Curious

[glenn cooper]

I got to thinking about recent dramas played out over equipmnet, probably most recently the "aero wheel" deal, or FC Pinto/Zetec parity.

All of the things I could think of were not really groundbreaking per se, but I was not around when the first cars showed up at a race with a dash and data for instance.

Were people trippin' hard?
What was the cost of something like that, back then?

Like the title says, just curious...

[Christopher Crowe]

-- I lept from the latest Air Shifter thread and went directly to your post and thought... well, you know the rest.

But my answer remains the same. Exactly the same. Just remove "Geartronics" and insert "Aerowheels," or what-have-you. Funkily written rules, me thinks.

Again regards,

Chris

[ghickman]

Originally Posted by glenn cooper

I got to thinking about recent dramas played out over equipmnet, probably most recently the "aero wheel" deal, or FC Pinto/Zetec parity.

All of the things I could think of were not really groundbreaking per se, but I was not around when the first cars showed up at a race with a dash and data for instance.

Were people trippin' hard?
What was the cost of something like that, back then?

Like the title says, just curious...

Glenn
Back in the late 80's predating data dashes we ran a little black box called Tachtal (sp?) It was a must have for ALL the front running FF guys. Problem was that Paul White owner of said little black boxes only had like 4 or 5 of them. So you had to be one of his "pet" drivers to get his services. It was a one channel deal (wheel speed on a strip chart) but boy was it helpful. I was lucky to be one of Pauls "pet" drivers....others just felt left out probably because they couldn't afford the $200 per weekend Paul charged. Remember this is 1988 dollars and you couldn't own it....you rented it for the weekend.

This all predated the internet so not sure how everyone felt but as a recal it casued some pissed off drivers back in the day. As I recal some called it cheating.

That new fangled technology led to what we have now. It's just the natural progression of things.

[Purple Frog]

Coop,

"Data" has been around for quite a while. (decades) It never really got controversial, probably because there was no direct performance advantage, as would be credited to something like a different cam, or an aluminum head. And as long as guys like DaveW were still winning without data, it didn't seem to be mandatory. Last year i had to chuckle when i spotted Dave plugging his laptop into his Citation. We've come a long way, baby.

The cost has always been relatively high. As each new breakthrough came along, and we would think the cost would drop. It would soon be followed by more features, and cost would go up. The evolution has been a long one. So now we have dozens of inputs of data tied into GPS data and all of it being overlaid on multiple synchronized HD camera feeds. Like a frekin' Hollywood film studio in every car on the grid.

Really the biggest expense in data is not the system cost, but in the ability to collect it, download it, and then analyze it correctly. Handling all that technology either takes a lot of time to learn, or a bit of cash to hire the knowledge.

I remember a few years back when we thought we could use those little Mychron Gold systems off of racing karts to beat the high cost of the already established brands such as Pi or Motec. Last week at the PRI Show, Mychron had one of the largest booths in the whole place.

[Roland V. Johnson]

In the early 90's there was a small company here in San Diego named RaceLog. They had I think 4 channel recorders for around $2,ooo-3,ooo depending on options. Nice data units for the time. Anyone could buy them.

[Rick Kirchner]

IIRC this all started with a product in the mid 80's called the EDGE. It was a luggable computer and an onboard system made by Emerson Electric. They showed up on the Patrick Racing cars at Indy. I really wanted to get in on the ground floor as a race engineer with them (when the experience with computers and instrumentation was more valuable than the experience with actual race engineering) since it was essentially what I was doing with missiles but without the telemetry.

Unfortunately the missile project I was a part of was contracted to Emerson and they were $%^ing it up royally and there were conflict of interest considerations, so I would have either had to quit my day job or pass. I passed.

I moved out here in early 1990 and got away from racing for a decade, so I lost track of where that product went and it's successors.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by Rick Kirchner

I moved out here in early 1990 and got away from racing for a decade, so I lost track of where that product went and it's successors.

It was essentially killed by Pi when Illmor mandated the Pi equipment with the Chevy's and the Cosworth DFX/DFS essentially went away after 1989 from the big teams that could afford the systems. Emerson Electric/CPS lost interest as it was more for marketing reasons than trying to build a sustainable business, though they did try to give that a go.

