Technology and NASCAR: How the Internet of Things drives Richard Childress Racing

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In: NASCAR Cup Series News

From the beginnings of NASCAR the only technology that moved the sport and the cars were mechanical technology. Mechanical geniuses such as Junior Johnson and Smokey Yunick tinkered with under the hoods of their race cars to gain a tenth a lap here or a mile per hour there in the early days.

Yet as time changes and mechanics of yesteryear moves to teams of engineers with new technology taking on a new millennium with interconnections made at the speed of light. NASCAR and track owners making investments into infrastructure upgrades and technology companies such as Dell coming on board with Richard Childress Racing have evolved the landscape on race weekend.

“We partnered with Dell for an end-to-end solution who has allowed us to interconnect into the IoT(Internet of Things) which has integrated from the shop directly to the track and truck on race weekend. In my 20 plus years working in the sport Dell has allowed us to aggregate data on the fly on race weekend and make decisions directly on the box” Said Eric Warren

As technology continues to drive the sport with NASCAR connecting laser templates into the inspection process to smooth the process for teams, Dell and Richard Childress Racing have worked together to build a platform to interconnect teams at the track.

“Working with Dell on data aggregation between our teams and our pit equipment all the way down to the guns we use has allowed our pit engineers at the track and our crew chiefs to model ever changing data directly on the box as the race progresses without having to rely on engineers back at the shop” Said Warren

With technology continuing to move into the future and NASCAR as a sports body and teams partnering with technology companies the prevalence of the Internet of Things will become ever clearer with competition getting closer and teams looking for ways to gain that competitive edge.

Teams will continue to use edge technology both at the track with data aggregation for crew chiefs and team engineers but at the shop with modeling technology in building the next generations of race cars and building data collection technology into at track equipment.

Speedway Digest Staff
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