GPS RacePak Data Acquisition
Background
Data acquisition is information. The more information you have, the better you can perform your job. If that job happens to involve something like motorsports, the better informed and prepared racers are the one’s who show up in the winner’s circle most often.
DPR Motorsport's consultancy services will provide you with full racing feedback without the need for you to understand the underlying technology. This service starts within providing you with the required GPS track map broken down into segments. The following example is based on Goodwood but is applicable to any circuit regardless of location.
In order to provide consistent benchmarks we divide the overall circuit into segments as shown in the picture on the right.
As a first step we will look at how the car/driver results look for the initial lap and then perform adjustments to the car as well as providing feedback. We use our database built up from consultancy test sessions to compare your results against a "hot" lap with an experienced driver and correctly set-up car.
The table on the right shows the more detailed analysis that can be provided with time and speed results within each segment. The first set of results are the "Reference" benchmarks with a lap time of 1:46. The second set below show an initial test lap with a much slower time of 1:58.
For Goodwood this demonstrates the vital importance of getting a sequence of corners correct. Having high speed at Fordwater and carrying this speed into NoName, St Mary's and Lavant is a pre-requisite to getting maximum speed down the straight into Woodcote. The results show a difference between a final speed of 90 mph approaching Woodcote as against 116 mph in the benchmark.
As well as the results tables, we will also provide graphs to assist the analysis. The following examples are based on the data acquisition results between Fordwater and NoName as shown by the X on the circuit map on the left.
The graph on the right shows the elapsed time on the right. On this point (approaching NoName) around the circuit there is little difference in relative position but this speed difference leads to a massive time difference in completing the lap due to the higher speed being carried through into the Woodcote straight with the benchmark time (blue line) almost 12 seconds faster.
