Race Data - 2012 season

[Cam]

Anything you can get your hands on. Live is great, but I don't think its everything. To have a couple of files with raw data over a couple of years would give heaps of data to run predictions and see trends. Track data, i.e.temps etc, would be good too.

Good luck!

[Kiril Varbanov]

Anything you can get your hands on. Live is great, but I don't think its everything. To have a couple of files with raw data over a couple of years would give heaps of data to run predictions and see trends. Track data, i.e.temps etc, would be good too.

Good luck!

Before reaching out to people overseas (honestly, I don't know anymore who is where), my personal investigation:
- http://code.google.com/p/f1lt/ - F1LT is an unofficial Formula 1 live timing application written using Qt library for Windows and Linux systems. It has a mobile app version.

- http://code.google.com/p/ak-f1-timing/ - This project provides a comprehensive .NET library for reading and processing messages generated by the official F1 live-timing feed during a race weekend.

- http://code.google.com/p/f1livetiming/ - A library for streaming and decoding the data from the formula1.com live timing feed. Use it to build your own .NET applications for displaying timing information (and some other stuff) live during a Grand Prix.

Note: I haven't had the time to QA any of them, please do so, if you are interested. I think it's a good start. As promised, updates will follow when something pops up.

[Forza]

F1LT that @Kiril Varbanov mentioned is a neat application to collect the data and it also has online server database for data from previous sessions. There are some others ( F1 Live-Timing for .NET & gareth / live_f1-core) that use same principle for collecting data but this one is the most developed.

There are also some other projects out there at F1 Data Junkie with database Analysis and visualisation of F1 related data. If you want to scrape data from F1 PDF time sheets you can use this procedure F1 Timing Scraperwiki. Basic procedure description is available at PDF Data Liberation: Formula One Press Release Timing Sheets

Also some other applications using F1 live timing data like F1 Live timing map

I didn't want to post about it on F1technical before because fom won't appreciate this. I apologize If it was mentioned before on forum

[gert]

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

The plan was to find a way to put this data in a database to make it more usable -- once I have a bit more spare time, that is.
Of course, first step is to make sure you have all the data they (FIA) make available. Seems like I failed there and then, already...


I am aware of the scraper project, that's something I was planning to have a better look at when time permits.

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.

Indeed. As far as I know, they have 2 kinds of PDF documents on their site. The first ones are published after the race, and are generated from XLS or CSV data.
Later on these get replaced by official documents: i.e printed, signed, and scanned to PDF. Of course these are useless - no data can be extracted from them anymore.

Probably need someone to actually ask them directly for it.

I think it's highly unlikely they want to help. I asked them for help with the missing PDF file without result. At first, no answers, and when I didn't give up I just got a message that they were unable to help me.
Not even the stupid PDF file, FFS.

[Forza]

I've checked my database and it seems that file chn-session3-times.pdf is indeed corrupt so I don't have it either. I only have chn-session3-classification.pdf but this isn't useful for lap time analysis.

A bit of help with Fia site. You can search the file directory yourself. Only thing you need is file name and insert it into url aderess. Some PDFs are still stored on FIA page but they are relocated to different site folders.

For example
2012 German GP - FP3 times Link

2012 Belgium GP - FP3 times Link

2012 Canada GP - FP3 times Link

Highlighted number indicates different races:
/2012-07/ Canada
/f1-2012-11/ Germany
/f1-2012-12/ Belgium

However first 3 races used different index for folders and docs (I don't remember it) so you will have to do search for it.
You can also search for older PDFs on FIA page. For example 2008 Japan GP - FP3 times Link

There are also some Fia PDF files available on Speed F1 under downloads section .

[Kiril Varbanov]

OK, I talked to appropriate person.
The FIA feeds are not available to mere mortals. Any attempt to transmit live race data during live GP event will be relentlessly pursued due to the whole commercial model and the vendor that distributes the app for mobile phones - which is understandable.
Archives with live race data are not available anywhere (at least visibly), in a nice readable and parse-able format.

I'm not done with this, however, the research and the attempts are continuing. I will update the thread with appropriate findings. My final goal would be something like Excel workbook containing couple of sheets with race results, qualifying times, speed traps and sector times. I already wrote simple Jscript to extract such data to plain .CSV files.

