Summary I made my presentation about infotechnology usage in motorsport. I chose this topic because I am an infotechnology student and also I have been rally driver since 2009. I believed this could be interesting topic for others to hear because you can’t really find much information about the technologies used in different motorsport disciplines from the Internet but you can learn about them usually when somebody tells you about those technologies. Because I’m a rally driver and I know most about rallying I focused on rally and in addition talked little bit about Formula One and also about simulators. Most of the information I used to make this presentation was based on my personal experience. In addition, I found some interesting technologies which are used in Formula One from the Internet. Most interesting hi-tech solutions used in rally are in my opinion ride height control with GPS and launch control which is synced with start clock. First means that the height of a car’s suspension is automatically regulated based on the location of the car. If the road is wider and smoother then the car’s height is being lowered and when there are holes in the road or it’s just rougher then the car’s height is being raised. Launch control system means that the driver presses the gas pedal to the floor and the car takes off with no reaction time when it’s the right time to start. In rally cars usually start with 2 or 3 minute gaps between them. Formula One is most definitely the most hi-tech racing series. Almost everything there are controlled with computers. One thing to point out is the steering wheel of a Formula One car. Modern F1 wheel might have 35 or more knobs, buttons and switches. Driver can adjust almost everything of his car with the wheel. Usually F1 wheels have also LED screens which can display as many as 100 pages of info and data. Third topic I talked about was simulators. Modern road circuit simulators can be very similar to real life experience. For example most of the testing in F1 are made with simulators because it is much cheaper and also testing kilometres and time is limited. But the rally simulator have not yet reached that kind of level. They are similar but doesn’t actually simulate the real life. I think the cause of this is that it’s much harder to simulate all kind of different road surfaces like snow or gravel etc and also it’s harder to drive and so it has less market. Last topic I talked about was about video analysis. Modern on-board cameras are very small and they record high definition video. Videos are important to analyse your driving technique. This way you could save a lot of money because you can make your testing and analysing much more efficient. In conclusion, IT is everywhere and it has unlimited options how to use it to make something easier or how to make it work for you. In rally every millisecond you could win makes a huge difference.
