The lap counter graphic is something that I have recently realised has actually been on my mind for a while, if that makes sense.

It could be that my brian is bruxxed but I find the lap counter quite confusing to the point where I don’t take much notice of it anymore.

The lap counter counting the number of laps to go makes sense to me on the first lap or the last lap, when I say to myself “ah … that’s how it works!” but any laps in between I can’t make up my mind what lap the cars are actually on.

If the lap counter says 57/65, “That means 57 laps to go fool!” I hear you say, but then I always seem to go off on a magical thought train tour debating whether it is 57 complete laps to go or 57 including the one they are part way though.

I should be able to work out which way it works and then remember and not have a problem any more, but for some reason every race revisits the same issues for me.

Now, it is quite useful to know how many laps there are to go especially if someone is flying towards the end of the race and you want to work out if they can catch the person in front before the chequered flag or something and is used in the race commentary accordingly, but I would suggest that most commentary usually refers to the lap that the cars are currently on (or will be) such as…

“Raikkonen in on lap 10” or “Alonso puts in his fastest lap on lap 24” or “Taking on enough fuel to get him to lap 49” or “Incident on lap 14 involving …etc etc etc”

This has been bought to the forefront of my mind recently with things like British Superbikes and Touring Car coverage following the Grand Prix programme. On both of these events the lap counters have counted up, starting from 1/16 or whatever when the cars or bikes are on lap 1 and showing 4/16 when on lap 4 with 3 laps completed. This seems to make much more sense (to me) partly because

a) I can place the cars in the race quickly

b) Using the symbol “/” to me says “of” and although both “57 of 65 laps to go” and ” on lap 4 of 16″ are probably both correct I would suggest the latter was more intuitive

c) Suprisingly given my previous admission of mental confusion, I can easily work out how many laps are still to go.

I think if I know quickly where the cars are in the race, I’ve got a fixed starting point for any lap calculations either forward or back in the race. The problem I have with the counters counting down, it takes me so long to work out what lap the cars are on that it has changed by the time I work it out even if I got it right!