm6wmhxgH8zyABx/images/watchparty/session-picker.png?fit=max\&auto=format\&n=zwm6wmhxgH8zyABx\&q=85\&s=97082e32e7b1f66655df2dc6fc9cbb79) Sessions are organised as a year stack: each season is a row, and within a season, weekends fan out as a deck of cards, one card per race weekend. Navigate years with the arrows or by clicking a peeking row, and step between weekends within a year using the arrows, a drag, or the mouse wheel. Each weekend card offers one session per slot (practice, qualifying, race), preferring the canonical FastF1 data once it exists. A slot that holds more than one copy of the same session shows one small button per source instead of a single button, labelled **FastF1**, **OpenF1** or **Pre-race**, so you can open exactly the copy you mean rather than only the card's default. > [!TIP] > > A source label is about where the data came from, not whether a stream happens to be open right now. **Pre-race** means the slot holds only a lap-0 prediction loaded before the weekend, with no timing in it yet. *** ## Your Workspace A session opens as a workbook of tabs. Each tab is a grid of widget windows you can drag, resize and close, and every tab remembers its own arrangement, including where a closed widget sat so it comes back in the same place. * **Add a widget** from the palette on the left: drag its card onto the grid, or click it to drop it into the first free slot. A widget already open on the tab shows greyed out; one instance per tab. * **Manage tabs** in the strip along the top: **+** adds an empty tab, double-click a name to rename it, and the **x** deletes it. The last remaining tab cannot be deleted. * **Playback, session and driver selection are shared** across tabs, so switching tabs never pauses or reseeks the session. * **Reset layout**, at the right of the transport footer, restores the default workbook after a confirmation. It discards every custom tab and arrangement. * **Display**, next to Reset layout, turns on display mode for a wall screen or TV: the tab strip, the palette, the transport footer and every widget title bar disappear, leaving only widget contents. The layout is frozen while it is on, so nothing can be dragged, resized, dropped or closed, and playback keeps running underneath. Press **Escape** to come back; there is no on-screen exit button, and the mode is not remembered across a reload. Your arrangement is saved in the browser as you go, so it is there the next time you open Watchparty. The default workbook has thirteen tabs and opens on **GPS**: | Tab | What is open | | - | - | | GPS | Timing Tower, Track Map, Race Control | | Race | Timing Tower, Race History, Race Control | | Stints | Timing Tower, Stints, Race Control, Weather: Temperature, Weather: Wind Speed | | Strategy | Timing Tower, Tyre Strategy, Pit Window | | Telemetry | Telemetry, Laps | | Track Dominance | Track Dominance, Laps | | Weather | All six weather charts | | Pit Stops | Pit Stops | | RST | Predicted Race History, Predicted Pylon, Strategy Status, Strategy Table, Stop Sensitivity | | Tyre Deg | Tyre Deg Table, Corrected Laps Plot, the three Tyre Deg Ranking charts and their tables | | Lap Times | Laps, Lap Times | | Stint Times | Stints Table, Stint Lap Times | | WP-1 | Lap Counter, Laps To Go, Tyre Deg & Life, Pit Stop Strategies, Pit Window, Predicted Race History, Predicted Podium | > [!TIP] > > Race-only widgets such as Race History and Pit Window show a plain not-applicable state on a practice or qualifying session rather than an empty chart, so the same workbook works for every session type. *** ## Widget Catalogue Every widget below reads from the same live/replay stream through the gateway. Where a widget only makes sense for certain session types, the card says so; elsewhere it shows a plain not-applicable state rather than an empty chart. ### Timing > **[Timing Tower](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/timing-tower)** > > Live running order, gaps and tyre compound for every driver. > **[Lap Times](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/lap-times)** > > Lap-by-lap comparison across drivers, raw or fuel-corrected. > **[Race History](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/race-history)** > > Race only: position and gap evolution across the whole race. > **[Laps](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/laps-table)** > > A sortable, filterable table of every recorded lap. > **[Pit Stops](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/pit-stops)** > > Every driver's stop count and pit lane time, in running order. > **[Lap Counter and Laps To Go](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/lap-counter)** > > Race only: the current lap against the race distance, and the laps remaining, as large readouts. ### Track > **[Track Map](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/track-map)** > > Live car positions plotted on the circuit outline. > **[Telemetry](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/telemetry)** > > Speed, throttle, brake and gear traces compared between laps. > **[Track Dominance](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/track-dominance)** > > Which driver is fastest through each section of the lap. > **[Track Evolution](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/track-evolution)** > > Race and practice: how much faster the track gets as rubber goes down. ### Tyres > **[Stints](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/stints)** > > Tyre compound and age across every driver's stints. > **[Stints Table](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/stints-table)** > > Every stint as a sortable, filterable row, and a drag source. > **[Stint Lap Times](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/stint-lap-times)** > > Raw lap times within a stint, with no analytics in the way. > **[Tyre Deg Table](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/tyre-deg-table)** > > Race and practice: degradation rate per driver per stint. > **[Deg Fit Plot](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/deg-fit-plot)** > > Race and practice: the degradation curve fitted to a stint. > **[Corrected Laps Plot](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/corrected-laps-plot)** > > Race and practice: the corrected laps behind the degradation model. > **[Tyre Deg Ranking](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/tyre-deg-ranking)** > > Race and practice: drivers ranked by degradation rate, per compound. > **[Deg Prediction](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/deg-prediction)** > > The pre-race degradation figure per compound, as the strategy engine was given it. > **[Live Deg Prediction](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/live-deg-prediction)** > > The measured median degradation per compound, with its spread. > **[Tyre Strategy](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/tyre-strategy)** > > Race only: every driver's stint sequence laid out on one timeline. > **[Tyre Deg & Life](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/tyre-deg-life)** > > Race only: pre-race degradation and tyre life beside the actual, per compound. ### Strategy > **[Pit Window](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/pit-window)** > > Race only: the live gap picture around one driver, with modelled pit losses. > **[Pit Stop Strategies](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/pit-stop-strategies)** > > Race only: the predicted winner's two best pre-race strategies, fixed from the lap-0 snapshot. > **[Race Strategy Tool](/software/internal/watchparty/strategy/index)** > > Race only: the strategy engine's seven widgets, from status to predicted finish. ### Context > **[Race Control](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/race-control)** > > Flags, safety cars and official messages as they're issued. > **[Weather](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/weather)** > > Track and air temperature, wind, humidity and rain, as of the playhead. > **[Weather Charts](/software/internal/watchparty/widgets/weather-charts)** > > The same readings plotted across the whole session. *** ## Concepts > **[Data Journey](/software/internal/watchparty/concepts/data-journey)** > > How data gets from OpenF1 and FastF1 to your screen. > **[Insights and Versioning](/software/internal/watchparty/concepts/insights-and-versioning)** > > How metrics are computed, versioned and kept trustworthy. > **[Fuel Correction](/software/internal/watchparty/concepts/fuel-correction)** > > Why lap times are corrected for fuel load, and where you see it. > **[Telemetry Degradation](/software/internal/watchparty/concepts/telemetry-degradation)** > > Why some sessions show frozen telemetry, and what it means. 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