The lead hardware engineer was John Faivre who went to Penske shortly thereafter and has since been at TRD for ~13 years. I wrote a lot of the software for the EDGE once John decided he didn't have time to do both hardware, software and be the main customer contact. The software was written in Pascal on DOS, of all things. They were based in Carson, CA, just across the freeway from the former Nissan North American headquarters.

[George Main]

Originally Posted by Rick Kirchner

IIRC this all started with a product in the mid 80's called the EDGE. It was a luggable computer and an onboard system made by Emerson Electric. They showed up on the Patrick Racing cars at Indy. I really wanted to get in on the ground floor as a race engineer with them (when the experience with computers and instrumentation was more valuable than the experience with actual race engineering) since it was essentially what I was doing with missiles but without the telemetry.

Unfortunately the missile project I was a part of was contracted to Emerson and they were $%^ing it up royally and there were conflict of interest considerations, so I would have either had to quit my day job or pass. I passed.

I moved out here in early 1990 and got away from racing for a decade, so I lost track of where that product went and it's successors.

Actually, Rick, CDS was the first "offical" Racing data acquisition company founded in 1986. While Emerson and Stack lay claim to having been founded earlier, they weren't "specific" racing data acquisition companies, but built data acquisition for other industries and they got drawn into racing (with what they had) by teams looking for information recording.
Though none of those actually were specific built until a later date. I don't know that Edge ever specially built a system for racing except for a designed enclosure.
Around 1991-1992 Pi Research (Founded in late 1986-early 1987, for racing) made moves to apply for a patent on founding auto racing data acquisition in hopes to lock up the industry, that is until they found out CDS was there before them....

I have a funny story about EDGE. As you may know they used phone wire for sensor data transmission. You had phone wire running all over the car. I worked for Jamie Galles and Jimmy Vasser in Atlantic and at our early tests we used the EDGE system.
Jamie came in after running the car for the first test session (after watching us install the system) and remarked " Hey Guys, AT&T came on the radio and asked me for my calling card number.
Unfortunately the Edge system never functioned after the second session (PC board vibrated loose and broke) and was replaced with CDS systems for the rest of testing which Genoa ran with the rest of the season and the next ones as well. Edge pretty much suffered from a lack of support and had "survival" problems on race car, probably a lot different vibration and RF noise (phone wire and no shielding), compared to a rocket. Their racing systems pretty much disappeared around 93 as far as selling new ones. Don't know the exact reason they faltered, just that the sales slowed and died off. Their lack of support couldn't have helped their situation.

[George Main]

Originally Posted by ghickman

Glenn
Back in the late 80's predating data dashes we ran a little black box called Tachtal (sp?) It was a must have for ALL the front running FF guys. Problem was that Paul White owner of said little black boxes only had like 4 or 5 of them. So you had to be one of his "pet" drivers to get his services. It was a one channel deal (wheel speed on a strip chart) but boy was it helpful. I was lucky to be one of Pauls "pet" drivers....others just felt left out probably because they couldn't afford the $200 per weekend Paul charged. Remember this is 1988 dollars and you couldn't own it....you rented it for the weekend.

This all predated the internet so not sure how everyone felt but as a recal it casued some pissed off drivers back in the day. As I recal some called it cheating.

That new fangled technology led to what we have now. It's just the natural progression of things.

Ahh, the days of toilet paper databases, when Laptops had huge, huge 20 meg hard drives. I remember watching you guys waiting for the sun to come out so you could analyze your data and overlay your graphs, LOL. I'm proud to say, CDS never had a paper trail, as far as I know of.
The RacePak, which was Bernstein's creation, was also on paper rolls. Bob Lobenberg and myself ventured into drag racing (92) to sell systems. We always asked to to see their data base. After which we would be taken into their trailer and a stack of boxes to the ceiling of receipt paper containing data from their runs (the only way they could line up a run over another). Made it easy to clear some space in their trailer by keeping all their data on a laptop.

Roland wrote:
In the early 90's there was a small company here in San Diego named RaceLog. They had I think 4 channel recorders for around $2,ooo-3,ooo depending on options. Nice data units for the time. Anyone could buy them.

The Racelog was a good system though more of a "Hobby" for the guy that built them, what was his name? Steinberg...Steinlager??? Wow, I must be old.. I can't remember his name...but can remember names of beer..
Was gasoline invented back then or was it seat belts..?

