Data in Racing: Why Is It Critical in Making Race Cars Go Faster?

If you watch any racing on TV, or better still at a track, you will see plenty of people in the team garages with headsets on staring at a screen. If you catch a glimpse of that screen, it seems to be covered in lines jumping up and down a graph. This is obviously very interesting to them and to anyone who wants to make their race car go faster, as here – in all its glory – is shown what exactly is happening in the race car.

Although this seems to be a major side of racing now, this was not always the case. In fact, there were not motorsport-specific systems or hardware until the late 1980s. Before then, chief mechanics would work closely with the driver, and using their experience, work out ways of making the car behave more to their liking. Simple recording devices were first seen in testing in the 1970s, but the units that recorded the data were pretty large and added extra weight that could be better used elsewhere, so did not feature in actual races until much later. In addition to size and weight concerns, drivers were often a bit suspicious about having all their actions recorded electronically. Who would admit to not taking a corner at full throttle if asked? However, after they understand that the data can help make their car quicker, most drivers cannot get enough of the squiggly lines on the screen in front of them.

In the late 1980s, the key to getting more data was the availability of more computing power. Race cars already had basic electronics for the fuel injection systems, but very little that actually monitored what the driver inputs were, and as a result, what the race car did in response. Even if they could monitor a sensor, they could only capture this information on a floppy disk. At this time, motorsport-specific data logging was appearing in the US and Europe; and the data captured from a lap was recorded on a logger, for later download.

One of the first things they discovered was what a violent place a racing car could be. You do not want a race car with much suspension movement (it upsets the weight transfer during cornering) and also any aerodynamic disruption will also make the race car unpredictable and make an otherwise normal driver pretty grumpy! Meaning, the race car must be very stiff, especially because driving over curbs creates huge energy which is painful to the driver and the race car. In Formula 1 races, which pioneered the use of more and more data, teams originally used military-grade products just so the electronics could survive the race. As Peter Wright, technical director for a Formula 1 Team, once observed¹, "the objective in engineering a Formula 1 car is to ensure that the vehicle can maintain maximum acceleration, at all time as it travels around the defined path of the course."

Data from the race car also helps the race engineers understand the health of the car too, particularly in relation to temperatures and pressures. Just like on a road car, these must match the zone which the designers had in mind. So, we have established data is important in modern racing. But how is it used to make a race car go faster? The image below shows a typical logging screen from manufacturer MoTeC*, showing changes in the car’s data as it progresses round a lap. Modern race cars record hundreds of channels of data, so the engineers on the pit wall only focus on a few in real-time; they will review all the data gathered after the race to see what they can learn from the event.

This is a topic that can fill many books. So here, we will look at a few simple examples and show what our data engineer is looking at. The top channel is logging engine rotations per minute (rpm); the second logs speed in kilometers per hour (KPH); the middle captures the throttle position; the fourth shows longitudinal G; and the bottom identifies the steering angle. The graphic also shows two examples of the lap which the car ran. Put altogether, this information helps the data engineer see what is happening in the car during the lap. It also enables the engineer to offer setup changes (or advice to the driver!) as to how to improve the overall lap time. 

Data becomes useful when all the pieces of this jigsaw come together. When it enables the team to learn a lot about the driver and the way the race car responds. As always, the answer to going faster will be a combination of factors, but the driver needs to be very aware of their part in this challenge as well as the setup of the race car.

Think about the ride height sensor, as an example. This is often infrared and unsurprisingly, measures the distance between the bottom of the race car to the surface of the track. If the race car is too high, it allows too much air to flow under the race car, making the aerodynamics less efficient, and the race car much more unpredictable to drive. If the race car is too low, it hits the track all the time, which is not only very uncomfortable, but also makes the race car act like a toboggan and go straight on instead of following the steering inputs. Our race engineer will have a pretty good idea of the optimum ride height, but a lap or two with fuel on the race car will show where those pesky new bumps have appeared since last year’s race and the height will have to be optimized to cope. Minor scraping on the ground, at the end of a straight (where we have maximum aero load), is generally okay, but more important this means the expensive racing machine will handle like a shopping trolley for the majority of the lap.