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Pit Watcher

A pit lane stopwatch for the cars you care about. One row per car, showing how long it has been in the pit lane and how that compares with your target times.

It is a backup to the pit lane timer on the car and on the pit wall (VBOX and the like) for release calls in events with minimum pit lane times, not a replacement: the car's own timer is authoritative. In other events it is simply the quickest way to see a stop as it happens.

Which cars​

Rows come from the Cars selector in the panel's toolbar, the same control the Gap Chart uses. Until you change it, it is your Hero and Sister cars; the Hero, Sister and Follow buttons in the selector put those sets back with one click. Your choice is remembered per view.

The Pit Watch Cars setting in Settings does not affect this panel. It belongs to the older standalone Pit Watcher window.

Columns​

  • Car - the watched car, in its class color
  • Elapsed - a progress bar of time in the pit lane, with marks at your release and pit-out targets. The bar is live while the car is in the lane and frozen on the last completed stop otherwise.
  • Pit Ln - time since the car crossed pit-in. Red and bold while the car is still in the lane; the duration of the last stop once it leaves.
  • →Release - countdown to the moment the crew should release the car. Small text above is the target itself; the value below is signed, negative before the target and + after. Turns green once reached.
  • →Pit Out - the same, against the full pit lane target. Turns orange once reached.

Where the targets come from​

The two targets come from Advanced Stints, opened from the panel's gear:

  • Avg Pit Lane Time - how long a full pit lane transit should take
  • Box to Pit-Out Time - how long it takes to get from the box to the pit-out line, which is what turns the pit lane target into a release target

Both can be set per car number, per car class, or as the default. Setting the Default rule alone is enough to light →Pit Out for every watched car; →Release needs a car number rule with a Box to Pit-Out Time, since release times differ from crew to crew. Edits made in another P1TS window apply here immediately - there is no need to reload.

If nothing is stored, the panel still runs as a plain stopwatch: Pit Ln ticks, and the two target columns read --- rather than showing a made-up number.

Timing

A live stop counts on your computer's clock, several times a second, from the moment the car crossed pit-in, so the countdown is smooth and carries no feed delay. For that to hold your computer's clock must agree with the timing feed to within a few seconds, which it does whenever it is set to update automatically.

Before the race weekend, set your computer's clock to update automatically. On Windows, open Settings, Time & Language, Date & time, and turn on Set time automatically; Microsoft's guide is How to set your time and time zone. If your timing feed comes over a pitwall network with no internet, connect to the internet briefly (a phone hotspot is enough) so the clock can sync, then reconnect to the pitwall.

If the clocks disagree, the panel says so under the table as soon as it connects, with a link that opens Windows' Date & time settings directly, and live stops count from when the pit-in was received instead - still correct to within the feed's delay, usually a second or two. A completed stop is always measured from the feed's own pit-in and pit-out times, whatever your clock says.

  • Pits and Stints shows the whole session's stops rather than the one in progress.