[George Main]

Originally Posted by Purple Frog

Coop,

"Data" has been around for quite a while. (decades) It never really got controversial, probably because there was no direct performance advantage, as would be credited to something like a different cam, or an aluminum head. And as long as guys like DaveW were still winning without data, it didn't seem to be mandatory. Last year i had to chuckle when i spotted Dave plugging his laptop into his Citation. We've come a long way, baby.

The cost has always been relatively high. As each new breakthrough came along, and we would think the cost would drop. It would soon be followed by more features, and cost would go up. The evolution has been a long one. So now we have dozens of inputs of data tied into GPS data and all of it being overlaid on multiple synchronized HD camera feeds. Like a frekin' Hollywood film studio in every car on the grid.

Really the biggest expense in data is not the system cost, but in the ability to collect it, download it, and then analyze it correctly. Handling all that technology either takes a lot of time to learn, or a bit of cash to hire the knowledge.

I remember a few years back when we thought we could use those little Mychron Gold systems off of racing karts to beat the high cost of the already established brands such as Pi or Motec. Last week at the PRI Show, Mychron had one of the largest booths in the whole place.

If the numbers were the same as common computer sales, they probably would be less.. but then again, if you guys would stop running into things, a laptop would probably survive the trip and the data companies could sell A/D converter PC cards (for a $150) for the sensors and off you go.... {no pun intended}

Some twenty years ago, I thought at this point in time, the software would be capable of doing my job, and analyzing data for you,,,, it never happened, though I firmly believe it could. Unfortunately, the most important and powerful part of the systems today, is hidden from view. And that is analysis, as you pointed out.
Seems all the companies are pretty much copying each other by taking what some other good selling system is using for software, applying their own look to it.
The buying customer is mostly hardware/price/"simple use"- driven yet the importance and biggest advantage is analysis and is 95% of the whole deal. Not the dash, not the shift lights, not the performance monitor, not the track map, but data and using it well.

PAs you pointed out Purple frog...

However I beg to differ on the opinion [FONT="Courier"]"It never really got controversial, probably because there was no direct performance advantage, as would be credited to something like a different cam, or an aluminum head. "[/FONT]
The reason I differ in opinion is that in my entire career with data, I have never failed to make a car/driver faster than the previous session unless the car/driver/track failed to cooperate by staying healthy. I have seen Cams and Heads fail to comply as prescribed, and watched it happen in data. Yes, horsepower is instant laptime, but data only makes it faster..
Dave W. probably hasn't needed data, maybe because he's not being tested in that way and has enough experience to make up for lack of experience of competitors lack of understanding of using data. Or maybe he's a "closet" data user
Another fossil (just kidding Dave, Bob calls himself that) Bob Lobenberg, who has beaten Dave W. on occasion (also without data at the time) But in 1989, Bob got beat in every session (first time in Bob's career as a driver at club level) at the Atlantic EAST/West Coast shootout by Claude Bourbenias (?)
Bob discovered a data system wired in the car (CDS) Bob became a firm believer in data, and to this day swears that a driver without data against a driver who has good analysis will not stay ahead in comparable competitive cars and driver talent. Analysis changes all of it and when done well, it never fails...
Motec, Pi, Aim,CDS, Stack are all very capable systems, on the hardware. It becomes an issue of analysis, how long it takes and the software tools you have to achieve the answers. Clarity of recall (that isn't humanly possible by the driver or an/many observers) of the decisions that have to be made to: driving/setup/track condition, are relatively easy tracked and made available in data. Good analysis of it, never goes in the wrong direction.


There are a lot of things that make up a drivers win, but there's only one source of information that always has an impact on performance....

[Wren]

Originally Posted by glenn cooper

I got to thinking about recent dramas played out over equipmnet, probably most recently the "aero wheel" deal, or FC Pinto/Zetec parity.

All of the things I could think of were not really groundbreaking per se, but I was not around when the first cars showed up at a race with a dash and data for instance.

Were people trippin' hard?
What was the cost of something like that, back then?

Like the title says, just curious...

My impression seems to be that some people get upset if they think that something will upset the balance of things and some people get upset if they think that other people are trying too hard.

I've heard of people getting upset about shock dynos in trailers and seen people get upset over legal fuel. I don't really get it.

I was busy with kindergarten when data came out, but I would guess that it did upset some people, especially given that it is still banned in some CF run groups.