Allistair Lee

Why I finally ditched WordPress for a static site

Allistair Lee — Fri, 23 May 2025 22:17:31 GMT

I've been using WordPress since its early days and to me, it's familiar and comfortable. It's always there when I needed it. And not to mention, it powers over 40% of the internet* for a reason.

But lately, I've been thinking that maybe it's time for a change as I don't need all the features that WordPress offers for my personal website.

Still love WordPress

Just to be clear, I'm not "breaking up" with WordPress. It's a great platform and it's still my go-to for client work. Clients are familiar with it and it's easy to use.

But for my own little corner of the web? I wanted something that didn't feel like I was managing a giant piece of machinery. I just wanted to write. No plugins to update, no database backups to worry about, no security patches that break everything on a Sunday night.

The search for a new home

While I was looking for a new home for my website, I went on a bit of a deep dive into the world of static site generators. I started with Jekyll, because it's widely known as the OG of static site generators (SSG). But it just didn't click with me. It felt like I was spending more time fighting the configuration with Ruby.

So I switched to Hugo. All the posts that I've read about how fast it was, it's true. It's like a rocket ship. But I'm not familiar with Go, and it felt a bit like trying to build a Lego set where the instructions were written in a language I only half-understood. Every time I wanted to do something a little custom, I felt like I was hitting a wall.

Then I found Eleventy (11ty)

And then, I found 11ty. It clicked with me immediately for some reason because building with it, it felt like I was back in the early days of the web - just me and some HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No magic, no hidden "blocks" I couldn't figure out how to move. Just a straightforward way to build a site that looks exactly how I want it to. It doesn't force me to use a specific language or a weird folder structure. It just works.

How it’s going

So far, I'm actually having fun again. Everything on here is a choice I made, not a default some plugin set for me.

I don't know exactly where I'm going with this website, but for the first time in a long time, I'm actually excited to find out. For now, I'm just enjoying the process, and transferring my old posts over.

Catch you on the next build! 🚀

* Accurate at the time of writing.

Starting a digital garden

Allistair Lee — Wed, 28 May 2025 21:51:08 GMT

Recently came across this article about digital gardens and it made me rethink my approach to blogging. So, I've decided to start one by adding a /notes section.

Why /notes?

The problem I had with WordPress - and my old mindset around blogging - was that every post felt like it had to be a perfect piece of work. It needed a catchy headline, a polished intro, and a tidy concluding thought. If I didn't have all the answers yet, the post just sat in my drafts folder until it became irrelevant - mostly due to me spending time fighting the "expectations" of what a blog should be rather than writing.

Now that I've switched to 11ty, it's much easier to just write and commit without worrying about it being perfect.

Seeds, not statues

In the notes section, I'll be dropping in things that don't quite fit the "Post" mold:

Growing ideas
Half-finished thoughts or posts
Quick technical snippets (like how I set up 11ty)

As these grow, they might eventually graduate into posts. Or they might just stay as useful little "seeds" of information.

Learning (and wrestling) in public

The big goal here is to stop overthinking. I used to think that unless I had a complete post, it wasn't worth publishing.

This changes that.

Who knows, these little notes might be useful to someone else; they'll definitely be useful to "future me" when I forget how I solved it six months from now.

Keeping it simple

I'm keeping the setup as simple as possible. Each note is just a Markdown file sitting in my src/notes/ directory. They aren't meant to be "finished" - they're meant to be tended. Some notes will wither and get deleted if they turn out to be dead ends. Others might grow into something much bigger.

For now, I'm just happy to have a place where I can plant a seed and see what happens.

Catch you on the next build! 🚀

Data Breaches, and the Illusion of Security

Allistair Lee — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 21:01:08 GMT

It seems like every time I read the news, there's another headline about a company losing control of its users' data. It's become so common that it's almost easy to tune out - until you realize your own life is caught up in those headlines.

I recently decided to stop ignoring it and actually looked into where my own information has ended up. Have I Been Pwned is a good resource for this. Lo and behold, there I was, listed in breaches from years ago - services I don't even use anymore, but that still held a piece of my identity. It was a strange, unsettling feeling, realizing just how much of my personal history is floating around in databases I no longer have any control over.

Bubble size represents number of compromised records.

