- Practise race pace, not a hero lap: a long run in race conditions, measured for spread and trend.
- Get your numbers for the race distance: typical fuel per lap, tyre wear per lap, and what a stop really costs.
- Fix your most expensive corners against a teammate's lap in the same car and settings.
- Keep it clean: an invalid lap in qualifying is a lost lap; in the race it is a warning.
- Review race night the same way, and carry the numbers into next week.
What league racing rewards
A time-trial leaderboard rewards one perfect lap. A league race rewards a different set of skills, and each one is measurable in practice:
| Skill | What decides it | What to measure |
|---|---|---|
| Race pace | Your typical lap, not your best | Spread and typical lap over a long run |
| Clean driving | Laps lost to track limits, warnings, penalties | Invalid laps per session |
| Strategy | Fuel, tyre life, the cost of a stop | Typical fuel per lap, wear per lap, in-lap and out-lap times |
| Qualifying | One or two attempts, under pressure | Theoretical best and time available |
| Racecraft | Being on the pace while defending or attacking | Consistency late in a run, when it is hardest |
A league week
Many leagues run one circuit a week with the same car rules for everyone. That makes the week a natural training block. Keep the car, assists and session type the same as the event, so your quickest lap of the week is offered as the target for every session that follows.
- Early in the week: a baseline run.Eight to ten laps at race pace in the event's conditions. Note your typical lap, spread, leaking sector and invalid laps. This is the number the week is measured against.
- Midweek: three sections.Chase a faster lap — your own best, or a teammate's lap file — and let the practice plan rank the three most expensive stretches. Drill one per evening: three clean laps, one change, compare the exit.
- Race simulation: a long run.A stint at race pace for the fuel and tyre numbers: typical kilograms per lap, wear per lap on your race compound, and an in-lap and out-lap if you will stop.
- Qualifying practice.A handful of single-lap attempts in the event's qualifying format. Your theoretical best says what is in the car; the attempts say how much of it you can find on demand.
- Race night, then review.Race. Afterwards, open the session: fuel and tyres lap by lap, the consistency trend, laps lost to track limits — and what to work on next week.
Race pace: the typical lap is the one that counts
In a race your best lap matters less than your twentieth. Look at the gap between your best and your typical lap: in the worked example it is 0.227 s a lap (1:20.950 against 1:21.177). Over a twenty-lap race that is 4.5 seconds — often the whole gap to the car in front, found without any new speed.
Two numbers point at where it goes. The leaking sector — where your laps lose most on average against your own best — and the brake-point spread, which flags the corner whose braking wanders most lap to lap. Fix the wandering corner with a fixed reference, and the typical lap moves towards the best. See consistency.
Fuel and tyres for your race distance
- Fuel. StintLab's typical consumption is the median of full, pit-free laps. Multiply by the race laps and add the margin you are comfortable with; fuel on board divided by kilograms per lap tells you, at any point, how many laps you can run at this pace.
- Tyres. Wear per lap on each compound from a long run, and the wear at which your lap times start to drop, give each compound's useful stint length.
- Stops. The in-lap and out-lap against two typical laps is what a stop costs you on this circuit. A strategy with one stop fewer must save more than that on track.
All of it comes from the fuel, tyres and pit stops panel on F1 25 laps, lap by lap, with pit laps marked and kept out of every pace figure.
Qualifying: one lap, measured
Qualifying is where the theoretical best earns its keep. After a few attempts, it tells you how much time you have already driven but not in one lap — in the example, 0.283 s between the best sectors and the best lap. If that number is large, qualifying is a consistency problem: practise stringing the lap together. If it is small, the time is not in your sectors; it is in a faster target.
Invalid laps matter most here. A lap binned for track limits is a lost attempt — the quickest lap of the example evening was one. StintLab keeps invalid laps on the list so you can see them, and never lets them set a best.
Share laps with your teammates
Every lap StintLab records is a plain file, and the same file is how laps travel between teammates. Send your best lap_<n>.json to a teammate; they import it and it becomes a target for their laps — with a full practice plan — as long as the car, track, conditions and settings match. It never counts as their driving and never sets their personal best.
For the team's strategy chat, View → Session report and Print / Save PDF… lay your recent sessions out one per sheet — best lap, theoretical best, consistency, fuel and tyres — as a PDF anyone can open. A lap-times.csv lands beside it for a shared spreadsheet.
Your data, your team's business
StintLab has no server and no account, so your laps are never uploaded anywhere. StintLab shares nothing: what rivals can see of your car is decided by the game's own telemetry setting, and a lap file only leaves your PC when you send it. And because the app shows nothing on screen while you drive, there is nothing to distract you — or anyone watching your stream.
Questions
Can StintLab see my rivals' telemetry?
No. Many of the game's telemetry packets carry an entry for every car on the grid, but StintLab records your own car and nothing else. The only other laps it ever holds are lap files someone chose to send you.
Does it matter that league races are online?
StintLab records your own car from the telemetry the game sends in whatever session you are driving; nothing in it depends on the session being offline. The in-game setting for whether your telemetry is public or restricted changes what other players can see of your car, not what StintLab records.
Is using StintLab allowed in leagues?
League rules are each league's own, so check yours. What StintLab does is read the telemetry the game itself broadcasts, on your own PC. It shows nothing over the game while you drive — no overlay, no pop-ups — and it never touches the game.
Can I use a practice lap as the target for a race lap?
Not as an automatic target: laps are matched on the game's exact session type, so Practice 1 is compared with Practice 1, Short Qualifying with Short Qualifying and Race with Race — even Q1 and Q3 are kept apart. You can still overlay any two laps of one session yourself, and practising in the same session type as the event keeps your targets available.
How do I share a lap with a teammate?
Laps → Open saved laps folder, find the session, and send them lap_<n>.json. They choose Laps → Import reference lap… and it becomes a target for their laps in the same car, track, conditions and settings. It never counts as their driving.