Live Timing Client#

This module can be used to save live timing data during a session. It is not possible to do real-time processing of the data.

Note

Usage of the live timing client requires an active F1TV Access/Pro/Premium subscription. FastF1 will direct you to sign in to you F1TV account if you have not already done so. You can get more information about the authentication flow in the F1TV Account Authentication section.

The live timing client cannot be used in hosted environments like Google Colab or in WebAssembly based environments like Jupyter Lite, due to limitations of the sign-in method.

There are two ways to interact with this module.

From a python script by creating an instance of SignalRClient

From the command line by calling python -m fastf1.livetiming

Usage Example#

Record live timing data during a session

python -m fastf1.livetiming save saved_data.txt

or alternatively create a Python script to run the SignalR client

from fastf1.livetiming.client import SignalRClient

client = SignalRClient(filename="saved_data.txt")
client.start()

Load this data into FastF1 after the session has finished

import fastf1
from fastf1.livetiming.data import LiveTimingData

livedata = LiveTimingData('saved_data.txt')
session = fastf1.get_testing_session(2021, 1, 1)
session.load(livedata=livedata)

optionally you can load live timing data from two or more files

livedata = LiveTimingData('saved_data_1.txt', 'saved_data_2.txt')

Important Notes#

You should try to record a full session whenever possible. Recording may need to start up to one hour before the start of the session to capture all data. The api parser may not be able to deal with the data correctly if the beginning of a session is missing. Your mileage may vary depending on what and how much data is missing.
You should not mix recorded live timing data and data requested from the api after a session. The data will likely not be synchronized correctly.
You should use the cache with saved live timing data too. This will speed up loading of the data considerably after the first run.
You need to use different cache directories if you want to cache saved live timing data and api data for the same session! The cache cannot tell the data sources apart. If cached data from one source already exists it will not be reloaded automatically from a different source. See fastf1.req.Cache for details on how to configure a custom cache directory. One simple way is to add the following line to your code:
```
fastf1.Cache.enable_cache('path/to/cache/directory')
```
You need to force a cache update if you modify the LiveTimingData (e.g. by adding a second file). The cache cannot tell that the input source was modified and will still use the old cached data.

You can force-refresh the cache:
```
fastf1.Cache.enable_cache('path/to/cache/directory', force_renew=True)
```
You only need to use forece_renew=True once after modifying the input data.
The SignalR Client seems to get disconnected after 2 hours of recording. It looks like the connection is terminated by the server. You need to manually start a second recording before the first one disconnects if you want to have no gap in your recording.

Use a different output file name for the second (or any subsequent) recording. You can then load data.LiveTimingData from multiple files. The files need to be provided in chronological order. The content of the files may overlap. Data from overlapping recordings is recognized and will not be loaded as a duplicate.

Command Line Interface#

Available commands and options when calling python -m fastf1.livetiming

The module has two main commands

{save,extract}
  save          Save live timing data
  extract       Extract messages from saved debug-mode data

Save#

The main command for recording live timing data during a session

usage: python -m fastf1.livetiming save [-h] [--append] [--debug]
       [--timeout TIMEOUT] file

positional arguments:
  file               Output file name

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  --append           Append to output file. By default the file is
                     overwritten if it exists already.
  --debug            Enable debug mode: save full SignalR message, not
                     just the data.
  --timeout TIMEOUT  Timeout in seconds after which the client will
                     automatically exit if no data is received

Extract#

Only for when data was saved with the optional ‘–debug’ argument

Recording in debug mode saves the full SignalR messages as received. The non debug mode saves only the important data part of a message. The data part of each message needs to be extracted to utilize the debug-mode data. The extracted data is the same data you get when saving without the ‘–debug’ argument.

usage: python -m fastf1.livetiming extract [-h] input output

positional arguments:
  input       Input file name
  output      Output file name

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

API Summary#