Source: Have I Been Pwned

What 20 years of breaches actually looks like

When I see the data laid out like this rather than reading the headlines one at a time, the scale becomes more difficult to dismiss. Some of the biggest bubbles in that chart aren't obscure forums or niche apps, they're platforms I trusted with my email, my password, sometimes my phone number, date of birth, and more.

But a few things stand out to me.

Breaches aren't slowing down. The early-to-mid 2010s had some big ones, but the mid-to-late 2010s is where things really accelerated. More services online means more data collected, and more targets.

The scale is genuinely hard to process. Some of these incidents exposed hundreds of millions of records in a single event. That's equivalent to the entire population of a country having their information out in the open at once.

Companies are often slow to disclose. Sometimes by months or years. By the time the "we take your security seriously" email arrives, the data has already been circulating for ages.

The illusion of security

Here's the uncomfortable part: for most of these breaches, there's nothing I did wrong. I signed up for a service, trusted them with my data, and they failed to protect it. The security burden sits almost entirely on the companies, but the consequences land on me.

The standard advice after a breach is to change my password. Fine. But my email address doesn't change. My date of birth doesn't change. Once that information is out there, it's out there permanently. There's no patch for that.

What I can actually do

I can't un-breach myself. But I can reduce the impact.

A password manager means every service gets a different password. One breach doesn't hand over the keys to everything else.
Email aliases for every service I sign up for. If that address starts getting spam, I know where it came from and I can kill it.
Two-factor authentication wherever it's offered. An extra step, yes. But it means a leaked password alone isn't enough.

None of this makes me immune but when the next breach happens, at leastthe damage is contained.

Catch you on the next build! 🚀

Skyscraper Live: Alex Honnold vs. Taipei 101

Allistair Lee — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 03:56:11 GMT

Alex Honnold just free soloed Taipei 101.

1,667 feet of glass and steel. No ropes. No harness. He topped out in under 92 minutes, and I spent most of that time forgetting to breathe. I climb at my local gym on weekends but that context made it worse, not better. I know just enough to understand how wrong any single moment could go.

The Technical Beta: Steel vs. Granite

For those that are familiar with climbing, you know it's all about "reading the rock" - transforming a climb from a desperate struggle against gravity into a strategic, efficient, and successful process. But this? It's just the geometry of the architecture and the friction against metal and treated glass. It's like trying to scale a vertical mirror.

But Honnold did it, very gracefully at that. He broke the climb into three sections, and watching them unfold in sequence was watching a man translate a language no one else speaks.

The Slabs (0–100m): The opening is all Ruyi flared geometries - architectural flourishes he spent months re-contextualizing as edges. He'd pause on sections that looked completely blank, find that millimeter-thin gap, and float on to the next hold. It's like watching someone solve a high-stakes LEGO set where he had memory of the instructions.
The Bamboo Boxes (100–450m): The core of the climb, and the true test. Eight stacked sections that make up the midsection. Each box tilts outward at a 7-15° angle. He wasn't just going up; he was also fighting the gravity that was trying very hard to peel him off the wall on every single move for hundreds of meters. At the top of each box, the "Dragon" flares require massive core tension.
The Towers & Spire (450m+): By the time he hit the observation deck, the wind was audible on the stream - a reminder that it is not just a battle of the gravity but also a battle of the wind. Then, there's the spire - an exposed steel in the open sky, and precise moves that demand everything he has left. Then, quietly, he topped out. No fanfare. Just a man standing at the very top, overlooking Taipei.

"The challenge is the overall physicality. I don't know how it's going to feel until I'm on it."

Alex Honnold

A language only he speaks

Honnold's scale is incomprehensible. It's a masterclass in translation - taking the cold, alien geometry of a skyscraper and finding a way to make it legible.

I'll be back at the gym next weekend, probably falling off the same V4 I've been working on for almost a month. It's a completely different world, but after watching that, I think I get the "why" a little bit more. For now, I'm just happy to keep working on my own local sequences.

Catch you on the next build! 🚀

F1 2026 Australia: The New Era Begins

Allistair Lee — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 04:01:23 GMT

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- Race Winner

- Fastest Lap

- Race Laps

The 2026 era is here. New regs, new power units, new everything - and Mercedes walked in and took 1–2 at the season opener because they made the right call while Ferrari made the wrong one.

The headline is Russell winning. The real story? Ferrari had everything they needed and somehow left it on the table.

Section 01 - The 2026 Regulations

Speed trace comparison from sector timing data - 2025 vs 2026 pole laps.

