The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
This column is turning into a chronicle of my summer travel schedule, but I need to write about the time I spent last week in Edmonton at the Rexall Indy. This is the only Indy car race in Canada this year and I was completely amazed by the role that technology played in an event like this. It has been about four years since IÕve been to one, but over the past 10 years or so, computing power has completely transformed the way that races like these work. I went to the track with my uncle for three full days and also bought a pass for the paddock, the area where the race teams set up their cars. This is an amazing place where you can get right up to these half million dollar cars, watch the teams work on them, and talk to the drivers or the mechanics who spend their time back here. But wandering around in this space, I always saw was each teamÕs geeks. Every team had at least two people who had their laptops with them at all times. Every time the cars hit the track, these people followed along behind them and downloaded massive amounts of data. Everything on an Indy car records something. The temperature of the brakes, the tire pressure, the amount of pressure applied by the driver on the accelerator at each and every place on the track. On top of the teamÕs geeks, Honda, which supplies all of the engines on each of these $500,000 cars, has their technicians on hand and they stop at each team as they come off of the track and get their information from them. Firestone as well. They supply all of the tires for all of the cars and they are interested in how their product is performing, so they stop at each with their laptops to download from their sensors. It seems like the entire sport thrives on the constant stream of information that comes from each driver and car. All of this data is put together by the teams as they spend the first day and a half of every race schedule setting up the car for the driver. Dozens of small adjustments made to the suspension, the gearing, and the engine itself add up. Over the total time of the practice sessions, I watched the cars gain four to five kilometres per hour on every lap. This is a huge amount considering that when it came to actually qualifying for the race, the top four drivers were separated by less then half a second and two of the cars were only one ten thousandth of a second apart. On top of this, each car is completely wireless with a full communication channel installed in it, allowing the team to communicate with the driver at all times. Also very cool is that the Indy driving series allows you to subscribe, for only $19.95 a race season, to a full data feed coming out of each car. This means that whenever the cars are on the track and the top-mounted camera is turned on, you can sit at home on your computer and watch the practice sessions or the race on TV and move from car to car, getting the view from the driverÕs seat. With this subscription, you also get a data feed coming out of the car you have selected to watch at any time, giving you their speed, time off of leader, RPMs, track position, etc. Indy racing is a form of entertainment that has managed to capitalize on technology, putting it to good use to improve the experience of the fans. They have managed to completely change the experience the fans have. Think of other sports putting this kind of behind-the-scenes use of technology to work. Cameras and audio feeds coming off of benches during a hockey game, ride-alongs during a hydroplane race, or being able to listen in on conversations at any time during a football game. There are a lot of sports that could use technology to give their fans an extra experience. Having some kind of a premium pay package that allows people to get behind the scenes and have extra access to players and games has many interesting possibilities. ([email protected])
