Loading Experience...
Preparing your Formula Dream journey
Across the 2025 season, the fastest team through the speed trap was 3.75 km/h quicker than the slowest. Five of the ten teams were identical to the nearest km/h.
Over the same season those same ten teams were separated by 1.623 seconds of lap time.
Formula 1 cars are not separated in a straight line. Almost the entire difference between them happens in the corners.
Every lap of a Grand Prix records a speed trap figure, and we pulled all of them for the 2025 season. Two numbers matter and they say different things.
The maximum is the single highest reading of the race. It is the headline number, and it is nearly always a car with a tow and an open rear wing. It describes a situation more than a car.
The median is what a car actually does on a normal lap. It is the more honest figure.
On maximum, Monza tops the season at 364 km/h, exactly as you would expect from the lowest-downforce circuit of the year.
On median, it does not. Mexico City comes out fastest at 328 km/h, with Monza second at 326.
The reason is altitude. The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez sits 2,285 metres above sea level, comfortably the highest circuit on the calendar, with roughly 25% less air density than sea level. Less air means less drag. It also means less downforce and less power, which is why teams run big wings there and still go faster than almost anywhere else.
It is not a fluke of our data either. Mexico holds the all-time Formula 1 speed trap record: Valtteri Bottas at 372.5 km/h in 2016.
At the other end, Monaco tops out at a median of 279 km/h and a maximum of 291, the only circuit of the year where nobody broke 300.
The spread from Mexico to Monaco is 49 km/h, which is a far bigger difference than anything between the cars themselves.
Now the team comparison, which produced a result we did not expect.
Measuring each team's speed trap against the field median at the same race, across dry races only:
Five teams are indistinguishable. The speed trap records whole km/h, and across a season those five land on exactly the same value as the field. The total spread, fastest to slowest, is 3.75 km/h.
We are not going to dress that up as a ranking. It is not one. Mercedes and Williams are measurably quicker in a straight line, Alpine measurably slower, and in between the data genuinely cannot separate the teams.
That is the finding, and it is more interesting than a table would have been.
We measured race pace for the same ten teams across the same season. The gap from fastest to slowest was 1.623 seconds a lap.
Put the two side by side as a share of a typical value and the contrast is stark.
Those look close until you work out what 3.75 km/h is actually worth. On a one-kilometre straight at around 310 km/h, carrying an extra 3.75 km/h saves in the region of a tenth and a half. Even a circuit with two or three long straights cannot turn that into more than about half a second.
The lap time gap is 1.623 seconds. Straight-line speed can account for a fraction of it. The rest is cornering, braking, traction and tyre behaviour.
This also explains something that looks strange in the numbers above. McLaren had the fastest car of 2025 by more than half a second a lap, and were exactly average through the speed trap. They were not fast because they were slippery. They were fast everywhere else.
Stop reading the speed trap column as a performance table. It tells you about wing level and whether a driver had a tow, not about how good the car is.
A car that is quick in a straight line is often compensating. Running less wing buys top speed and costs cornering. Mercedes and Williams sat at the top of the speed trap and fourth and fifth on race pace.
Altitude beats aerodynamics. Mexico runs high-downforce wings and still records the highest average speeds of the year, because there is a quarter less air to push through.
Monaco really is a different sport. 279 km/h median, and no car broke 300 all weekend.
---
Trap speeds are set on specific laps, in specific conditions, with a specific tow.
The Formula Dream app runs a live Dashboard through every session: every car moving on the circuit map, and a timing tower with lap times, gaps and intervals, tyre compound and age, pit counts and positions gained or lost. It is the same information these measurements come from, arriving live. You also get live driver radio as it is broadcast, and every FIA document of the weekend as it is published.
Free, no subscription, no ads, independent. Not affiliated with Formula 1.
Russell took the lead at turn one and crashed at the final corner of the same lap. Verstappen won, Hamilton charged to second, and the McLarens hit each other.
