CLI Tool - tif1

Overview

The tif1 CLI provides a powerful command-line interface for accessing Formula 1 data directly from your terminal. Built with Typer and Rich, it offers beautiful, formatted output with progress indicators and interactive tables. The CLI is designed for:

Quick data exploration - Browse events, sessions, and drivers without writing code
Performance testing - Benchmark data loading and cache performance
Cache management - Inspect and manage your local data cache
Debugging - Enable detailed logging to troubleshoot issues
Scripting - Integrate F1 data into shell scripts and automation workflows

Installation

The CLI is automatically installed when you install tif1:

pip install tif1

After installation, the tif1 command will be available in your terminal. Verify the installation:

tif1 version

Global Options

All commands support standard help output:

tif1 --help              # Show all available commands
tif1 events --help       # Show help for a specific command

Commands Reference

`events` - List Events for a Season

Display all Formula 1 events (Grand Prix weekends) for a specific year. Syntax:

tif1 events <year>

Arguments:

year (required): Season year (2018-current)

Output:

Formatted table with event numbers and names
Total event count for the season

Examples:

# List all 2025 events
tif1 events 2025

# List 2024 events
tif1 events 2024

# List 2018 events (earliest supported year)
tif1 events 2018

Sample Output:

┏━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ # ┃ Event                         ┃
┡━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1 │ Bahrain Grand Prix           │
│ 2 │ Saudi Arabian Grand Prix     │
│ 3 │ Australian Grand Prix        │
│ 4 │ Japanese Grand Prix          │
...
└───┴───────────────────────────────┘

Total: 24 events

Use Cases:

Discover available events for a season
Find the exact event name for use in other commands
Verify data availability for a specific year

`sessions` - List Sessions for an Event

Display all sessions available for a specific Grand Prix event. Syntax:

tif1 sessions <year> <event>

Arguments:

year (required): Season year (2018-current)
event (required): Event name (use quotes for multi-word names)

Output:

Formatted table with session numbers and names
Typical sessions include: Practice 1, Practice 2, Practice 3, Qualifying, Sprint, Sprint Qualifying, Race

Examples:

# List sessions for 2025 Abu Dhabi GP
tif1 sessions 2025 "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix"

# List sessions for Monaco (single-word event names don't need quotes)
tif1 sessions 2024 Monaco

# List sessions for a sprint weekend
tif1 sessions 2024 "São Paulo Grand Prix"

Sample Output:

┏━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ # ┃ Session            ┃
┡━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1 │ Practice 1         │
│ 2 │ Practice 2         │
│ 3 │ Practice 3         │
│ 4 │ Qualifying         │
│ 5 │ Race               │
└───┴────────────────────┘

Use Cases:

Determine available sessions for an event
Find the exact session name for data queries
Identify sprint weekends (which have Sprint and Sprint Qualifying sessions)

`drivers` - List Drivers in a Session

Display all drivers who participated in a specific session, along with their team information. Syntax:

tif1 drivers <year> <event> <session>

Arguments:

year (required): Season year (2018-current)
event (required): Event name (use quotes for multi-word names)
session (required): Session name (use quotes for multi-word names)

Output:

Formatted table with driver codes and team names
Total driver count
Progress indicator during data loading

Examples:

# List drivers in 2025 Abu Dhabi GP Practice 1
tif1 drivers 2025 "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix" "Practice 1"

# List drivers in qualifying
tif1 drivers 2024 Monaco Qualifying

# List drivers in the race
tif1 drivers 2024 "British Grand Prix" Race

Sample Output:

Loading session... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100%

┏━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Driver ┃ Team                   ┃
┡━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ VER    │ Red Bull Racing        │
│ PER    │ Red Bull Racing        │
│ HAM    │ Mercedes               │
│ RUS    │ Mercedes               │
│ LEC    │ Ferrari                │
│ SAI    │ Ferrari                │
...
└────────┴────────────────────────┘

Total: 20 drivers

Use Cases:

Identify which drivers participated in a session
Find driver codes for use in other commands
Verify team lineups for a specific event
Check for reserve drivers or substitutions

`fastest` - Show Fastest Laps

Display the fastest lap times for all drivers or a specific driver in a session. Syntax:

tif1 fastest <year> <event> <session> [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

year (required): Season year (2018-current)
event (required): Event name (use quotes for multi-word names)
session (required): Session name (use quotes for multi-word names)

