A field guide to APEX.

APEX is a personal project that turns raw Formula 1 telemetry into a race engineer's operating system — for an audience of one. Every fast lap streams a wall of data: GPS, throttle, brake, speed, gear, RPM, DRS. Engineering teams see that data live, in lockstep, and it's how they make a fast car faster. APEX takes the same architecture and rebuilds it for a fan who wants to feel the lap rather than just watch it.

The product is split into five modules. Each one shows the same telemetry through a different lens — a 3D opener, a working cockpit, an editorial gallery, a generative lab, and a personal library. The underlying lap is the same; the way you read it is different.

The site auto-loads with Hamilton's 2020 Silverstone pole as the default lap. Most actions ripple across modules — pick a lap in the Gallery, switch to Telemetry, and you're looking at the same lap there too.

Across Telemetry, Gallery, Canvas, Collector and this page, the same chrome wraps everything:

1. 01

   Sidebar (left)

   The APEX logomark, the five telemetry channels (Velocity / G-Force / Throttle / Braking / Sectors), the red SYNC_SENSORS button, and a link to your Collector.

2. 02

   Topbar (top)

   Lap-time pill on the far left, tab nav (Telemetry, Gallery, Canvas, Collector, About), the NEXT_SESSION countdown, then the right-side tools: SEARCH (opens the command palette), BELL (live data status popover), and LIBRARY (jumps to Collector).

3. 03

   Main content (centre)

   Whatever route you're on lives here. Each module fills the space differently — Telemetry uses a two-column grid, Gallery is a card layout, Canvas splits into preview + controls.

4. 04

   Footer (bottom)

   Thin build strip showing the APEX OS version and data sources.

5. 05

   Splash on first load

   A short looping video of a car driving away in slow motion plays behind the APEX wordmark for ~1.8 seconds while fonts settle.

6. 06

   On mobile

   The sidebar collapses behind a hamburger button in the topbar. Tap it for the same channel nav as desktop.

The main module. Read a lap channel by channel and scrub through it like a video editor would.

1. 01

   Pick a lap

   Click ACTIVE_LAP in the top-right (or use the command palette via ⌘K). The dropdown lists every baked lap — driver, year, track, time. Selecting one resets the scrub to the moment of peak speed for dramatic first paint.

2. 02

   Switch channels

   Click any of VELOCITY / G-FORCE / THROTTLE / BRAKING / SECTORSin the sidebar. The big centre chart swaps, the channel kicker updates, and the diagnostic prose on the right re-evaluates based on what's happening at the current scrub point.

3. 03

   Scrub through the lap

   Drag the scrub bar at the bottom or click anywhere on the track. Arrow keys also work: ←/→ step 1%, Shift+arrow steps 5%, Home/End snap to the ends. The S1/S2/S3 markers are tick lines on the scrub track.

4. 04

   Read the diagnostic panel (right)

   Live readouts at the scrub point: speed, lat-G, throttle, brake state, gear, RPM, DRS, distance. Underneath, a SYSTEM_LOG paragraph that changes phrasing depending on whether the driver is braking, mid-corner, or at full throttle.

5. 05

   Watch the sequential log

   Eight rows of telemetry centered on your scrub position. The current row is highlighted red. Useful for seeing the exact sample-by-sample data.

1. 01

   Browse the featured story

   The Silverstone Through Eras strip at the top tells a curated story across four pole laps — Hamilton 2020 through Verstappen 2025. The fastest lap is flagged FASTEST; the rest show a delta.

2. 02

   Open the inspector drawer

   Click any card. A drawer slides in from the right with the bigger fingerprint, sector pills, a mini velocity curve, and the lap's era + accent block. Esc to dismiss.

3. 03

   Cross-link to Telemetry

   From the inspector, hit OPEN_IN_TELEMETRY. APEX sets that lap as your active lap and you can flip over to /telemetry to drill into the channels.

4. 04

   Download the poster (when available)

   Some laps ship with a print-ready 11×14 poster PNG. The inspector exposes a download link for those.

5. 05

   Read the field notes

   At the bottom, four editorial cards on tyres, the geometry of a corner, garage observation, and the power unit. They're commentary, not interactive.

Real-time generative renderer. Every slider repaints the fingerprint as you move it. There's no save-and-render — what you see is what gets exported.

1. 01

   Pick a preset (recommended start)

   Five presets sit at the top of the controls: Neural Trace, Poster Print, Phone Wallpaper, Ferrari Tribute, Studio Mono. Each snaps every knob at once. Treat them as starting points, not final answers.

2. 02

   Pick a palette

   Five gradient swatches: NEURAL, ICE, FERRARI, EMBER, MONO. They control the throttle-to-colour ramp along the line.

3. 03

   Pick an aspect

   Square (1:1), Poster (11:14, vertical), Phone (9:16, taller), Wide (16:9). The preview frame updates instantly.

4. 04

   Tune the geometry + light + elements sliders

   SEGMENTS controls resolution. SMOOTHING kills GPS jitter. STROKE changes line thickness. GLOW drives the halo bloom. BRAKE_OPACITY/SIZE control the red bursts. Toggles for brake bursts / start pip / caption.

5. 05

   Save the render

   The PRESERVE panel has two buttons:
   SAVE — names the preset and stores it in your Collector.
   SHARE_LINK — copies a URL with the full state encoded in #p=…. Anyone who opens it sees the exact same render.

6. 06

   Export

   PNG · 1024 / 2048 / 4096 for raster, or the big red DOWNLOAD_SVG for vector. PNG bakes the bloom into pixels; SVG keeps everything resolution-independent.

Personal library that lives in your browser's localStorage — nothing leaves the device unless you share a link.

1. 01

   See your saved presets

   Each card renders the fingerprint with the params you saved, plus driver / year / track / palette / aspect / relative timestamp.

2. 02

   Restore by clicking a card or OPEN

   That deep-links into Canvas with your saved params + active lap. The toast says 'Preset restored from share link'.

3. 03

   Share or delete

   SHARE copies the URL-encoded preset to your clipboard. DELETE removes a single entry. CLEAR_ALL in the header wipes everything.

4. 04

   Auto-sync across tabs

   If two Collector tabs are open and you save from Canvas in a third, both Collector tabs refresh automatically.