Nicxe/f1_sensor v3.1.0

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F1 Sensor – v3.1.0

Replay mode and expanded race intelligence

F1 Sensor 3.1 introduces Replay Mode, making it possible to replay historical Formula 1 sessions in real time directly in Home Assistant. Combined with a large set of new live sensors and reliability improvements, this release significantly expands both analysis and automation possibilities during race weekends.

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Replay Mode

Replay Mode lets you replay historical F1 sessions while keeping all live sensors synchronized with the original session timeline.

• Replay races, sprints, and practice sessions in real time
• Live sensors update during playback, including race control, track status, weather, timing, and driver positions
• Pause, resume, and stop playback at any time
• Replay data is automatically cleaned up when playback stops

A dedicated Replay media player entity provides timeline controls and correct time handling while paused. For race and sprint sessions, playback can optionally start from the formation lap marker to better align with TV broadcasts.

Driver positions and timing

New and expanded timing data provides deeper insight into race progression.

• New Driver Positions sensor with grid position, current position, and lap times
• Pit in, pit out, and retirement status per driver
• Fastest lap details per driver, including lap number and lap time
• Indicator for the overall fastest lap of the session

Incidents, penalties, and track limits

Race control information is now exposed in more detail and with improved resilience.

• Track limits sensor with total counts and per-driver breakdowns
• Deleted lap times, warnings, and penalties per driver
• Investigations sensor showing active investigations, decisions, and historical outcomes
• Incident and track-limit data is preserved across Home Assistant restarts and cleared predictably when sessions end

Tire performance and strategy

Live tire data makes it easier to understand pace and strategy during sessions.

• New Tire Statistics sensor with aggregated tire performance data
• Top three fastest lap times per tire compound
• Total laps driven and tire sets used per compound
• Delta comparison between compounds
• Pit delta time showing total time loss compared to a normal race lap

Circuit and session context

Additional metadata improves context before and during sessions.

• Circuit map image URLs available in race sensors
• Country flag URLs for race and season sensors
• New sensor showing the current local time at the circuit, including time zone and UTC offset
• Extended session metadata available before sessions go live
• Improved handling of track grip status from race control messages

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"F1-sensor live data cards" comming soon

Full changelog

New features

• Add a replay media player with timeline controls
  Adds a dedicated Replay media player entity so you can play, pause, stop, and scrub through historical sessions with a progress bar and time display. It keeps the timeline accurate by pausing time while playback is paused and resetting to zero when stopped.

• Add circuit map image URL to race sensors
  The Next Race and Current Season sensors now include a new attribute called circuit_map_url. This attribute provides a direct link to the official Formula 1 circuit layout image

• Add country flag URLs to race sensors
  The current season and next race sensors now include country flag information for each circuit location.

• Add driver positions sensor with lap-by-lap timing
  Introduces a new Driver Positions sensor that exposes grid position, current position, and lap times per driver for dashboards and automations.

• Add fastest lap details to driver positions
  Driver positions now include the overall fastest lap with the driver, lap number, and time, plus a per‑driver indicator you can use to highlight the fastest lap in dashboards and lists.

• Add pit and retirement status to driver positions attributes
  Driver positions sensor now expose clear status fields for pit in/out and retirements

• Add pit delta time to pit stops
  The pit stops sensor now reports pit delta, showing the total time loss from entering the pits, stopping, and rejoining compared to a normal race lap. This complements pit stop time and pit lane time so you can see the full impact of each stop in dashboards and automations.

• Add replay mode for watching historical F1 sessions
  You can now play back past F1 sessions synchronized with TV replays or on-demand viewing. Select a session from the dropdown, load it, and press play when the session on your broadcast starts. All live sensors including race control messages, track status, weather data, timing, and driver positions update in real time during playback. Pause and resume as needed to stay in sync with your broadcast. When you stop the replay, cached data is automatically removed to save disk space.

• Add Saturday as a race week start option
  You can now set Saturday as the first day of race week in the integration settings. This makes the race week sensor better match regions that start the week on Saturday. Existing setups keep their current setting unless you change it.

• Add session metadata attributes to session status sensor
  The session status sensor now includes attributes such as meeting name, location, country, circuit name, time zone offset, and session start and end times. Previously this information was only available during live sessions through the current session sensor. With this change, the data is accessible as soon as the session enters the pre-session window, typically 60 minutes before the scheduled start. This allows dashboards and automations to display and act on upcoming session details before the session goes live.

• Add tire statistics sensor for live tire performance analysis
  A new sensor called Tire Statistics is now available under live timing sensors. It provides aggregated tire performance data during sessions, including the top three fastest lap times per tire compound with driver names, total laps driven and tire sets used for each compound, and a delta comparison showing which compound is fastest and how much slower the others are.

• Add track limits, investigations, and track grip sensors
  Three new live timing features are now available. The Track Limits sensor shows the total number of track limit violations during a session, with detailed per-driver breakdowns including deleted lap times, black and white flag warnings, and any resulting penalties. The Investigations sensor tracks steward investigations and penalties throughout a race, showing active investigations, their outcomes, and a complete history grouped by driver. The Session Status sensor now includes a track grip attribute that indicates whether low grip conditions have been declared by race control, useful for detecting wet or slippery track situations. All three features can be used to build dashboards showing live race incidents or to trigger automations when specific drivers receive warnings or penalties.