Before the race breakdown, a quick comparison of the 2025 and 2026 poles. Russell's 2026 pole was roughly 3 seconds slower than Norris's pole here in 2025. Three full seconds. To put that in perspective, a solid upgrade package at a top team is usually worth a tenth or two. Three seconds is basically an entire development generation, just handed back overnight.

But the question isn't whether the cars are slower, it's where the time went. Below is a simulated speed trace comparison between the 2025 and 2026 pole laps, built from sector timing data.

Two areas eat up most of the time loss.

High-speed corners - less downforce, heavier car, simpler floor. The 2026 car is just slower everywhere it needs grip. Lower entry speed, compromised exit, and the deficit cascades through the whole corner sequence. You can feel it watching onboards.
Long straights - the new power unit deploys energy differently, and you can actually see it in the trace as a plateau where the 2025 car just kept pulling away. Battery depletion is a hard constraint now, not just something engineers mention in press conferences.

Regulation resets are always messy at first. Look back to 2022, when they introduced a major technical overhaul, and the cars were dramatically slower than 2021 too. But within 18 months, most of it was clawed back. The question that actually matters this season isn't how slow the cars are right now - it's which team figures out the new rules fastest. That answer is going to define the next few years way more than Round 1 did.

With that said, let's get into the details of the race.

Section 02 - Final Standings

Final Standings - Gap to Leader (Top 10)

Drivers who finished a lap down are shown with a fixed bar. Gap values are final race intervals from the timing system.

That Mercedes gap looks pretty decisive on paper, but it came from nailing the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) pit stop timing, not from raw pace. Strip out those two windows and this race was far closer than the 10+ seconds suggests. The pace data backs that up - more on that in a bit.

Verstappen in P6 from P20 is the number this chart massively undersells. Fourteen positions, fastest lap on older tyres, 9 points from a weekend that started with a wall. That bar looks ordinary, but the drive absolutely wasn't. The Red Bull wasn't a P6 car but it was a car that started P20.

And look at P5 through P10. A handful of seconds covering five drivers from four different teams. That's what a regulation reset looks like when everyone's still figuring out their cars. Give it six months and we'll see development stretch those gaps out again. But right now? It's genuinely tight and I'm loving this new era of F1.

Section 03 - Race Strategy

Stint Strategy

Tyre Stints - Top 10 Finishers

Vertical markers indicate VSC/SC deployment laps. Stint lengths shown inside each block.

I believe this is where the race was won and lost.

Hadjar's engine gave up on Lap 11, triggering the first VSC. A pit during a VSC allows drivers to switch to fresher tyres while losing significantly less time. This is because all cars on track must run at a slower, mandated pace, so the "delta" in the pit lane is smaller. Mercedes understood this and brought both cars in immediately. Ferrari left both drivers out.

Then it happened again. Bottas had an issue around Lap 18, triggering a second VSC. Same window but the Ferrari once again left both drivers out.

Two VSC windows. Two chances. Zero action from Ferrari. That's not bad luck - that's a strategic call that was wrong twice in the same race. It was difficult to watch.

The stint chart tells the whole story visually. Mercedes ran roughly even stints because pitting early bought them clean air and fresh rubber. Ferrari's super long first stint with a compressed second shows that the team missed the window and had to scramble afterwards. Everything after that was just damage control.

Norris ran two stops in the top 6, cycling back to Mediums for the final stint. Looked aggressive on paper. In practice it was roughly neutral - track position lost, fresher pace gained. Net result: P5, which is probably about where the McLaren sat on pace anyway. Smart race management, even if the chart doesn't look spectacular.

Pit Stop Execution

Stint strategy only tells part of the story. We also have to look at the pit stop execution to fill in the rest.

Average Pitlane Time by Team

Total pitlane time (entry to exit) averaged across all race stops. Sorted fastest to slowest. Hover for exact values and stop count.

Ferrari's pit crew actually delivered - they beat Mercedes by a second and a half on average in the pit lane. But a fast stop on the wrong lap is still a bad stop, and Mercedes' 1-2 win is proof that the right strategy call beats a quicker pit stop.

Section 04 - Race Pace

Race Pace - Clean Air Laps Only

Box spans the middle 50% of clean laps. Vertical line is median, dot is mean. Whiskers are min/max after outlier removal. Hover for full stats.

