Race Data - 2012 season

[gert]

I didn't find a topic for the 2012 Race Data.
Is anybody still collecting these data files?

If so, can you help me with the Practice 3 results and the Practice 3 session laptimes from China?
Thanks!

[Kiril Varbanov]

I'm not entirely sure which data files you are talking about, but there's a pretty good site that collects literally everything - http://en.mclarenf-1.com

[raymondu999]

I think Gert is talking of the laptime charts FIA makes available in PDF form after every race. I don't know if anyone has been keeping them of late, but try F1Matrix too.

[gert]

I think Gert is talking of the laptime charts FIA makes available in PDF form after every race.

Indeed, that's what I'm looking for ...
I have most of these files since 2008, it just turns out that this single file seems to be corrupt.

[G37Sam]

Wow, any reason why you've been collecting this data since '08?

[ESPImperium]

Ive got from 2005 to now on tech reports and various other items, and back to 1994 in chassis data.

However i have also got a crap load of my own data, engine useage and the likes.

[Kiril Varbanov]

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Personally I would love to collect race data, presuming F1 management had nice way to open-source it - retrieve it automatically via API - be it REST call, SOAP, plain CSV, zip | tar.gz files which I can store, decompress on demand and create charts, or anything more suitable than PDFs.

This way you can draw trends, make conclusions, do some model curve fits, etc. You can even do predictive analysis.
In that regard, may I ask how do you collect race data? Again, I like what the Russian guys did on http://en.mclarenf-1.com, quite a lot of info there.

[Cam]

This way you can draw trends, make conclusions, do some model curve fits, etc. You can even do predictive analysis.

Exactly Kiril, and I've wondered why members haven't done something like this before in a more official manner. If some of this data was available in raw form, perhaps some of the members would like to crunch them and post their predictions before a race. Certainly there's enough talent on here to get some interesting and close results I think. It would also be good to discuss how the results faired to the actual race results and then to try and tweak the crunching settings to get closer next time.

If anyone is actually interested in doing this, maybe we can co-op to start something? It would be fascinating to see some of the approaches.

[raymondu999]

To be honest I think it's mostly that it's very tedious nowadays. You go through the PDF and manually copy paste each figure into a spreadsheet. If the FIA had, as Kiril said, opened some sort of web service or API for pulling this data (which let's face it, is free - they obviously use it for the live timing anyways) and the ability to parse it automatically rather than going through it one by one, it would simplify things a LOT.

Obviously it's at least available to the teams - for example Williams always has their own live timing during winter testing season.

Does anyone know how sites such as mclaren-f1 and f1matrix get their data? Or for that matter, how f1tests.co.cc pulls it?

It's obviously possible in some way or form - just not very accessible or well known.

[Cam]

the raw data would be available from the FIA in a usable form, such as excel or tab delimitated text - that's how they'd create the PDF. Probably need someone to actually ask them directly for it. Any volunteers? Maybe we could approach those Russian websites, for example, they obviously are getting some data from somewhere? Kiril, would you know anyone in the media that gets that feed?

Once you had that raw file from each race, its very easy to upload that to an online database, where forum members could then access it, or simple host each file on a forum thread as a download - even easier.

[raymondu999]

No need to have an excel to be honest. The fact that they can *feed* your laptop/desktop computer/iPad with live timing information, in real time, indicates that they are broadcasting on some sort of digital channel, sector times for each individual driver. The only thing missing is understanding how to tap into that feed, and where to get that feed.

[beelsebob]

No need to have an excel to be honest. The fact that they can *feed* your laptop/desktop computer/iPad with live timing information, in real time, indicates that they are broadcasting on some sort of digital channel, sector times for each individual driver. The only thing missing is understanding how to tap into that feed, and where to get that feed.

Just for reference, there is an open source project – live-f1 which parses the binary format the FIA server speak. Unfortunately, the FIA make it pretty clear that they don't want just anyone parsing it, without using their web site.

[raymondu999]

Ok - so they might sue us if we do that. But then, why not use an OCR library, and parse it visually off the live timing screens?

[beelsebob]

Ok - so they might sue us if we do that. But then, why not use an OCR library, and parse it visually off the live timing screens?

Right, I'm not trying to claim they're doing anything logical in denying easy access to this data... Personally I think they're batshit insane. But then, I'm not 82 and sat on $2.8bn.

[Kiril Varbanov]

I will sneak around and ask media colleagues if they know, although when it comes to FIA, the answer is like you are talking to the system administrator: "It's not supported, not allowed".
It's 2012, and I'm certainly not willing to manually copy-paste data from PDF files ... I will keep you updated if I get my hands on something interesting.

Finally, let's clear the requirements, shall we: what are we looking for, specifically? Lap times, speed traps, sector times, or anything that the generous FIA can provide?