Photo: IMSA
The IMSA Weathertech sports car championship by far understands the highest level of technology in American motorsport.
It is therefore not surprising that an increasing number of main providers of American technologies forge partnerships with IMSA, its teams and the 18 participating car manufacturers of the sanction organization.
The IMSA provides a product on a competitive track which is a crucible for the development of automotive and human performance. It is an arena that creates business -to -business relationships between a diversified group of car manufacturers, traditional automotive suppliers and providers of high -end computer technology and artificial intelligence capacity.
Thanks to the IMSA sports car race, these technology suppliers have a platform that presents the immense capacities of their products relatively to an audience warned of technology. The IMSA has even aroused the interest of NASA, whose engineers identify many similarities between endurance races and spatial exploration.
For the second consecutive year, IMSA has organized a technological symposium alongside the Rolex 24 of the season in Daytona.
This year’s event, which was held in the shade of Daytona International Speedway at the Embry-Rriddle Aeronautical University nearby, presented a panel including speakers from Microsoft Research, AMD, Michelin and Nasa.
“It is a fantastic opportunity to sit on stage with such qualified people and to hear them really paint the painting of challenges that the ISSA A,” said Matt Kurdock, Managing Director of IMSA Engineering .
“Sports car races are intrinsically complex. We have four different classes. We have in each car, four different drivers and the IMSA challenge is to extract from this racing data which is collected and to determine how to obtain an appropriate balance so that many factors remain engaged in sport.
“We have a very small IMSA engineering team, so we depend on cloud tools and simulation platforms to do a lot of heavy for us. There are certainly not very suspended fruits for AI, which is why we talked with research with NASA and Microsoft on this subject. »»
What is there for them?
Scientists, physicists, mathematicians and engineers working for Microsoft Research can almost create their own program.
For Siddhartha Sen, a principal researcher who has a specific accent on AI, who brought the whole range of failures and other board games to video games and simulators who led him to work with the platform Iracing simulation form. All this culminated with involvement in real world races, starting with the Alpine Formula 1 team.
Then “Sid” attended Motul Petit le Mans.
“I was presented to the concept of multiple classes on the same track,” said Sen. “And I said to myself,” Why do this? ” Why this complexity? Why make my life even more difficult? At first, I thought it was useless, but I saw the different classes of cars interact, and I thought: “It’s so interesting!” And the richness of this dynamic, I think makes an even more interesting problem. But also, more difficult.
“One of the things that leads me to this sport is that technology seems to be at the front and center,” he continued. “From the chassis to the motor to the simulators, the equipment they use, the teams only push technology so far. When they do, I think bodies like IMSA must also push their technology because they want to understand what teams do and how to manage this whole competitive environment in a balanced way.
“This combination of forces at stake is something that I had seen in any other field in which I worked. I do not know if there are in another area. This is one of the reasons why I am more and more passionate about work in this area and the use of our AI tools and ideas to see if we can solve some of these problems. Motorsport is different from any other area in which I worked. It is much richer, much more difficult and much more complicated than any other work I have done. »»
The introduction of SEN to sports car races is the direct result of Microsoft’s participation in the first IMSA technological symposium in 2024.
“I think last year, being Frank, was a bit of experience,” said Steve Clayton, vice-president of the communication strategy for Microsoft. “Now we are here with a full piece, and I think it shows the level of interest.
“I came back from this event last year, and I said to myself:” We must involve Microsoft Research, “he added.” We have done it, and now I just want to continue our quest because I See so many opportunities for our company to be involved in culture within motor sport and really enjoy the IMSA partnerships with people like NASA and Michelin and AMD.
“The search for life of Microsoft Research in many ways is data, so there is no better place to come and collect data, with the amount of data that these cars throw each 60th.”
Connection of points
It is often said that the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar championship is a sensory overload – the images, the sounds and even the smells of a traffic runway. It doesn’t take much to hang a beginner – especially when they understand that the race is much more than a bunch of cars that run around and around a circuit.
“I have never been a big fan of car sports to this event (the Rolex 24) three years ago when we were invited by our friends from Crowdstrike to come to a CIO symposium (Head of Information ), ”Said Lewis Carroll, director, field engineering for AMD.
“Wandering around the paddock, we found a Microsoft logo on the side of one of the trailers of the race team. We say to ourselves: “Okay, what does Microsoft do on the racetrack?” We are going to talk and they use Microsoft Azure to perform simulations for a product called Ansys Cloud. Aha, now we understand! AMD is the engine under the hood which feeds simulations behind Ansys Gateway and Ansys Cloud.
“This sport, perhaps more than any other there, is all about the data. You need high performance calculations to transform this data into information, and this happens at a massive rate and this must occur in the extreme product, and IMSA, which wants to balance the power to create an experience of engaging fans. And, of course, we have all the fans who want to follow their favorite car, team or driver with real -time data and statistics. »»
It’s not rocket science, but it’s close
The worlds of motorsport and aeronautics share a surprising amount of overlap. The two strongly depend on engineering and technology, sharing an obsession with light weight and aerodynamics. Security is an important additional consideration in both specialties.
There are not many obvious parallels between the management of a racing car around Daytona or for 24 consecutive hours and sending a crew to Mars. But the two missions are based on data collection to identify and solve potential (if not pre -emptional) problems with a piece of high -tech machines.
“The problems we have are basically quite similar to the problems of motorsport,” said NASA scientist Ian Maddox. “The race generates a ton of information at a very high rate, and a large part is somehow similar to the data we are used to seeing.
“A large part of what we want to learn with IMSA is to understand what you can do with the data set that you have – prognostics or diagnostics. When something is wrong with the vehicle, be able to react quickly and know exactly what is the problem, then, let’s hope, repair it very quickly. These are the same kind of problems we are trying to solve to bring the teams safely to March. It is more similar than anyone who didn’t think it.
A new generation of fans – and engineers
A key theme that has emerged from all the star speakers of the technological symposium was the desire to use data to improve the experience of fans.
“One of the things I love in IMSA is the quantity of respect and access for fans,” said Sen. “It is something that I have not seen anywhere else, this openness and this desire to communicate and engage with fans. With all AI technologies, combined with this high frequency data, I can imagine creating tools and interfaces that allow fans to interact and understand what is happening more detailed, in natural language than fans can understand. “”
The president of the IMSA, John Doonan, revealed that the IMSA will host six events in 2025 which will take stem students to the racetrack for interaction with the engineers of the race teams, Michelin and Bosch, which includes an overview of the New IMSA advanced engineering trailer.
A group of STEM students from local County Schools of Volusia has attended this year’s technological symposium and has been encouraged to direct questions to the speakers of the Panel. It was a week after the same group of students attended the first IMSA Stem event in Roar before the Rolex 24.
“Today is sharing, it is a question of learning and continuing to show what we do on the racetrack – which is relevant today, and I hope in the future”, said Doonan, who added that the IMSA was very successful with Embry -Devinette engineering trainees. “This is an opportunity to show our future generation the opportunities that exist for them.”