Options:

--driver <code> or -d <code>: Filter to a specific driver (3-letter code)

Output:

All drivers mode: Sorted table of fastest laps with position, driver, team, and time
Single driver mode: Driver’s fastest lap time
Progress indicator during data loading

Examples:

# Show fastest laps for all drivers in qualifying
tif1 fastest 2025 "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix" Qualifying

# Show Verstappen's fastest lap
tif1 fastest 2025 "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix" Qualifying --driver VER

# Show Hamilton's fastest lap (short option)
tif1 fastest 2024 Monaco Qualifying -d HAM

# Show fastest laps in practice session
tif1 fastest 2024 "British Grand Prix" "Practice 1"

# Show fastest laps in the race
tif1 fastest 2024 "Italian Grand Prix" Race

Sample Output (All Drivers):

Loading session... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100%

┏━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Pos ┃ Driver ┃ Team                   ┃ Time      ┃
┡━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1   │ VER    │ Red Bull Racing        │ 82.456s   │
│ 2   │ LEC    │ Ferrari                │ 82.789s   │
│ 3   │ HAM    │ Mercedes               │ 82.901s   │
│ 4   │ SAI    │ Ferrari                │ 83.012s   │
...
└─────┴────────┴────────────────────────┴───────────┘

Sample Output (Single Driver):

Loading session... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100%

VER fastest lap: 82.456s

Use Cases:

Compare driver performance in a session
Identify the fastest driver in qualifying or practice
Analyze individual driver lap times
Generate performance reports for specific drivers

`cache-info` - Show Cache Information

Display detailed information about your local tif1 cache, including location, file count, and total size. Syntax:

tif1 cache-info

Arguments: None Output:

Cache directory path
Number of cache files
Total cache size in megabytes

Examples:

# Show cache information
tif1 cache-info

Sample Output:

Cache location: /home/user/.tif1/cache
Cache files: 3
Total size: 145.67 MB

Use Cases:

Monitor cache disk usage
Verify cache location
Determine if cache needs cleaning
Troubleshoot cache-related issues

Cache Details: The tif1 cache uses SQLite with Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) for optimal performance:

Main cache database: cache.sqlite - Stores session data, lap data, and metadata
WAL files: cache.sqlite-wal and cache.sqlite-shm - Transaction logs for concurrent access
In-memory cache: LRU caches for frequently accessed data (not shown in file count)

The cache stores:

Event schedules
Session metadata
Lap data
Telemetry data
Weather information
Race control messages

`cache-clear` - Clear Cache

Remove all cached data to free up disk space or force fresh data downloads. Syntax:

tif1 cache-clear [OPTIONS]

Options:

--yes or -y: Skip confirmation prompt (useful for scripts)

Output:

Confirmation prompt (unless --yes is used)
Success or cancellation message

Examples:

# Clear cache with confirmation prompt
tif1 cache-clear

# Clear cache without confirmation (for scripts)
tif1 cache-clear --yes

# Clear cache without confirmation (short option)
tif1 cache-clear -y

Sample Output (With Confirmation):

Are you sure you want to clear the cache? [y/N]: y
Cache cleared successfully!

Sample Output (Without Confirmation):

Cache cleared successfully!

Sample Output (Cancelled):

Cache clear cancelled

Use Cases:

Free up disk space
Force fresh data downloads after data corrections
Troubleshoot cache corruption issues
Reset cache during development/testing

Warning: Clearing the cache will require re-downloading all data on next access, which may take time depending on your network speed and the amount of data requested.

`version` - Show Version Information

Display the currently installed version of tif1. Syntax:

tif1 version

Arguments: None Output:

tif1 version number

Examples:

# Show version
tif1 version

Sample Output:

tif1 version 0.1.0

Use Cases:

Verify installed version
Check for updates
Report version in bug reports
Confirm successful installation

`debug` - Debug Mode Session Loading

Load a session with debug-level logging enabled to troubleshoot issues or understand data loading behavior. Syntax:

tif1 debug <year> <event> <session>

Arguments:

year (required): Season year (2018-current)
event (required): Event name (use quotes for multi-word names)
session (required): Session name (use quotes for multi-word names)

Output:

