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How IT drives Ferrari's success

Tags:
Dieter Gundel,
Ferrari

Dietmar Müller ZDNet Germany

Published: 06 Sep 2004 12:35 BST

Driving a race car takes more than good hand-eye coordination and the stomach for G-forces. It also takes a truckload of high-tech gear.

Ferrari's Formula 1 team -- and the results of seven-time world champion driver Michael Schumacher -- are heavily influenced by technology. This includes software designed in-house and hardware with standard components such as the Opteron processor from team sponsor Advanced Micro Devices.

A good deal of the high-performance work takes place off the asphalt in the "box", the garage where cars get their tyres changed during a race. That's where the computers collect the telemetry data on how the car is meeting the demands of the course.

Dieter Gundel, head of racetrack electronics at Ferrari, sat down with ZDNet Germany to explain how the high-profile team gets an edge at the track.

How much standard software do you use? In comparison, how much of the software that you use is developed in-house?
Depends which applications you are referring to. Office products are standard Microsoft. Design and calculation tools (CAD and CAM) are standard workstation products. All car-control and most of the data-analysis applications are written in-house, as are specific database products. It is not easy to give specific numbers because different groups use different tools.

What hardware do you use?
PCs for the majority of work. Workstations for design and component simulations.

What system software do you use?
PCs use Microsoft [Windows] XP companywide.

What development software do you use?
Again, it depends. Control software for the car is C and assembler. Analysis and simulation is mainly done with Matlab. Other projects are written in object-oriented languages (C++, Delphi and Visual Basic, depending on preference).

During a race, how many gigabytes of data flow between the car and the "box"?
Roughly 1GB for an average race that lasts about one and a half hours, and obviously more data for longer races. This is partially redundant data because we use alternative telemetry channels and internal memory to make sure we don't lose data.

How does the communication between the race car and the box work?
As the question implies, there is only communication from the car to the garage allowed. The onboard control unit, in addition to performing a controlling role, samples all relevant signals (sensors, actuators and internal status variables) and hands them over to a dedicated logging controller. This unit both stores data in memory and prepares data for telemetry transmission.

For telemetry, the data is encoded and packaged and then transmitted to the box in the microwave frequency band of around 1.5GHz. In the box, the necessary error correction to the data is applied, then the data is decoded and finally the data is distributed to the real-time workstations that are online. As there is no channel to the car, big gaps in reception have to be compensated by defining areas of the circuit where the telemetry data is buffered rather than immediately transmitted. The data is sent later to the garage for analysis.