For this, I strip out lap 1, VSC laps, pit-out laps, and statistical outliers - isolating each driver's true pace in clean, representative conditions. Box width is basically a proxy for consistency. Tight box means the driver was laying down controlled, similar laps all race. Wide box means disruption - traffic, tyre issues, incident recovery. And consistency compounds. A consistent tenth per lap is five seconds by the chequered flag.

Here I'm comparing each driver's pace rank against their actual finishing position. If someone is faster here than where they finished, something cost them - strategy, traffic, incidents. That gap between pace and result is the weekend's real story hiding in the numbers.

Verstappen is the obvious one. The Red Bull's average and median sat at the fast end - but the box is the widest in the group. That's not a car problem. That's fourteen overtakes. Every time he was stuck behind a slower car, he was in dirty air, braking early, running compromised lines. The raw speed was clearly there albeit not as dominant as the Mercedes or Ferrari. Starting from the back just turned it into variance.

Mercedes and Ferrari sit close enough on this chart that the strategy difference becomes genuinely painful to look at. Ferrari had the car. They had the pace. The result gap is a strategy story, not a performance one.

Section 05 - Driver Spotlight

Grid: P20 → Finish: P6 +14 places

P20 after a qualifying crash. Gained 14 places, fastest lap on older rubber, nine points from a weekend that could easily have been a zero. The pace chart puts the Red Bull right at the fast end. If he starts from the front in Shanghai, I think we're going to see something very different very quickly.

18 Years Old · 4 Points on Debut

Eighteen years old. First ever grand prix. And he held off a four-time world champion for multiple laps before the pace gap made it inevitable. No panic, just clean, composed racing under pressure that most rookies don't show in their first season, let alone their first race.

Home Grand Prix · Crashed on Reconnaissance Lap

Cold tyres, a torque spike from the new hybrid system, a kerb at Turn 4 - and he was done before the formation lap even started. At his home race, that was hard to watch. McLaren lost half their potential constructors' haul before a single racing lap. One zero in a 24-race season shouldn't define anything, but it does eat into the margin for error for the rest of the year.

Team Debut · Hulkenberg DNS (Technical)

Audi's first ever grand prix as a works team and Hulkenberg was out before the start with a technical issue - so zero reference data from the experienced driver for the whole race. Bortoleto went and got P9 anyway. Without a team-mate to compare against it's hard to read too much into it, but that's a data point that exists now. There's something worth keeping an eye on here.

Section 06 - Championship Standings

Drivers' Championship Standings

Points auto-calculated from race results. Fastest-lap bonus applied where applicable (P1–P10 only).

Constructors' Championship Standings

Cumulative team points from all completed rounds this season.

We're one race in, and Mercedes lead both championships after a perfect 1–2 - that's the maximum constructors' haul from a single race, 43 points, early gap opened. Ferrari are second on 27. That's a 16-point deficit after just one round.

McLaren's total reflects the Piastri DNS more than the car's actual speed. That zero doesn't define their championship, but it does eat into the buffer for the rest of the year.

Red Bull's constructors' tally looks modest - but honestly, between the qualifying crash and Hadjar's DNF, a total of zero was on the cards. This is damage limitation, and the pace chart says they'll be in a very different position soon.

Box, box - see you next race. 🏎️

Up Next

F1 2026 China: Sprint

Allistair Lee — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 02:35:20 GMT

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- Sprint Winner

- Fastest Lap

- Sprint Laps

Russell wins again. First grand prix, and first sprint, and he's won both. The headline is the win streak. The real story?

First four laps saw Russell, and Hamilton swapping the lead multiple times. Then Lindblad's Racing Bulls gave up on lap 11. And on lap 12, Hulkenberg and Bottas both stopped within moments of each other. Three cars, two laps, and that gave the race director no choice.

The Safety Car (SC) came out on lap 13. In a 19-lap sprint, everyone will take that opportunity to get on fresh tyres. Russell was first to pit, and he was followed in quick succession by Leclerc, Norris, and Hamilton.

And from there, Russell controlled the race to the end.

Section 01 - Final Standings

Final Standings - Gap to Leader (Top 10)

Gap values are final sprint intervals from the timing system. DNFs and drivers outside the top 10 omitted.

