Race condition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A race condition or race hazard is the behavior of an electronic, software or other system where the output is dependent on the sequence or timing of other uncontrollable events. It becomes a bug when events do not happen in the order the programmer intended. The term originates with the idea of two signals racing each other to influence the output first. in Software Engineeringwith bugconditiondependentprogrammerracesystemtiming