For deaf and hard of hearing fans
The whole race, felt and read.
Race broadcasts put their meaning in sound: the commentator’s voice, the radio, the engine note that says something is wrong. RaceSonar puts it in your hand and on your screen instead.
Where captions fail elsewhere
F1 TV subtitles
A public issue log documents the subtitle option showing “unknown” for the language in Safari, no option at all in Firefox, and a captions button on the iPad app that produces no text.
Captions here are not a video track. They are written from the timing feed, so there is nothing to switch on and no player that can lose them.
Source: chanware/f1-subtitles on GitHubLive TV captions
A Sky viewer who relies on captions for F1 reported them turning into “nonsense messages about Helen and her mother.” Sky’s support agreed live auto-captioning struggles with background noise and accents.
Ours never hear the engines. Each caption is one sentence built from the data: “Lap 48. Verstappen up to 1st from 2nd.”
Source: Sky Community help forum, May 2025Team radio
The most emotional material in the sport is audio, and broadcasters caption it only when they choose to show it on screen. Most clips are never captioned at all.
Every clip the app receives is transcribed and the words appear under its caption a few seconds after the clip. The transcript is machine-made and can misspell a name; the clip is still there to play for anyone who can.
Team radio was our gap too
Until August 2026 this app said “Team radio from Bearman” and offered a play button, which is exactly the thing a deaf fan cannot use. That was the one place the product broke its own promise. It is fixed, and it is the reason this page exists.
How it feels
Every kind of event has a vibration of its own, told apart by count and rhythm rather than fine timing, so it survives a cheap phone motor: one sharp buzz is an overtake, long-then-short a pit stop, two heavy thuds a retirement, a building ramp the safety car, three long blasts a red flag. After a few laps you stop reading the captions to check.
- Overtake
- Pit stop
- Fastest lap
- Retirement
- Safety car
- Red flag
On a Wear OS watch the patterns use the motor’s shaped primitives, so a ramp is a ramp. Trackside, the watch pulses faster and harder as your driver approaches the spot where you stand, which is the one thing the big screen and the PA both fail to tell you.
How it reads
A captions-first layout gives the log the whole screen, newest line at the top, with the running order beside it. The loudest moments are larger and heavier so a glance finds them. Three colour themes, including maximum contrast, and large text on its own switch. Nothing flashes.
Questions
How can a deaf person follow a Formula 1 race?
Open RaceSonar in a browser and press Play. Every event has its own vibration pattern on a phone or Wear OS watch, and a caption log carries every word at the same moment. Team radio clips are transcribed and shown under their caption.
Are the captions live?
Yes. They are written from the timing data as it arrives, not transcribed from a commentator, so they do not lag the broadcast or turn into nonsense when the engines get loud.
Does it work on a watch?
Yes, on Wear OS. The watch app is built and being prepared for the Play Store; it pairs with the browser player so your settings carry over.
Try it
Open the playerOr replay a past race