Beginner's guide to F1
Understanding Formula 1 sectors
What do F1 sector colors mean?
After watching all the seasons of Drive to Survive, my wife and I started following F1 in real time in 2022. What we quickly realized is there is a lot to learn to truly appreciate and enjoy the races. Unfortunately, this information was not easily accessible to the newcomer. So, I decided to cover many of the topics from tires and qualifying to DRS and sector colors in a series of posts. In this post, we will cover the sectors and sector colors.
Sectors
F1 tracks are divided into 3 sectors. Each sector is approximately the same length, delineated by white lines across the track. Vehicles are timed in each sector. This information is useful to teams to determine how their drivers are doing compared to others over the same section of the course.
When a vehicle finishes a sector their time is assigned a color of purple, green, or yellow.
Purple
A purple sector means that time is the fastest of any driver over that section of the course. When you are watching F1, you may notice…
