A method and system for synchronizing a lidar and a camera on an autonomous vehicle. The system selects a plurality of track samples for a route including a lidar scan and an image. For each track sample, the system calculates a time shift by iterating many time deltas. For each time delta, the system adjusts a camera timestamp by that time delta, projects a lidar scan onto the image as a lidar projection according to the adjusted camera timestamp, and calculates an alignment score of the lidar projection for that time delta. The system defines the time shift for each track sample as the time delta with the highest alignment score. The system then models time drift of the camera compared to the lidar based on the calculated time shifts for the track samples and synchronizes the lidar and the camera according to the modeled time drift.