P.S.
Live timing on F1.com appears to be an image being put inside the Java Applet every one or two seconds? Dear me ... that's not the greatest way to be inline with the tech trends, but the Live Timing has been discussed many times, I suppose, and I believe we all agree that it needs major overhaul.

Has anyone smoke tested the frameworks we discussed earlier? I'm really curious to see the output.

[Cam]

Awesome work Kiril. No, I have not tested those yet as I don't run the supported platforms. I intend to try through a VM over the next week, I will update when I can

So, the live feed, we can't re-broadcast but can we capture? For later use as a tool to display other information it should be okay as we're not actually displaying it verbatim. For example, capturing the live feed of lap times over a weekend and then using that data to show averages based on that data, a week later. Surely this outside any broadcast rights scope?

[gert]

I've checked my database and it seems that file chn-session3-times.pdf is indeed corrupt so I don't have it either. I only have chn-session3-classification.pdf but this isn't useful for lap time analysis.

Thanks for checking that, Forza! If yours is corrupted too, then probably it will be almost impossible to find that file anywhere.

A bit of help with Fia site. You can search the file directory yourself. Only thing you need is file name and insert it into url aderess. Some PDFs are still stored on FIA page but they are relocated to different site folders.

And thanks for this explanation too.
I was aware of the 2008 files and the 2012 trick: the way the 2012 files are stored changed when they altered the layout of the Media Center.
Unfortunately China still used the old layout, so the trick doesn't work there.

IIRC, the filenames changed according to the race (race abbreviation in the filename) and the filenames wer moved once the presentation for the next race was made available.
However, I have been unable to find any of the 2009-2010-2011-2012 (first few races) after the files had been moved.
I have most of the files I need, it was just that it might have given me a clue about where they store it so I can get it if needed.

There are also some Fia PDF files available on Speed F1 under downloads section .

Unfortunately, even if the results on the webpage are from 2012 China, the PDF documents are those of the 2011 race.

Thank you for your efforts though, I appreciate

[Richard]

Have you looked here for 2011 viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9815

and here for 2010 viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8168

[gert]

Have you looked here for 2011and here for 2010

I sure did. I posted some of the links in the 2011 topic.

Maybe what I wrote was not very clear, what I meant to say is that I was unable to find back any of the 2009-2010-2011 files on the FIA site after they moved (or removed?) them to prepare for the next race.

If I could find it back on the FIA site I would maybe be able to find more info just by playing with the URL, something like the 2012 trick Forza explained...

[clipsy1H]

can anyone know where i can find Monaco pre-race drivers press conference??

[raymondu999]

Here: http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/ ... 13373.html

[gert]

The FIA site has been redesigned.

There are HTML reports and results of all the 2012 races, but no more PDF Timing Sheets.
Even the Brazilian results have disappeared.

Have the all moved behind the login button?

I hope they still make them available for the 2013 season ...

[Kiril Varbanov]

Indeed, the site now features much more pleasant design than the old one. I also hope that old results will be made available in HTML format, which is a lot easier to be automated via programming interface, let's say with initial "wget -r http://fia.com/results" and then parsing the already known format with your favorite language.
They, FIA, still have some rough edges to polish, for example the fact that fia.com doesn't open without the necessary www. prefix (explicit CNAME), which is an old paradigm when DNS was black magic.

Until that happens, I still find http://en.mclarenf-1.com as the most complete archive for all races in 2012, for Qualification, speed traps in FPs and various stats. I suggest that anyone who is going to do some data mining exercises to go over there and quite simply copy and paste data in his preferred tool - pasting in Excel 2007 for example works OK, as the data comes in HTML table, which is easily recognized by Excel.
Then, do whatever you wish with it, for example saving to CSV and inserting into DB or just plain parsing with your 'weapon of choice'.

[Kiril Varbanov]

Some more 2012 race data -Stats from Pirelli about total tire usage per driver and per compound.

I took the liberty to place it on Google Docs as their web page is showing it skewed. In the meantime I'm awaiting response from FIA about where did the race data from 2012 go on their website.