Better knowledge of the instantaneous soot and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions in Diesel engines would allow better choices of injection parameters and thus lead to better raw emissions than, for instance, with classical averaged mea-sures, like smoke maps. Unfortunately, while for most regulated emissions fast measurements are possible and reason- ably fast sensors are available, the same is not true for soot. Against this background, this paper proposes a real time,delay-free soot model based on the pressure trace information. The model essentially maps changes of the pressure trace into changes of the raw soot emissions. The key elements of the approach are the design of experiments, segmen- tation of the pressure trace and the use of the principal component analysis technique to extract the essential information. The model is based only on data; that is, it needs an initial calibration with working points measured with a standard device, such as an AVL Microsoot or Opacimeter. This paper describes the method and then shows validation results with an additional amount of pilot injection in one cylinder which confirms the delay-free soot estimation.