• Add track time sensor showing current local time at the circuit
  A new sensor displays the current time at the race track location, making it easy to understand what time it is for drivers and teams at the circuit. Attributes include timezone name, UTC offset, and the time difference from your local time, helping you quickly compare track time to your own.

• Let you choose the first day of race week
  You can now select whether race week starts on Sunday or Monday in the integration settings. This makes the race week sensor match local expectations instead of assuming a single global start day. Existing setups keep their current behavior unless you change the setting.

• Add a formation start marker for race and sprint sessions
  A new formation start marker helps you sync broadcasts with a reliable pre‑start reference, and it is exposed as a binary sensor for automations. Replay playback now starts from this marker when available so you can see the full build‑up. Live delay calibration can also use the formation start marker as an optional reference instead of session live.

Bug fixes

• Improve event-tracker fallback recovery when upstream schedule responses are partial or updated
  This update makes the live timing fallback more robust when Index.json is unavailable. The event-tracker schedule lookup now continues to alternate timetable sources if one source is present but empty, so valid sessions are still discovered. Retry behavior after 401/403 now uses refreshed endpoint values, improving automatic recovery when F1 changes upstream configuration. This reduces idle/live timing gaps during transient API or endpoint changes.

• Preserve live session incidents and track-limit laps across restarts
  Live session incident and track‑limit details now survive Home Assistant restarts and stay accurate even when incoming messages are sparse. When the live stream ends, these sensors clear predictably so dashboards don’t show stale data. Replay and weather handling are more resilient, reducing memory spikes and avoiding stuck states during temporary errors.

• Prevent recorder size warnings for growing F1 sensor attributes
  Large, season-growing attributes are now excluded from Recorder for affected sensors, including season and sprint results, points progression, driver positions, pit stops, and current season race lists. The full data is still available in Home Assistant state attributes for dashboards and templates, but it is no longer stored in the database where it can exceed the 16 KB limit. This removes recurring warnings and reduces unnecessary Recorder database load over the season.

• Prevent recorder warnings for large Current Season sensor attributes
  The Current Season sensor now keeps the full races attribute available in Home Assistant state attributes while excluding that heavy data from Recorder storage. This removes the recurring 16 KB attribute-size warning and helps avoid unnecessary database growth without changing what users see in the UI.

• Restore live timing reliability with automatic event-tracker fallback when Index data is unavailable
  Live timing now keeps Index.json as the primary schedule source and automatically falls back to F1’s event-tracker schedule only when index data is unavailable or invalid. This keeps normal behavior unchanged while improving reliability during temporary upstream index outages, including blocked pre-season windows.

• Restrict event-tracker fallback to real index failures only
  Live timing no longer switches to the fallback schedule when a valid index is simply past its final session. Fallback is now only used when index data is actually unavailable or invalid, preserving expected idle behavior while keeping recovery support for genuine index outages.

• Session status track-grip handling
  Updated the session status track-grip handling to preserve the last declared grip condition and only change it when an explicit “LOW/NORMAL GRIP CONDITIONS” message arrives, so it no longer flips back to normal on unrelated race control updates.

• Stop applying live delay during replay playback
  Replay mode now plays back data without applying the live delay setting, so sensor updates follow the recorded timing. This keeps replays responsive and consistent in both development playback and historical sessions. The live delay number continues to affect only live sessions

• Formation lap sensor configuration issue

Documentation

• Update for v3.1

Maintenance

• Add a replay start reference option for race replays
  You can now choose whether replay playback begins at session start or at the formation lap marker when available. This makes replay timing easier to align with your preferred reference point. Existing setups keep the current default behavior unless you change the setting.

• Clear sensor data when loading a replay session and restore live data when replay ends
  Starting a replay while a live session was active could cause sensors to display mixed data from both sources. Sensors are now fully cleared when a replay session is loaded, ensuring a clean state before playback begins. Live data updates are blocked during the entire download and playback phase to prevent stale values from reappearing. When the replay is stopped or finishes, the integration automatically reconnects to the active live session and restores current real-time data without requiring a restart.

• Clear sensor data when loading a replay session and restore live data when replay ends
  Starting a replay while a live session was active could cause sensors to display mixed data from both the live session and the replay. Sensors are now fully cleared when a replay session is loaded, ensuring a clean state before playback begins. When the replay is stopped or finishes, the integration automatically reconnects to the live session if one is still active, restoring current real-time data without requiring a restart.

• Improve reliability of FIA document updates
  FIA documents now handle page structure changes more gracefully so updates continue to appear. If the season page cannot be resolved, the integration falls back to a safe default to avoid missing documents. This improves the stability of FIA decision sensors without requiring any user changes.

• Prepaired code for 11 teams and 22 drivers

☕ Support This Project

If you find F1 Sensor useful, consider supporting its development