Russell's margin looks tight on paper - but strip out the SC and he may have had a larger gap to Leclerc. The Ferrari pair in P2 and P3 is the interesting read. Leclerc at 0.674s. Hamilton at 2.554s. Both pitted when the SC came out, same lap, same conditions - but Hamilton's stop was over four seconds slower due to double stacking.

And then there's Verstappen at P9. Zero sprint points. Nine-tenths of a second behind Bearman in a Haas. I don't care what happened with the car setup or the SC timing - a four-time world champion finishing behind a Haas is a data point that needs addressing quickly.

Look at P4 through P8. Norris, Antonelli, Piastri, Lawson, and Bearman - four different teams. Everyone's still figuring their cars out and the midfield is genuinely competitive.

Section 02 - Sprint Strategy

Stint Strategy

Tyre Stints - Top 10 Finishers

Vertical markers indicate SC deployment laps. Stint lengths shown inside each block.

Looking at the stints, most drivers have two blocks - they pitted under the SC. Others have one long block - they stayed out. The pit decision on lap 13 drew a hard line through the field, and you can see it in the chart immediately.

Russell, Leclerc, Norris, and Hamilton all pitted. Fresh rubber, three laps to use it. Several others stayed out, gambling that track position would be worth more than grip.

Pit Stop Execution

Let's also take a look at the pit stop execution.

Pitlane Time by Driver

Total pitlane time (entry to exit) per driver, sorted fastest to slowest. Hover for per-stop breakdown with lap number.

Norris had the quickest pitlane time at 22.5 seconds but that's not enough to get a podium finish. Leclerc was next at 23.2s. Russell at 23.3s. Then Hamilton at 27.8 seconds - a five-second gap to the fastest stop of the day.

Five seconds. In a sprint with three racing laps left. That's an eternity.

Hamilton kept P3, but the gap to Leclerc at the flag was 1.88s. Match Leclerc's pit time and Hamilton could have been fighting Russell for the win in the final stint instead of just managing a deficit.

Section 03 - Driver Spotlight

2026 Record: 2 from 2 · Championship Lead: +11 pts

Australia then Shanghai. Grand prix then sprint. Two completely different formats, two wins. Russell read the SC call instantly - first car in on lap 13, clean exit, never seriously challenged on the restart. There's a version of this sprint where someone undercuts him in the pit window and he comes out behind. That didn't happen because he didn't give anyone the opportunity.

Pit Time: 23.2s · Ferrari's best sprint result of the 2026 era

Clean stop, clean exit, clean race to the flag. Compared to Australia where Ferrari left two VSC windows unused, this felt like a completely different team making completely different calls. The pit crew delivered a 23.2-second stop that put him into P2 with zero drama. That's exactly what a championship contender looks like two rounds into a season.

Pit Time: 27.8s · +4.6s vs Team-Mate

The pace was there. The pit stop wasn't. Hamilton's 27.8-second stop was 4.6 seconds slower than Leclerc's on the same lap. In a full race that might wash out over 50 laps of strategy. With three racing laps left, it was the difference between fighting for P2 and managing P3. The intra-team battle is developing a pattern: Leclerc, one step ahead, every session so far.

Sprint Points: 0 · 0.9s Behind P8 Bearman

Nothing today. Zero points, ninth place, nine-tenths behind a Haas. The pace chart says the Red Bull has speed buried in there somewhere. But speed buried in variance doesn't accumulate on the championship table. If he starts from the front tomorrow, I think we're going to see something very different. If he doesn't - that's two rounds of evidence that Red Bull have a real problem.

Section 04 - Championship Standings

Drivers' Championship Standings

Points auto-calculated from race and sprint results. Sprint points: P1–P8 score 8–7–6–5–4–3–2–1.

Constructors' Championship Standings

Cumulative team points from all completed rounds and sprint results this season.

Russell leads by eleven. Two formats, two wins, and he's the benchmark right now and it's not close to being controversial.

But the constructors' picture is where it gets interesting. Ferrari outscored Mercedes today - 13 points to 12 due to Antonelli's bad start and a 10-second time penalty for contact with Hadjar which left him in P5.

McLaren are quietly keeping pace. Norris and Piastri both scored, both showed genuine speed. The Piastri DNS in Australia hurt the constructors' total, but two-car points finishes from Shanghai is the kind of foundation a championship campaign is built on across 24 rounds.

