boxbox

F1 live timing in your terminal — the pit wall timing screen as a TUI. Positions, gaps, tires, mini-sectors, race control, and a live track map, straight from the same feed that powers the official F1 app.

Prefer text? The layout is broken down below.

Install

git clone https://github.com/hung-ng/boxbox
cd boxbox
cargo install --path .

Requires Rust 1.88 or newer. Needs a terminal ≥100 columns wide for the side panels (the timing tower alone works narrower). Team colors use truecolor when the terminal advertises it (COLORTERM=truecolor) and fall back to the xterm-256 palette otherwise.

Use

boxbox live                        # connect to the live feed (during sessions)
boxbox replay bahrain race         # replay any archived session
boxbox replay monaco qualifying --year 2024 --speed 2
boxbox replay silverstone race --start-at 01:05:00
boxbox replay                      # no args: browse year → race → session
boxbox replay --list --year 2024   # print the season schedule

--speed accepts a finite multiplier from 0.5 to 120.

A query resolves against the full season schedule: a unique match (e.g. monaco qualifying, silverstone race) plays immediately, anything ambiguous drops into the browser pre-filtered by what you typed. Matching covers race name, circuit, city, and country, plus a few nicknames (britain/uk, cota, vegas, holland, …). replay --list and the browser share this one source, so the listing and the picker always agree.

The season is always chosen with --year, never as a positional token — boxbox replay monaco 2023 is rejected with a hint to use boxbox replay monaco --year 2023.

Replay downloads a session's timing streams once and caches them locally (~/Library/Caches/boxbox on macOS, the XDG cache dir on Linux, %LOCALAPPDATA%\boxbox on Windows), so re-watching is instant and offline.

Cache

boxbox cache path               # print the cache directory
boxbox cache info               # per-category disk usage (sessions/schedules/circuits)
boxbox cache clear              # wipe the whole cache
boxbox cache clear --year 2024  # wipe only one season's cached session streams

Session streams run tens of MB each and nothing evicts them automatically, so the cache grows as you watch more sessions — use boxbox cache info to check its size and boxbox cache clear [--year] to reclaim space.

Keys

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	select a driver (detail panel follows them through the field); scroll the RC log while it's open
m	cycle view: split → map → tower → auto
r	open/close the full race control log
space	pause/resume (replay)
+ / -	playback speed (0.5× – 120×)
← / →	seek back / forward 1 minute (replay; a paused session scrubs without resuming)
Shift+← / Shift+→	seek back / forward 5 minutes (, / . work too, for terminals that don't report Shift on arrows)
0	restart from the very beginning (replay)
g	restart at the green flag (replay)
?	toggle the keybindings help overlay
q / Esc	quit (Esc closes the overlay first)

The screen

• Status bar — track flag chip, session-type chip (RACE / QUALI / FP1–FP3 / SPRINT / SQ), lap counter or Q-segment + a locally-ticking clock (yellow under 2:00, red under 0:30; Q{p} ended between segments), session fastest lap (purple), weather (A air / T track temp, wind, humidity), replay transport with an elapsed / total timeline (⏵/⏸/⏹), and the meeting name with its year. Always visible.
• Timing tower — the race story: gap, interval, tire, last lap. Position changes flash a green ▲ / red ▼; intervals under 1s (DRS range) highlight both cars of the battle; pit stops replace the interval (PIT/IN PIT while stopped, then the pit-lane time in cyan, OUT LAP on exit) right where your eye is. The selected row stays on screen as the field scrolls. In qualifying: best lap, gap, a live mini-sector strip per driver, the elimination cutoff line in Q1/Q2 (drop-zone drivers show their red gap to the cutoff time), and just-completed laps flash in the live-lap column. In practice: a LAPS column.
• Driver panel — select anyone with ↑↓: sector times (Q1/Q2/Q3 segment bests in qualifying), mini-sectors, full stint history, pit stops and last pit-lane time (or lap count in practice), gaps, and a speed-trap line (I1/I2/FL/ST).
• Track map — braille circuit with cars as team-colored dots; active yellow-flagged marshal sectors light up yellow on the outline, in-pit cars dim, and a dim trace sketches the pit lane as cars use it. The whole outline tints with the track flag (yellow / SC-VSC / red).
• Race control ticker — the latest message that matters (penalties, safety car, flags); routine track-sector/blue-flag spam is filtered into the full log behind r.

In live mode before a session starts, the body shows a "waiting for a live session…" message with the next scheduled session.

Data sources

• livetiming.formula1.com — the unofficial SignalR feed used by the official web/app timing (live), and its static archive (replay). No account needed.
• api.multiviewer.app — circuit outlines for the map.

This project is unofficial and is not associated in any way with Formula 1 companies. F1 and related marks are trademarks of Formula One Licensing B.V.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.