Circuits
How Pit Trace rates circuit demands
Every circuit page on Pit Trace shows five demand chips: downforce, braking, traction, tyre and cooling. Each chip is a low, medium or high rating of how much that demand matters at the track. They give context for the upgrades teams bring to a race. They are not a measurement, a forecast, or a ranking of cars or circuits.
Each rating comes from a published public number where one exists. Where none exists, the chip says so and is labelled editorial.
How each axis is scored
Downforce
From Pirelli's downforce rating (1 to 5) in its race previews. 1 or 2 is low, 3 is medium, 4 or 5 is high. Pirelli dropped this row in its 2026 previews, so downforce ratings use 2025 data.
Braking
From Pirelli's braking rating (1 to 5). 1 or 2 is low, 3 is medium, 4 or 5 is high. Brembo's brake difficulty index is checked alongside it as a cross-check. If the two land in different bands, the Pirelli value is used and the difference is noted.
Traction
From Pirelli's traction rating (1 to 5), banded the same way.
Tyre
From Pirelli's tyre stress rating (1 to 5), banded the same way.
Cooling
An estimate, not a direct measure. It uses the average daily high temperature over race weekend dates from 2021 to 2025, plus altitude. High is 29 C or above, or 1500 m or above. Low is below 20 C. Medium is everything else. Pit Trace does not have access to team cooling data.
Status labels
Sourced. We have a published number and link to it.
Proxy. Derived from public climate data, not a direct measure. Cooling uses this label.
Editorial. Pit Trace's own judgement, because no public number was found.
Where a rating uses data from a year other than 2026, the chip shows the data year.
The weakest ratings
Cooling is the weakest axis, because it is a climate estimate. It ignores airflow, humidity, night starts and the weather of the actual weekend.
Downforce at Sepang and Madring is editorial, because Pirelli has no rating for either circuit.
The cut points are Pit Trace's choices. Pirelli and Brembo publish 1 to 5 scales, and grouping them into low, medium and high is our simplification, so a circuit one step from a cut point could land in the next band. Small differences between circuits are not meaningful.
Similar circuits
Circuits that share a high or low demand are listed as similar. This is a grouping aid for browsing. It is not a prediction of how any car will perform.
Disclaimer
Circuit demand ratings on Pit Trace are Pit Trace's own interpretation of publicly available information. They are not official data from the FIA, Formula 1, Pirelli or Brembo, and none of those organisations has reviewed or endorsed them. Source figures are credited on each rating. Ratings are simplified into low, medium and high, so small differences between circuits are not meaningful. Ratings may change as new data is published. Pirelli, Brembo, Formula 1 and related marks belong to their owners.
Last reviewed: 2 October 2026. Ratings are re-scored when a new Pirelli or Brembo race preview is published. (2026-10-02)
Sources
Each circuit links to the Pirelli preview and the Brembo cross-check used for its ratings. Those pages are cited here. Their images are not reproduced. Cooling for every circuit uses the Open-Meteo historical weather record.
Open-Meteo historical weather API
Albert Park Circuit
Shanghai International Circuit
Suzuka Circuit
Miami International Autodrome
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Circuit de Monaco
Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya
Red Bull Ring
Silverstone Circuit
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
Hungaroring
Circuit Zandvoort
Monza Circuit
Madring
Downforce: editorial
Baku City Circuit
Sepang International Circuit
Downforce: editorial
Marina Bay Street Circuit
Circuit of the Americas
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
Interlagos Circuit
Las Vegas Strip Circuit
Lusail International Circuit
Yas Marina Circuit