Measured in milliseconds ยท lower is better
F1 Reaction Test
Five lights on, a pause you cannot predict, then out. Go on the dark, not on the fifth light.
Before you start
The median on mouse is 265 ms. Run the test and we will place you against it.
Compared against
Your display, input device and browser all sit between the lights going out and the moment your press is registered. Compare grid starts only against the same setup.
The other device classes
Trackpad
Touchscreen
Curve is a fitted baseline plus 0 first attempts recorded here. The baseline is a curve, not a sample: no part of it is a real person. Baseline is an estimate: set slightly faster than the random-delay visual test, because the light sequence tells you roughly when the change is coming and a warned reaction runs a little quicker than an unwarned one. No published dataset was found for it. Nobody publishes a distribution for this task on consumer hardware. Treat the placement as provisional until real results replace it. Per-device offsets are extrapolated, not measured. The baseline is dropped once a device class holds 5,000 real first attempts. See the full distribution.
Understanding your score
| Band | ms | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Jump start | 150 and below | Too fast to be a reaction. You moved on the fifth light, not on the dark. |
| Race winning | 151 to 190 | The range professional grid starts are usually reported in. |
| Strong getaway | 191 to 220 | Clean and quick. You waited and still went early on the grid. |
| Solid | 221 to 260 | Where most first attempts land once people stop guessing. |
| Slow off the line | 261 to 320 | Usually hesitation: you saw the dark and checked yourself. |
| Bogged down | 321 and above | Attention, not biology. Try again without the tab in the background. |
What the sequence actually is
A Formula 1 start runs on five red lights that come on one at a time at a fixed cadence. Once all five are lit, nothing about the display tells you what happens next: the lights stay on for an interval nobody on the grid knows in advance, and the start is the moment they all go out together. This test reproduces that shape. Five lights, a fixed cadence, then a hold that varies from run to run, then dark.
Your clock starts on the dark, not on the fifth light. That distinction is the whole test. The fifth light is a cue that the wait has begun, and treating it as the signal is the single most common way to ruin a run.
Press before the lights go out and the trial is voided rather than scored slowly. There is no partial credit for a near miss, for the same reason a grid does not award one: a start that began before the signal is not a fast reaction, it is a guess that happened to land.
Why this number is not your reaction time
This is a warned reaction task. You know a signal is coming, you know roughly what it will look like, and you are already braced for it. A plain reaction test hides the change inside a random delay with no run up, so you are reacting from a cold state. The two produce different numbers from the same person, and the grid start version is usually the quicker of the two.
That is why this test keeps its own population separate from the plain reaction test rather than pooling them. Comparing a grid start against a cold reaction would flatter you by an amount that has nothing to do with you.
It also means a good result here does not transfer. Being quick when you know the signal is coming says little about being quick when it is not, which is the situation almost every real reaction actually happens in.
How to get a clean run
Watch the lights, not the clock. The hold is randomised precisely so that counting through it does not help, and the people who score worst are usually the ones who tried to time it rather than see it.
Keep your finger resting on the button rather than hovering above it. Travel distance is real milliseconds, and it is the easiest tens of milliseconds on this page to give away.
Run all five trials. One start tells you very little: the spread between your best and worst in a single session is routinely wide enough to move you two whole bands. The median of five throws away one mistimed start without letting one lucky one define you.
If you void several trials in a row, you are anticipating rather than reacting. Slow down deliberately for one run and accept a worse number. It will still be a real one.
About the numbers you have heard
Grid start reaction figures in the region of two tenths of a second are commonly reported from broadcast timing data, and that number is why most people arrive at a test like this one. Two things are worth knowing before you compare yourself against it.
The first is that a driver is pressing a clutch paddle they are already holding, on hardware built for the purpose, in a car where the entire start procedure has been rehearsed hundreds of times. You are on a browser, on whatever mouse or trackpad is in front of you, with a display and an input stack that together account for tens of milliseconds before your intention reaches the page.
The second is that we do not hold that data. We have no dataset of professional grid starts, and this page does not pretend to place you against one. What it can do honestly is place you against everyone else who ran this same sequence on the same kind of device, which is what the curve below the test actually shows.
Questions
- Why was my attempt voided?
- You responded before the lights went out. The test scores the interval from lights out to your press, so a press that arrives first has no interval to measure. It is treated the same way a grid treats a jump start: the run does not count.
- Is a result under 150ms possible?
- Not as a genuine reaction to the dark. Sub-150 results on this sequence almost always mean you committed on the fifth light and happened to be lucky about when the hold ended. That is why the scale calls that band a jump start rather than a good score.
- Why is my result here faster than on the plain reaction test?
- Because this task warns you. The light sequence tells you the signal is imminent, so you are braced when it arrives, while the plain test hides the change inside a delay with no run up. The gap is a property of the two tasks, not of you, which is why the two populations are kept separate.
- Does the hold length change between runs?
- Yes. The lights stay on for a different interval every time, which is what stops counting from working. A fixed hold would turn the test into a rhythm exercise and everyone would score the same.
- Can I compare a phone result against a mouse result?
- No, and the page will not do it for you. A touchscreen has to detect, process and report a finger landing, and that path is slower than a switch closing a circuit. Touch results are ranked only against other touch results.
- Where does the starting curve come from?
- Nobody publishes a distribution for this task on consumer hardware, so the baseline curve is our estimate and is labelled as an estimate on the page. It is placed slightly faster than the plain reaction curve because a warned reaction runs a little quicker. Real results replace it as they accumulate.