We all have watched other professional racing teams at one time or another working with data acquisition. Whether it was in a magazine, on TV, or in person, most of us were left with an impression of what a data acquisition system should be able to do just from these images. Add to this an "expert" racer friend, and you will probably be convinced that nothing short of 25 channels and a team engineer will be needed. This could not be further from the truth. It is unfortunately these preconceived ideas that keep many club racers from benefiting from data acquisition.

The reality is that there is one or two channels that really make a difference in a typical club racer’s weekend, those channels are either RPM or MPH. These are the "results" channels. To put it simply, the more speed you carry throughout the entire track, the faster the lap times. Now this sounds simple enough, but reality tells us that during a typical practice or qualifying session, the average driver will get a couple of "fast" laps, a couple of warm-up laps, and most of the laps will fall in the middle. The key is to find out WHY the fast laps were fast (which corners REALLY made a difference) and use that information to improve or consistently achieve our fast laps. The bonus to this approach is that even if you have two laps with identical lap times, (your crew person will typically brag on how consistent you are!) you will likely find that you were fast at TWO DIFFERENT corners! By focusing on combining these corners you now have the ammunition to go even faster. In club racing this is a very common scenario due to the fact that you have such a short period of time to generate perfect laps. Without this information, it is difficult to analyze which parts of the track are really important to the driver. Sometimes the data confirms what would be common racer knowledge, meaning it happens to be the corner leading onto the longest straight, but may times it is not! The power of data acquisition is the ability to prove this before the next session.

During a typical race weekend, if a club racer took and compared just the MPH graph from the fast laps to the OK laps, with a little practice it should be easy to find what was important to going fast. The benefit can double if you have a teammate’s data to compare it to. RPM can also achieve the same results as MPH, although gearing and shift points can make the data a little more difficult to interpret. But with a little practice, you can also tell off throttle time, length of shift times, wheelspin, cornering speed and braking.

We always recommend to a racer that does not have a great deal of data experience (or time) to start with either RPM or MPH only. This will usually reap the highest benefits without a large amount of time spent on analyzing the data. Remember, we still have to fuel the car, change the tires, eat lunch, get the grid sheet, find the bolt that got lost in the grass, put up the tarp and still have time to have some fun! As a racer gains experience, we will then recommend adding analog channels (steering wheel position, "G" force, suspension travel, throttle position, exhaust temperature, etc.) as tools to help a particular situation.

What I often hear from club racers that are interested in data acquisition is "certainly the PROS use more channels than MPH and RPM". These racers are absolutely right, but the pros will usually have a team engineer whose focus is strictly data analysis. To quote Carroll Smith from his book Drive to Win, "if I had only one channel of information, I want it to be engine RPM." His second choice would be MPH. In a conversation I had with another "guru" of data acquisition, his first choice would be MPH then RPM. Either way, what is important is to realize is where the REAL results come from, and apply that to your racing program. When I am out club racing, I will typically use MPH, and add other channels when I have the time and a specific situation that I want to address.

To give you an example of how RPM can help you, let me reference a situation that helped me win a race at Watkins Glen. In a nutshell, I was in fourth place racing with a tight front pack, when I made a mistake that caused me to lose the draft of the front three cars. I knew in order to catch the front pack again, I would have to do perfect laps. Which meant I had to focus particularly on the turns that were critical to turning the fast laps. I had known which turns these were form the data analysis of MPH I did after qualifying. Needless to say I focused on the turns that were key, consequently I turned faster laps than the leaders, and was able to catch them, putting me in a position to win the race. I don’t know if I could of won that race without the information I had downloaded after qualifying, but my gut feeling is probably not. This was a case where data acquisition helped the driver, there are similar situations on how it was used to improve the race car.

The point is that you do not have to spend countless amounts of money and time to benefit form data acquisition. In reality it is a great diagnostic tool that every club racer can afford to benefit from.