Detailed debug logs showing:
- HTTP requests and responses
- Cache hits and misses
- Data parsing steps
- Performance metrics
Session summary (driver count, lap count)
Progress indicator during loading

Examples:

# Debug session loading
tif1 debug 2025 "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix" "Practice 1"

# Debug qualifying session
tif1 debug 2024 Monaco Qualifying

# Debug race session
tif1 debug 2024 "British Grand Prix" Race

Sample Output:

2025-04-18 10:30:15 - tif1.cache - DEBUG - Cache miss: 2025/Abu Dhabi Grand Prix/Practice 1/laps
2025-04-18 10:30:15 - tif1.http_session - DEBUG - GET https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/TracingInsights/2025/...
2025-04-18 10:30:16 - tif1.core - DEBUG - Parsing lap data: 342 laps
2025-04-18 10:30:16 - tif1.cache - DEBUG - Cached: 2025/Abu Dhabi Grand Prix/Practice 1/laps
Loading session with debug logging... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100%

Session loaded successfully!
Drivers: 20
Laps: 342

Use Cases:

Troubleshoot data loading issues
Understand cache behavior
Measure performance and identify bottlenecks
Debug network connectivity problems
Report detailed information in bug reports
Verify data sources and CDN behavior

Debug Information Includes:

Cache operations (hits, misses, writes)
HTTP requests (URLs, response times, status codes)
JSON parsing performance
DataFrame construction steps
Data validation results
Retry and circuit breaker activity

Configuration

The CLI respects all tif1 configuration options set via environment variables or the .tif1rc configuration file.

Environment Variables

Key environment variables that affect CLI behavior:

# Cache location
export TIF1_CACHE_DIR="$HOME/.tif1/cache"

# Enable/disable caching
export TIF1_ENABLE_CACHE=true

# Network timeout (seconds)
export TIF1_TIMEOUT=30

# Maximum retry attempts
export TIF1_MAX_RETRIES=3

# Offline mode (use cache only)
export TIF1_OFFLINE_MODE=false

# Backend library (pandas or polars)
export TIF1_LIB=pandas

# Log level
export TIF1_LOG_LEVEL=WARNING

Configuration File

Create a .tif1rc file in your home directory for persistent configuration:

{
  "cache_dir": "/custom/cache/path",
  "timeout": 60,
  "max_retries": 5,
  "enable_cache": true,
  "lib": "pandas"
}

See the Environment Variables documentation for complete details.

Advanced Usage

Scripting and Automation

The CLI is designed for use in shell scripts and automation workflows:

#!/bin/bash
# Script to check fastest laps for all 2025 qualifying sessions

for event in $(tif1 events 2025 | grep -oP '\d+\s+\K.*'); do
  echo "Processing: $event"
  tif1 fastest 2025 "$event" Qualifying
done

Performance Testing

Use the CLI to benchmark cache performance:

# First run (cold cache)
time tif1 drivers 2025 "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix" Race

# Second run (warm cache)
time tif1 drivers 2025 "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix" Race

Pipeline Integration

Combine CLI commands with other tools:

# Export fastest laps to CSV (requires jq and custom processing)
tif1 fastest 2025 Monaco Qualifying > fastest_laps.txt

# Check cache size before and after clearing
tif1 cache-info
tif1 cache-clear -y
tif1 cache-info

Common Workflows

Exploring a New Season

# 1. List all events
tif1 events 2025

# 2. Check sessions for an event
tif1 sessions 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix"

# 3. View drivers in qualifying
tif1 drivers 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix" Qualifying

# 4. Check fastest laps
tif1 fastest 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix" Qualifying

Analyzing Driver Performance

# Compare a driver across multiple sessions
tif1 fastest 2025 Monaco "Practice 1" -d VER
tif1 fastest 2025 Monaco "Practice 2" -d VER
tif1 fastest 2025 Monaco "Practice 3" -d VER
tif1 fastest 2025 Monaco Qualifying -d VER

Cache Management

# Check cache size
tif1 cache-info

# Clear cache if too large
tif1 cache-clear -y

# Verify cache cleared
tif1 cache-info

Troubleshooting

# Enable debug logging to diagnose issues
tif1 debug 2025 "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix" Race

# Check version
tif1 version

# Verify cache location
tif1 cache-info

Tips and Best Practices

Event and Session Names

Use quotes for multi-word names: "Abu Dhabi Grand Prix"
Single-word events don’t need quotes: Monaco
Session names are case-sensitive: Qualifying not qualifying
Use tif1 events and tif1 sessions to find exact names

