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NASCAR's New 2018 Inspection Process Aims To ‘Create A Level Playing Field’
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NASCAR will have a new inspection system in place for the 2018 season, with a full-fledged rollout of a process that was tested at four tracks last year.
The process—developed by Hawk-Eye Innovations, the company that oversaw the debut of NASCAR’s Pit Road Officiating technology—will replace the laser inspection system (LIS) and claw template station that previously measured vehicle bodies. The new system is expected to be far more thorough in its scanning process, creating a three-dimensional heat map of a particular car and comparing it to the computer-aided drawing (CAD) for each manufacturer.
It’s the latest evolution in technical rules enforcement that dates back to its primitive origins with manual measurements and wooden templates.
“It’s part of our DNA to try to innovate,” says John Probst, NASCAR Managing Director, Competition and Innovation.
Two inspection stations will be a fixture at the race track this year, one in the Monster Energy Cup Series garage and the other for the NASCAR Xfinity Series. A third rig will be permanently stationed at the NASCAR Research and Development Center, and it’s already getting plenty of use.
Competition officials have kept that dedicated inspection bay open to teams in the offseason, allowing them to become better oriented with the setup. Since that open-door policy was established, organizations have booked more than 100 appointments and conducted more than 800 scans in preparation for the season.
“I think that as you go back and look at how NASCAR has evolved their inspection process over the years, not always did we have a lot of team involvement,” Probst says, noting that organizations have contributed design time, parts and engineering time to help develop the inspection efforts. “… I think that’s a really good step and a good omen for the industry moving forward in that we had such a collective effort to put this thing together.”
One notable difference is the new inspection bay’s appearance — a black tent with a collection of 16 cameras and eight projectors attached to its inner structure. An additional camera is positioned below the vehicle to measure the underside.
Once a car rolls in, the projectors cast light in a series of lines and dots over the body to create a coordinate system for the cameras. In roughly 30 seconds, those cameras capture the measurements of those light patterns and create a 3-D heat map — also called a point cloud — that helps officials determine whether a car is in compliance.
For more information, including a video of the new inspection process, visit the NASCAR website here.
The process—developed by Hawk-Eye Innovations, the company that oversaw the debut of NASCAR’s Pit Road Officiating technology—will replace the laser inspection system (LIS) and claw template station that previously measured vehicle bodies. The new system is expected to be far more thorough in its scanning process, creating a three-dimensional heat map of a particular car and comparing it to the computer-aided drawing (CAD) for each manufacturer.
It’s the latest evolution in technical rules enforcement that dates back to its primitive origins with manual measurements and wooden templates.
“It’s part of our DNA to try to innovate,” says John Probst, NASCAR Managing Director, Competition and Innovation.
Two inspection stations will be a fixture at the race track this year, one in the Monster Energy Cup Series garage and the other for the NASCAR Xfinity Series. A third rig will be permanently stationed at the NASCAR Research and Development Center, and it’s already getting plenty of use.
Competition officials have kept that dedicated inspection bay open to teams in the offseason, allowing them to become better oriented with the setup. Since that open-door policy was established, organizations have booked more than 100 appointments and conducted more than 800 scans in preparation for the season.
“I think that as you go back and look at how NASCAR has evolved their inspection process over the years, not always did we have a lot of team involvement,” Probst says, noting that organizations have contributed design time, parts and engineering time to help develop the inspection efforts. “… I think that’s a really good step and a good omen for the industry moving forward in that we had such a collective effort to put this thing together.”
One notable difference is the new inspection bay’s appearance — a black tent with a collection of 16 cameras and eight projectors attached to its inner structure. An additional camera is positioned below the vehicle to measure the underside.
Once a car rolls in, the projectors cast light in a series of lines and dots over the body to create a coordinate system for the cameras. In roughly 30 seconds, those cameras capture the measurements of those light patterns and create a 3-D heat map — also called a point cloud — that helps officials determine whether a car is in compliance.
For more information, including a video of the new inspection process, visit the NASCAR website here.