Red Bull's zero from today is the number that jumps off the page. All their points so far came from Australia, from Verstappen driving from the back. The constructors' tally looks modest - and honestly, between the qualifying crash in Melbourne, Hadjar's DNF, and now a pointless sprint, Red Bull haven't strung together a clean weekend yet. That needs to change fast.

Box, box - see you next race. 🏎️

Up Next

F1 2026 China: Antonelli Arrives and Mercedes Dominates

Allistair Lee — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:59:40 GMT

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- Race Winner

- Fastest Lap

- Race Laps

A 19-year-old on the top step. A massive 1-2 for Mercedes. And a Ferrari debut podium for Hamilton. If Australia told us Mercedes had the edge, China proved they might just be in a different league entirely.

But the headline of Shanghai wasn't just the Silver Arrows running away with it. It was Antonelli converting a historic maiden pole into his first-ever Grand Prix victory, handling the pressure like a 10-year veteran. Meanwhile, Red Bull's struggles deepened, and McLaren's weekend ended before it even started.

Let's get into the details of the weekend after the exciting Sprint race on Saturday.

Section 01 - Final Standings

Final Standings - Gap to Leader (Top 10)

Drivers who finished a lap down are shown with a fixed bar. Gap values are final race intervals from the timing system.

Mercedes' 1-2 looks dominant, and quite frankly, it was. Russell backed up his Sprint race victory with a solid P2, but Antonelli was the undisputed star. The gap they pulled on the rest of the field is already starting to look intimidating.

Behind them, Ferrari secured a podium with Hamilton after a wheel-to-wheel thriller with his teammate Charles Leclerc during the entire race. The Scuderia clearly has the second-fastest car on the grid right now, but bridging that delta to Mercedes is going to require serious, aggressive development.

And looking at the midfield - Bearman in P5, Gasly in P6, and rookie Liam Lawson dragging the Racing Bulls to P7. The new regulations have absolutely scrambled the order behind the top two teams.

Section 02 - Race Strategy

Tyre Stints - Top 10 Finishers

Vertical markers indicate VSC/SC deployment laps. Stint lengths shown inside each block.

The Sprint race on Saturday gave the pit wall a preview of tyre degradation. Mercedes controlled it beautifully, leading the race entirely from the front after the first couple of laps. They ran an optimized strategy that gave Antonelli the clean air he needed to manage his battery deployment - an undeniably critical factor in these 2026 regulations.

Average Pitlane Time by Team

Total pitlane time (entry to exit) averaged across all race stops. Sorted fastest to slowest. Hover for exact values and stop count.

Ferrari threw everything they had at the leaders, but they simply lacked the overall efficiency of the Mercedes power unit on the long 1.2km back straight. And even with the almost perfect double stack, they still couldn't bridge the gap.

Section 03 - Race Pace

Race Pace - Clean Air Laps Only

Box spans the middle 50% of clean laps. Vertical line is median, dot is mean. Whiskers are min/max after outlier removal. Hover for full stats.

Mercedes sits comfortably at the top of the pace charts, with Antonelli laying down controlled, nearly identical laps perfectly managing his energy deployment to secure the 1-2 finish. Ferrari's pace behind them was also remarkably strong - Hamilton and Leclerc were closely matched and separated themselves comfortably from the midfield, but they simply lacked the crucial few tenths lap-after-lap needed to truly challenge the Silver Arrows.

Further down, the midfield pace reveals a fascinatingly tight scramble. Bearman extracted every ounce of performance out of the Haas to secure P5, producing a clean, unwavering pace trace that punches well above the car's expected weight class. Gasly and Lawson sit right on his heels, a clear sign that the new regulations have successfully compressed the pack behind the front-runners and opened the door for genuine midfield dogfights.

Section 04 - Driver Spotlight

Pole → Victory

Nineteen years old. Converted the youngest pole in F1 history into his maiden win. The composure he showed to manage the new power units and hold off a charging teammate was absolute perfection.

First Ferrari Podium

His first podium in red. After a gritty, thrilling battle with Leclerc, Hamilton showed exactly why Ferrari brought him over. He mentioned feeling "back to his best" in the post-race interviews, and the data completely backs him up. He squeezed every ounce of performance out of the SF-26.

ERS Cooling Failure

An absolute nightmare weekend. Dropped out of position, struggled with the hybrid system in traffic, branded the racing "Mario Kart", and then retired on Lap 46. Red Bull are officially on the back foot in this new era.

