2026 archive
Silverstone and Miami share the same full-throttle share, and have nothing else in common
Tracks have always been split into two families, engine circuits and downforce circuits, and the index used to split them is the share of the lap spent at full throttle. Twelve 2026 circuits show that this index, on its own, puts the fastest cornering track of the year and the slowest in the same place. A second axis is needed, and telemetry has it.
Low-drag wings and long straights on one side; high-downforce wings and linked corners on the other. The paddock has always sorted circuits this way, and one number is enough to do it: how much of the lap is covered with the throttle wide open. It is a convenient shortcut, and on the extreme cases it never gets it wrong.
We measured that share on the outright fastest laps of twelve 2026 races, counting the distance covered with the throttle above 95%. At Monza it is worth 78.0%, the highest of the year; at Barcelona 49.7%, the lowest. Twenty-eight percentage points separate them, and nobody needs telemetry to know that the Montmeló and the royal park ask for different cars. The median across the twelve circuits sits at 65.1%.
That number has one merit top speeds do not: a tow cannot inflate it. It measures a choice the driver makes, not a gift from the car ahead. That is why it became the single index.
Silverstone reads 65.1% of the lap at full throttle. Miami Gardens reads 65.2%. One tenth of a percentage point separates them: on the axis that is supposed to order circuits, they are the same circuit.
Then you look at the speed the corners are taken at, and the picture turns over. The same telemetry, on the same fastest laps, gives the median apex speed: 202 km/h at Silverstone, the highest of the season, and 121 km/h at Miami, the lowest. Eighty-one km/h apart, for two tracks the traditional index treats as twins.
The corner count says the same thing from another angle: eight fast corners at Silverstone against five slow ones, ten slow corners out of nineteen at Miami. These are two opposite questions put to the car.
At Silverstone what counts is rear stability under load: downforce grows with the square of speed, and the tyre works in slip through corners taken almost without lifting. At Miami the question is a different one. What counts is traction out of the hairpins and the ability to rotate in tight spaces, with the torque reaching the ground without spinning the wheels.
The engine-downforce split is not wrong: it is incomplete. On a two-axis plane, with full throttle across and cornering speed up, Monza and Barcelona stay where common sense puts them, at opposite corners. What moves are the circuits in between, and they are the majority.
Zandvoort drops to 59.9% of full throttle but holds 159 km/h at the apex: a short, twisting track that is nonetheless taken quickly. Suzuka sits closer to Silverstone than to Montréal: 188 km/h of median cornering speed against the 130 of the Canadian track. At Montréal, meanwhile, the throttle stays open for 71.2% of the lap. And Budapest, which everyone calls a Monaco without walls, has eleven medium corners and a median apex at 184 km/h.
The limit of this sample has to be stated now, not in a closing note. There are twelve circuits because twelve are the races we hold in the archive: Monaco and Singapore are missing, and those are exactly the tracks that would pull towards the bottom-left corner of the plane. With them in, the cloud changes shape; the coincidence between Silverstone and Miami, instead, stays where it is, because it does not depend on who else is in the sample.
And a figure that does not support the argument has to be kept out of the argument: we do hold top speeds circuit by circuit, but they are peaks from a single lap, and a peak is raised by the tow of the car ahead. The full-throttle share stays immune, and the piece rests on that.