Looking for Feedback

I am planning to add full support for the Ergast API with the next major release of FastF1 and I am looking for feedback before finalizing this feature. You can find more information here: theOehrly#311

FastF1 is a python package for accessing and analyzing Formula 1 results, schedules, timing data and telemetry.

It is recommended to install FastF1 using pip:

pip install fastf1

Note that Python 3.8 or higher is required. (The live timing client does not support Python 3.10, therefore full functionality is only available with Python 3.8 and 3.9)

Alternatively, a wheel or a source distribution can be downloaded from Pypi.

• Documentation.
• Examples.
• Changelog.
• Contributing.

Furthermore, there are some great articles and examples written by other people. They provide a nice overview about what you can do with FastF1 and might help you to get started.

• Accessing Formula-1 Race's historical data using Python (medium.com)
• Formula 1 Data Analysis Tutorial - 2021 Russian GP: "To Box, or Not to Box?" (medium.com)
• How to Analyze Formula 1 Telemetry in 2022 - A Python Tutorial (medium.com)

Creating a simple analysis is not very difficult, especially if you are already familiar with pandas and numpy.

Suppose that we want to analyse the race pace of Leclerc compared to Hamilton for the Turkish GP 2020.

import fastf1
from fastf1 import plotting
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

plotting.setup_mpl()

race = fastf1.get_session(2020, 'Turkish Grand Prix', 'R')
race.load()

lec = race.laps.pick_driver('LEC')
ham = race.laps.pick_driver('HAM')

Once the session is loaded, and drivers are selected, you can plot the information.

fastf1.plotting provides some special axis formatting and data type conversion. This is required for generating a correct plot.

It is not necessary to enable the usage of a cache but it is recommended. Simply provide the path to some empty folder on your system.

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(lec['LapNumber'], lec['LapTime'], color='red')
ax.plot(ham['LapNumber'], ham['LapTime'], color='cyan')
ax.set_title("LEC vs HAM")
ax.set_xlabel("Lap Number")
ax.set_ylabel("Lap Time")
plt.show()

Timing data, car telemetry and position data is available for the 2018 and later seasons. Schedule information and session results are available for older seasons too. (limited to Ergast web api).

FastF1 uses data from F1's live timing service.

Data can be downloaded after a session. Alternatively, the actual live timing data can be recorded and the recording can be used as a data source.

Usually it is not necessary to record the live timing data. But there have been server issues in the past which resulted in the data being unavailable for download. Therefore, you only need to record live timing data if you want to benefit from the extra redundancy.

FastF1 is unofficial software and in no way associated with the Formula 1 group of companies.