Double Electrical Failure

A double DNS before the lights even went out. You simply cannot afford this in modern Formula 1. Electrical gremlins crippled both cars on the grid, turning a weekend of potential into a total write-off for the Woking squad.

Section 05 - Championship Standings

Drivers' Championship Standings

Points auto-calculated from race results. Fastest-lap bonus applied where applicable (P1–P10 only).

Constructors' Championship Standings

Cumulative team points from all completed rounds this season.

Mercedes isn't just leading; they're threatening to run away with it early. With dominant performances in both Australia and China, they are banking maximum points while their direct rivals stumble.

Ferrari firmly holds second, but they desperately need to find raw pace to challenge for wins instead of just podiums. Red Bull and McLaren, on the other hand, are already looking at mountainous deficits. It's a long 24-race season, but in Formula 1, an early advantage in a new regulation cycle often dictates the destiny of the entire year.

Box, box - see you next race. 🏎️

Up Next

F1 2026 Japan: Race

Allistair Lee — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 01:06:25 GMT

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- Race Winner

- Fastest Lap

- Race Laps

A pole, a horror start, a crash, a perfectly timed Safety Car, and a 13-second winning margin. In any other season, a race like Suzuka would be the story of the year. In 2026, Antonelli just made it look like another Sunday.

The headline is simple enough: back-to-back wins for the 19-year-old, youngest championship leader in F1 history. But the race itself was far more complicated than that final gap suggests - and it conceals a deeply worrying picture for Russell, a promising one for McLaren, and a frankly embarrassing one for Red Bull.

Section 01 - Final Standings

Final Standings - Gap to Leader (Top 10)

Drivers who finished a lap down are shown with a fixed bar. Gap values are final race intervals from the timing system.

Thirteen seconds. That's Antonelli's winning margin over Piastri. On paper, it looks dominant. In reality, it's a number built entirely on the Safety Car window - and the fact that the rest of the field simply couldn't live with his pace on fresh Hards once he was out front.

The more interesting story is in P2 through P6. Piastri, Leclerc, Russell, Norris, Hamilton - all covered by less than 20 seconds, all running different strategies with different tyre states. This was a much tighter race than the winner's margin implies.

And Bearman - who was running strongly enough to have a real points finish - is missing from this chart entirely. That crash on Lap 22 was a huge one, and the triggered Safety Car completely reset the race.

Verstappen in P8 from P11 is quietly becoming the reliable disappointment in this championship story. One point. A car he called "undriveable" in qualifying. Red Bull are not where Red Bull are supposed to be.

Section 02 - Race Strategy

Tyre Stints - Top 10 Finishers

Vertical markers indicate VSC/SC deployment laps. Stint lengths shown inside each block.

I believe this is where Suzuka was won and lost - exactly like Australia.

The field converged on a one-stop strategy: Medium to Hard. Most teams had executed or were about to execute their stops in the laps immediately before Lap 22. Russell and Piastri had already cycled through. Antonelli had not.

When the Safety Car came out for the Bearman crash, Antonelli's pit wall made the call instantly. A free stop - hard tyres fitted, no meaningful time lost relative to cars already on track. He emerged from the pit lane in the lead with 30+ laps of race left on the freshest rubber of anyone in the top five.

Average Pitlane Time by Team

Total pitlane time (entry to exit) averaged across all race stops. Sorted fastest to slowest. Hover for exact values and stop count.

Russell's situation is worth unpacking separately. He didn't just lose the lead to the Safety Car - he then struggled with what Mercedes described as a battery "harvesting limit" issue during the restart sequence, specifically an "unexpected superclip" that restricted his power deployment at the worst possible moment. That's the 2026 power unit in all its complexity; one edge-case scenario in the hybrid management and the race just fractures.

He recovered to P4. The talent is clearly there, and the car is the fastest on the grid. But this was a weekend where Russell did everything right and still ended up on the wrong side of the lottery.

Section 03 - Race Pace

Race Pace - Clean Air Laps Only

Box spans the middle 50% of clean laps. Vertical line is median, dot is mean. Whiskers are min/max after outlier removal. Hover for full stats.

Strip out the Safety Car laps, the pit-out laps, and lap 1, and here's what the true performance picture looks like.

