Event Schedule#

Events and the Event Schedule are represented using the following objects. To access schedule data, see Loading Data.

EventSchedule(*args[, year])

This class implements a per-season event schedule.

Event(*args[, year])

This class represents a single event (race weekend or testing event).

The EventSchedule provides information about past and upcoming Formula 1 events.

An Event can be a race weekend or a testing event. Each event consists of multiple Session.

The event schedule objects are built on top of pandas’ pandas.DataFrame (event schedule) and pandas.Series (event). Therefore, the usual methods of these pandas objects can be used in addition to the special methods described here.

Event Schedule Data#

The event schedule and each event provide the following information as DataFrame columns or Series values:

Name

Data Type

Description

RoundNumber

int

The number of the championship round. This is unique for race weekends, while testing events all share the round number zero.

Country

str

The country in which the event is held.

Location

str

The event location; usually the city or region in which the track is situated.

OfficialEventName

str

The official event name as advertised, including sponsor names and stuff.

EventName

str

A shorter event name usually containing the country or location but no no sponsor names. This name is required internally for proper api access.

EventDate

pd.Timestamp

The events reference date and time. This is used mainly internally. Usually, this is the same as the date of the last session.

EventFormat

str

The format of the event. One of ‘conventional’, ‘sprint’, ‘sprint_shootout’, ‘sprint_qualifying’, ‘testing’. See Event Formats

Session[1-5]

str

The name of the session. One of ‘Practice 1’, ‘Practice 2’, ‘Practice 3’, ‘Qualifying’, ‘Sprint’, ‘Sprint Shootout’ or ‘Race’. Testing sessions are considered practice.

Session[1-5]Date

pd.Timestamp

The date and time at which the session is scheduled to start or was scheduled to start as timezone-aware local timestamp. (Timezone-aware local timestamps are not available when the 'ergast' backend is used.)

Session[1-5]DateUtc

pd.Timestamp

The date and time at which the session is scheduled to start or was scheduled to start as non-timezone-aware UTC timestamp.

F1ApiSupport

bool

Denotes whether this session is supported by the official F1 API. Lap timing data and telemetry data can only be loaded if this is true.

Supported Seasons#

FastF1 provides its own event schedule for the 2018 season and all later seasons. The schedule for all seasons before 2018 is built using data from the Ergast API. Only limited data is available for these seasons. Usage of the Ergast API can be enforced for all seasons by setting backend='ergast', in which case the same limitations apply for the more recent seasons too.

Exact scheduled starting times for all sessions: Supported starting with the 2018 season. Starting dates for sessions before 2018 (or when enforcing usage of the Ergast API) assume that each race weekend was held according to the ‘conventional’ schedule (Practice 1/2 on friday, Practice 3/Qualifying on Saturday, Race on Sunday). A starting date and time can only be provided for the race session. All other sessions are calculated from this and no starting times can be provided for these. These assumptions will be incorrect for certain events!

Testing events: Supported for the 2020 season and later seasons. Not supported if usage of the Ergast API is enforced.

Event Formats#

  • "conventional": Practice 1, Practice 2, Practice 3, Qualifying, Race

  • "sprint": Practice 1, Qualifying, Practice 2, Sprint, Race

    This is the original sprint format that was used in some races in 2021 and 2022. The Qualifying on friday set the grid for the Sprint on saturday. The results from the Sprint set the grid for the Race on sunday.

  • "sprint_shootout": Practice 1, Qualifying, Sprint Shootout, Sprint, Race

    This format was used in 2023. The Qualifying on friday sets the grid for the main Race on sunday. The Sprint Shootout on saturday is held in similar fashion to a normal Qualifying session and sets the grid for the Sprint that takes place on saturday as well.

  • "sprint_qualifying": Practice 1, Sprint Qualifying, Sprint, Qualifying, Race

    This format is used starting from 2024. In general, it is similar to the previous ‘sprint_shootout’ format, but the order of the sessions was changed and ‘Sprint Shootout’ is renamed to ‘Sprint Qualifying’. This means that the Sprint Qualifying on friday is held in similar fashion to a normal Qualifying and sets the grid for the Sprint on saturday. The Qualifying later on saturday then sets the grid for the race on Sunday.

  • "testing": no fixed session order

    usually three practice sessions on three separate days

Session identifiers#

Multiple event (schedule) related functions and methods make use of a session identifier to differentiate between the various sessions of one event. This identifier can currently be one of the following:

  • session name abbreviation: 'FP1', 'FP2', 'FP3', 'Q', 'S', 'SS', 'SQ', 'R'

  • full session name: 'Practice 1', 'Practice 2', 'Practice 3', 'Sprint', 'Sprint Shootout', 'Sprint Qualifying', 'Qualifying', 'Race'; provided names will be normalized, so that the name is case-insensitive

  • number of the session: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Note

The old 'sprint' event format from 2021 and 2022 originally used the name ‘Sprint Qualifying’ before renaming these sessions to just ‘Sprint’. The official schedule for 2021 now lists all these sessions as ‘Sprint’ and FastF1 will therefore return all these sessions as ‘Sprint’. When querying for a specific session, FastF1 will also accept the ‘Sprint Qualifying’/’SQ’ identifier instead of only ‘Sprint’/’S’ for backwards compatibility.

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