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Knowledge is Power: How Sensor Data Is Unlocking Motorsports Performance
During the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season, Alex Palou and his Chip Ganassi Racing No. 10 team defined dominance: eight wins, 11 podiums, six poles, and an average finishing position of 4.3.
Their incredible run across the 17-race season also included Palou's maiden Indianapolis 500 victory and the IndyCar Championship—his fourth overall and third consecutive. The overwhelming success was made more impressive because IndyCar, unlike Formula 1's emphasis on individual car design, is a spec series where all teams compete with mostly standardized equipment.
Competing against world-class drivers in similar cars usually makes sustained success difficult to achieve, but the No. 10 team has managed to find an edge on the margins.
"What Ganassi and Palou have done this year in IndyCar is a magical season," said Jeff Kitchen, director of operations at Texys America, Indianapolis, Indiana. "They have a great engineering group and have utilized everything to perform at such a high level. People are utilizing the data because knowledge is power, and it's only growing by leaps and bounds."
The success was a complete team effort, but glimmers of Palou's potential—and his detailed analytical approach—were evident from the very beginning of his career.
"I remember hearing about Palou's first test at Mid-Ohio," said Kitchen. "It wasn't just that he was quick, but he understood the changes being made to the car. He could talk to the engineers, look at the data and interpret it, and help them figure out what he needed at different points in the car to either make it go quicker or make it run longer. And that's the dance, getting all the pieces together.
"It's very rare to have a driver dominate like this in an era where cars are so similar," added Kitchen.
As Palou's 2025 season proves, race teams adept at collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data are increasingly the same teams standing at the top of the podium.
The first step in that process—the collection of data via sensors—is drawing increasing attention and investment from teams across the motorsports spectrum. At the same time, sanctioning bodies are also leaning into sensor data, seeing it as a key tool to officiate competition, control costs, and improve safety outcomes.
Measuring Performance
Automotive sensors aren't new technology, nor are they limited to the track. While modern street cars come equipped with upwards of 100 sensors, there's a big difference between those on your daily commuter and a race car.
"The main difference is in accuracy," said Mitchell Mefford, an engineer with SRO Motorsports Group America, Austin, Texas. "Motorsport-grade pressure transducers are more stable under heat and less prone to drift compared to OEM sensors. While both types work well for reliability, motorsport-grade components provide a higher level of precision, which is especially important for compliance monitoring."
SRO requires teams to run specific sensors for technical inspections, while also allowing teams to run additional sensors to analyze car performance.
"Generally, the teams that invest in extra sensors and detailed data analysis tend to perform better," said Mefford.
Founded in 1999 by Etienne Deméocq, a former head of electronics for Formula 1 teams, the Texys Group has been at the forefront of the high-performance sensor market across all motorsports, from F1 to club racing. While Texys has diversified into markets including aerospace and defense, motorsports remains its main focus.
"Motorsports continues to drive our innovations," said Kitchen. "We've got everything from aero, temperature, pressure, linear, rotary measurement—anything you can measure or need inputs to operate active controls or do map channels on."
As sensor technology continues to develop, the detailed data it provides is critical for team engineers to fine-tune their car setups, based on myriad factors and influences.
"Every lap is a compromise," said Kitchen. "You're trying to go as fast as you can but also trying to go fast consistently for the longest time, while managing all the dynamic things that are happening on the car. That's where we're seeing a lot of these additional sensor inputs—monitoring what happens to the car over a complete run. It's pretty fascinating how in-depth these teams are utilizing the data."
Gone are the days of basic tire and engine temperature readings. Today's race teams are analyzing the minutiae, looking for small bits of data that could illuminate a competitive edge in today's hyper-competitive fields.
"It's fascinating to watch what teams are doing as far as evaluating car performance based on inputs from tire temperatures both inside and outside the tire on all four corners, while also monitoring track temp and atmospheric temps within the side pods," said Kitchen. "Whether it's a spec series or not, everyone is looking for those magic parameters that lead to good setups, fast cars, and consistent cars."
As a sensor manufacturer, Texys works with teams and sanctioning bodies. While teams look to sensors as a means of extracting maximum performance from their cars and drivers, at times, sensor applications can run up against the gray area of the rulebook.
"The first thing is always going to the series and showing them anything new we have," said Kitchen. "When you look at all the different forms of motorsports and the different rules, it's 'monkey-see, monkey-do.' People will see something used overseas, or vice versa. So we outline our product offering with the series, to see if there's any concern or issues."
In IndyCar, the series mandates various sensors related to the gearbox control, the hybrid system, accident data recording, as well as a crank sensor and boost sensor. Teams also have the freedom to use their own sensors, pending approval by series officials through an online technical portal.
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