Total number of laps for race/sprint type sessions?

[Babnik21]

Could be missing something here but is the total number of laps not provided in any of the endpoints? Would be useful IMO.

[JeffreyJPZ]

Looks like the raw F1 stream provides total laps and lap updates (see this example). I don't see lap updates being that useful for our use case, but I could maybe see the benefit in adding a laps field to race sessions.

One thing to consider is that the total laps might change during sessions (weather delays, aborted starts, etc.), so it may become stale depending on how often sessions are refreshed. I think @br-g may know more about this.

[br-g]

Looks like the raw F1 stream provides total laps and lap updates (see this example). I don't see lap updates being that useful for our use case, but I could maybe see the benefit in adding a laps field to race sessions.

One thing to consider is that the total laps might change during sessions (weather delays, aborted starts, etc.), so it may become stale depending on how often sessions are refreshed. I think @br-g may know more about this.

Good catch, @JeffreyJPZ. The main problem here is that this lap count is only received from the stream at the beginning of the session. Even though the scheduled number of laps is known a long time in advance, we don't get it through this endpoint until the start, which is a pretty big limitation.

[Babnik21]

This info would be more useful if it were available before session start, so I agree this is a massive limitation.

Total laps can be scraped in advance from https://www.formula1.com/en/racing/{year}/{location}, but it would require adding html scraping to what currently seems to be a much cleaner all-JSON flow. Additionally, I wasn't able to find a reliable total lap source for sprint type sessions, and I don't like the idea of deriving from race and circuit distance.

That said, I do believe total laps info is valuable even if it's only available at session start (1h before?). Considering the limitations, likely the better approach.