Exporting your track sessions: LapTimer, TrackAddict, VBOX, Catalyst

You've been timing laps for two seasons. Your times live in a phone, a tablet or a box — and nowhere else. The day the app changes version, the phone dies, or you want to compare three circuits, you start again from nothing.

Exporting takes thirty seconds per session. Here's how it works in the four most common tools, and what you should know about what each one produces.

Harry's LapTimer

The most complete export of the group: GPS trace, lap times and speeds in a single file.

1. Open the Laps tab and select the session.
2. Share button, top right.
3. Choose Export → CSV (not "GPX", not "Video").
4. Save to Files, or email it to yourself.

The CSV holds one row per sample — latitude, longitude, speed, lap number. A full day at 10 Hz runs to a few megabytes: that's normal, and it's what allows distance to be recomputed from the trace rather than estimated.

RaceChrono

Same idea, different menu.

1. Open the session under Sessions.
2. ⋮ (three-dot) menu → Export session.
3. Pick the CSV format.

RaceChrono can also write .vbo; either works, CSV being the lighter of the two.

TrackAddict / RaceRender

1. Home screen → Data Files.
2. Select the session file (named by date).
3. Share / Export, then collect the .csv.

TrackAddict writes its metadata as comments at the top of the file — the lines starting with #. Don't strip them: that's where the circuit name and date live.

VBOX (Racelogic)

1. Take the .vbo off the unit's SD card, or use VBOX Tools → Export.
2. The file is plain text: it starts with [header].

One detail catches people out: VBOX doesn't store lap times. It records the trace and the speeds; laps are reconstructed afterwards by the software from a start/finish line. So a .vbo imported elsewhere arrives with no best lap — that's not a read error.

Another quirk inherited from marine navigation: VBOX treats west longitudes as positive. A tool that ignores that convention will place your Silverstone sessions somewhere off the coast of Japan.

Garmin Catalyst

The Catalyst is the odd one out: it doesn't export a trace, it exports a per-lap summary.

1. On the unit: Sessions → select the day → Export.
2. Or connect it over USB and copy the CSVs from the sessions folder.

The file gives one row per lap: number, time, distance, top speed. Less rich than a trace, but enough for what matters — and the distance is reported by the device rather than derived, which makes it more reliable than anything a geodesic calculation would extract from a 1 Hz GPS.

What an export never contains

Three things are missing every time, whatever the tool:

• actual running time, as distinct from the wall clock between first and last lap;
• temperature, which governs tyre and brake wear more than anything else;
• any link to maintenance. No timing app knows you flushed the brakes between two track days.

That last point is the one that matters. Your lap times live on one side, your invoices on the other, and nothing connects them — even though that connection is precisely what tells you when to act.

Back them up, even if you don't use them

Even if you do nothing with these files today, export them and drop them in a dated folder. Timing apps change formats, owners and business models. A CSV doesn't.

---

StemmaPass reads all four formats directly. Drop the file in: circuit, date, lap count, best time and distance are recognised automatically, then applied to the wear of every consumable. A 25-minute session doesn't count as 25 miles of road — and that's the entire point.

See the demo garage