Scott Davies reportng on Oulton Park race 30th September 2011.
The electrical engineering side of things has finally come together with an update from Race Technology and the final pieces of the puzzle coming together. We had a solid weekend of data and analysis, making my job a busy one. Now that the bugs have all been worked out, including the ones in the engineer’s head, we have a system where we can configure the dash to suit the driver. A full suite of alarms and notifications have been applied, in addition to the “performance” meter finally working! Based on a lap marker that I drop into the car, the driver can get an instantaneous update on how well they are driving against their best lap of the session. For the arrive-and-drive customers, I am expecting that this should add to the “surprise and delight” factor of the MCR cars and also give the driver a fantastic heads-up to how they are performing and where they can improve.
In addition to the dash and car setup, there is a new website in town, setup just for the race weekends. TSL timing Ltd. has set up a website with a java script enabled link to have a live table of timing for both laptops and internet enabled smartphones. The applet looks exactly the same as the analogue TV signal normally seen on the pit wall, but now it is free to view both for the punters trackside but for the ever important race engineers and crew! We have made extensive use of this and as long as we have a mobile internet connection at the pit wall, we are able to give Patrick exact positions and gaps now, making Paul’s job of timing much easier. Patrick commented over the weekend stating that it was great to be able to get a detailed stream of info both from his dash and the pit wall!!! Since this was our first weekend of solid data gathering, I have had a great chance to see how we stack up and compare our data to some of our other competitors who use Race Technology. I even was able to export the data and compare it to some Farringdon Instruments data, giving us the freedom to put a stake in the ground, so to speak, for our performance against other manufacturers, regardless of the data hardware.
Patrick’s data continues to show that he is king of the late-brakers. His consistency in car control is great from an engineer’s perspective because we can change one or two items and see a corner-by-corner change in the car which just makes our jobs easier. Over the weekend we addressed a few racing line selections out of the data and found over half a second in one of the sectors! Based on our data analysis, it also shows that gear selection is critical to this competition series. Even by as much as a tooth difference, it can make as much as a second’s difference in lap time.
Oulton Park always proves to be a challenging track. If it isn’t the new layout, it’ll be the weather that changes perspectives on why this track is so intriguing. Sitting behind a laptop whilst making heads-or-tails of squiggly lines has given me the great perspective of seeing a team come together. Over the past season, MCR race cars and the ADI Group sponsored #66 car of Patrick’s has been a great example of seeing teamwork and ingenuity come together to make a spectacular car. Even though our race was hampered by weather related tyre choices, it was fantastic and very encouraging to see a well-oiled team deliver through a busy weekend, even in spite of some of the mechanical issues we saw. Even in the face of adversity, we managed a finished race and a raft of data from the car and driver so we can continue to improve on a winning car.