Antonelli is in a tier of his own, but the shape of his data is surprising. He has the widest box of the top runners, meaning his core lap times experienced the largest variance. Yet his median sits at 1:33.478. This isn't a tight, metronomic stint; it's the trace of a driver whose pace fluctuated by nearly three seconds - likely managing tyres or a massive track gap - but whose underlying speed was so mighty that even a scattered stint averaged out nearly a full second clear of the field.

Piastri, Russell, Leclerc, and Norris are covered by just a couple of tenths on average. But what's interesting is Leclerc and Russell. Leclerc's median is sitting at 1.33.915, which is faster than Russell's 1.34.139 - in typical clean-air laps, the Ferrari was quicker. But Leclerc carries a massive right whisker extending out to ~1:37.8. Those painfully slow outlier laps dragged his overall average down behind the Mercedes.

Hamilton's data reflects a difficult race masked by a few flashes of speed. He has a long left whisker - meaning he popped in a handful of very fast laps - but his median sits noticeably to the right at 1:34.669. Because his median is slower than his average, it tells us the vast majority of his laps were significantly slower than the 1:34.5 implies. Suzuka was a much tougher grind for his side of the garage.

Gasly and Verstappen are practically identical in average, median, and overall box structure. They essentially ran the exact same pace. A Red Bull and an Alpine laying down identical race traces, anchored a full second behind the Mercedes. The harsh reality for Verstappen isn't just that he's off the lead - it's that the midfield has completely swallowed the Red Bull.

Section 04 - Driver Spotlight

Pole → P6 (Lap 1) → P1 (SC) → Victory

He wheelspin-botched the start and dropped to sixth. A 19-year-old, on pole at Suzuka, one of the most technically demanding circuits on the calendar, and he dropped five positions on the opening lap. Then he spent the next 20 laps rebuilding, trust the Safety Car to hand him the window, and won by 13 seconds. The composure required to stay in that race mentally after an opener like that is genuinely remarkable. He's now leading the championship. Youngest ever. And the points gap is already meaningful.

Fastest at the Start · Led 21 Laps

Best result of the season for McLaren. Piastri nailed the start, took the lead from pole-sitter Antonelli, and led over half the race. He simply got caught on the wrong side of the Safety Car timing - pitting just before it, leaving him exposed as Antonelli cycled through for free. His pace chart says he wasn't just a beneficiary of track position; the McLaren has real speed at Suzuka. This result changes McLaren's season narrative. They're not out of this.

Lap 22 - Triggered Race-Defining SC

He was running solidly in the points before a crash at Lap 22 sent him into the barriers at 50G. He couldn't stand up when he got out of the car. Medically cleared, but this was the kind of accident that reminds you Formula 1 is still genuinely dangerous. And beyond the personal relief - that single incident restructured the entire race result. Without the SC, Antonelli doesn't win by 13 seconds. He might not win at all.

Off the Pace · P6 in Qualifying, P6 in the Race

After arriving at Suzuka fresh off strong opening rounds, this was a reality check. His pace chart tells the story: he could occasionally spike a rapid lap, but his underlying core pace fell noticeably short of Leclerc's. He spent the afternoon battling in the midfield, unable to influence the podium fight ahead. A distinctly quiet, grinding weekend for the seven-time champion on a circuit that demands absolute harmony between car and driver.

Section 05 - Championship Standings

Drivers' Championship Standings

Points auto-calculated from race results. Fastest-lap bonus applied where applicable (P1–P10 only).

Constructors' Championship Standings

Cumulative team points from all completed rounds this season.

Antonelli leads on 72. Russell second on 63. The 9-point gap within the same team after just three races tells you everything about how close this intra-Mercedes fight is. Both drivers have the car to win. They've split the results between them. The championship could hinge on Safety Car timing, battle between teammates.

Ferrari are firmly P3 and P4 on the driver side, accumulating solid points, but 23 points behind Russell in P2 already. They're the best team not named Mercedes. The question is whether that's enough or whether they need to swing for something dramatic on development.

McLaren are back. Piastri's P2 and Norris's P5 gave them 27 points in a single race - as many as they'd scored in the first two rounds combined. At 46 total, they're still 89 behind Mercedes in the constructors', but the trajectory just shifted.

And Red Bull - 16 points after three rounds. Tied with Alpine. Fifth in the constructors'. This reads like a nightmare scenario for a team that has been the benchmark of Formula 1 for the past four years.

Box, box - see you next race. 🏎️

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