# Lapcharts?



## Montoya1 (May 14, 2004)

This is one for the excel or calc experts.

I am very much self taught when it comes to excel but I can see the bones of what I am trying to do. Obviously the prog can generate some pretty nifty charts, and the amount of fx's it can do is vast.

Looking at a typical lap times summary from trackmate, the drivers are across the top and the laps on the left hand side. I think if one could make each lap time the accumulation of itself and the all the ones above it, this would be a good start. If you could then rank the numbers from left to right for each lap I think you would then have the raw data to generate the chart.

So far so good, except after a long time of playing around I cant get anywhere near the above theory, which is all it may be.

Anyone?


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## SwamperGene (Dec 1, 2003)

Montoya1 said:


> Looking at a typical lap times summary from trackmate, the drivers are across the top and the laps on the left hand side. I think if one could make each lap time the accumulation of itself and the all the ones above it, this would be a good start. If you could then rank the numbers from left to right for each lap I think you would then have the raw data to generate the chart.


Excel's easier to understand than that :jest:




No sure of exactly what you're looking to accomplish


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## Montoya1 (May 14, 2004)

A lap chart:











(obviously there would only be 4 or 6 cars)

From what Trackmate dumps to excel (see attached)

If you can *very quickly* make the data in the attached into something like in the image above, that would be great, especially if it can be done without having to convert the individual laptimes to cumulatives ($) and then ranks (=RANK).

I can make something manually that looks pretty good in about six minutes, not using excel, so this would need to be one button /one macro - data to chart- done.


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## SwamperGene (Dec 1, 2003)

Yeah but there's no reference to position (for each lap) in the excel file...are you saying to do something similar using time as a reference instead of position?


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## Montoya1 (May 14, 2004)

That attached file is what Trackmate dumps out. That is all you have to work with to make the chart.

A human can quickly see that after two laps the car in blue lane has been on track for 10.5 seconds, but excel just sees two numbers. The trick then is to quickly change the second lap time from 5.2 to 10.5, the third to 17.5 and so on, so you then have a numerical 'story' of the race. 

That is not enough to produce a lap chart like above, but if that can be done quickly, wth a Macro maybe, that would be a start.


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## TK Solver (Mar 18, 2004)

You can slice and dice the data in a variety of different programs, including my personal favorite... TK Solver. I used Deane's spreadsheet data, changed the names, and came up with this plot showing the time behind the leader at each lap.


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## Montoya1 (May 14, 2004)

That is cool. I can produce something similar with excel once the lap-by-lap times are changed into cumulatives.

The trick is to generate something that shows only values of 1 to 4, the positions of each car as it crosses the line. It is possible to work it from the data I supplied, I have done it, but I want to know if there is a way to do so quickly...


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## Montoya1 (May 14, 2004)

Here is an example of what I mean, from the most recent EAHORC race:


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## neorules (Oct 20, 2006)

Montoya-- what is the reason or purpose of the chart???


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## SwamperGene (Dec 1, 2003)

It sorta provides a visual recap of the race, the guy in red led the entire race and lapped the field four times, yellow dropped to last on the third lap and stayed there while falling back three additional laps, black/blue seriously duked it out for 2nd and 3rd, until about the halfway point where blue grabbed 2nd and held it for the rest of the race with black finishing on the same lap. Would be sorta cool to wrap this into a race management program.


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## Montoya1 (May 14, 2004)

Some race management progs do create lap charts on the fly, but TM does not.

So it was a case of dumping the lap times out into excel, converting them first into cumulative times and then race positions to create a graph in excel, and then making screen grabs so some graphics could be added and some border touches applied with photobucket.

Fun to make and looks much better than a list of laptimes...


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