Performance Optimization

The first data access will be slower (cold cache)
Subsequent accesses are much faster (warm cache)
Use cache-clear sparingly to maintain performance
Enable debug mode to identify performance bottlenecks

Error Handling

If a command fails, try with debug mode for detailed error information
Check your internet connection for network-related errors
Verify event and session names are correct
Ensure the year is within the supported range (2018-current)

Cache Location

Default cache location varies by OS:
- Linux: ~/.cache/tif1 or ~/.tif1
- macOS: ~/Library/Caches/tif1
- Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\tif1
Override with TIF1_CACHE_DIR environment variable
Cache permissions are restricted to user-only (0o700)

Troubleshooting

Command Not Found

If tif1 command is not found after installation:

# Verify installation
pip show tif1

# Check if pip bin directory is in PATH
pip show tif1 | grep Location

# Reinstall if necessary
pip install --force-reinstall tif1

Network Errors

If you encounter network errors:

# Check with debug mode
tif1 debug 2025 Monaco Race

# Verify internet connection
ping cdn.jsdelivr.net

# Try increasing timeout
export TIF1_TIMEOUT=60
tif1 drivers 2025 Monaco Race

Cache Issues

If you suspect cache corruption:

# Clear cache and retry
tif1 cache-clear -y
tif1 drivers 2025 Monaco Race

# Check cache location
tif1 cache-info

Data Not Found

If data is not available:

# Verify event exists
tif1 events 2025

# Verify session exists
tif1 sessions 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix"

# Check if session has completed (future sessions have no data)

Python API Reference - Use tif1 programmatically
Caching Strategy - Understand cache behavior
Configuration - Configure tif1 settings
Data Flow - Learn how data is fetched and processed

Support

For issues, questions, or feature requests:

GitHub Issues: TracingInsights/tif1
Documentation: tif1.dev

Quick Reference

# List commands
tif1 --help

# Events
tif1 events 2025

# Sessions
tif1 sessions 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix"

# Drivers
tif1 drivers 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix" Race

# Fastest laps (all)
tif1 fastest 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix" Qualifying

# Fastest lap (single driver)
tif1 fastest 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix" Qualifying -d VER

# Cache info
tif1 cache-info

# Clear cache
tif1 cache-clear -y

# Version
tif1 version

# Debug
tif1 debug 2025 "Monaco Grand Prix" Race

​Overview

​Installation

​Global Options

​Commands Reference

​events - List Events for a Season

​sessions - List Sessions for an Event

​drivers - List Drivers in a Session

​fastest - Show Fastest Laps

​cache-info - Show Cache Information

​cache-clear - Clear Cache

​version - Show Version Information

​debug - Debug Mode Session Loading

​Configuration

​Environment Variables

​Configuration File

​Advanced Usage

​Scripting and Automation

​Performance Testing

​Pipeline Integration

​Common Workflows

​Exploring a New Season

​Analyzing Driver Performance

​Cache Management

​Troubleshooting

​Tips and Best Practices

​Event and Session Names

​Performance Optimization

​Error Handling

​Cache Location

​Troubleshooting

​Command Not Found

​Network Errors

​Cache Issues

​Data Not Found

​Related Documentation

​Support

​Quick Reference

Overview

Installation

Global Options

Commands Reference

`events` - List Events for a Season

`sessions` - List Sessions for an Event

`drivers` - List Drivers in a Session

`fastest` - Show Fastest Laps

`cache-info` - Show Cache Information

`cache-clear` - Clear Cache

`version` - Show Version Information

`debug` - Debug Mode Session Loading

Configuration

Environment Variables

Configuration File

Advanced Usage

Scripting and Automation

Performance Testing

Pipeline Integration

Common Workflows

Exploring a New Season

Analyzing Driver Performance

Cache Management

Troubleshooting

Tips and Best Practices

Event and Session Names

Performance Optimization

Error Handling

Cache Location

Troubleshooting

Command Not Found

Network Errors

Cache Issues

Data Not Found

Related Documentation

Support

Quick Reference