HP Technology Fuels IndyCars to Checkered Flag

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., This Sunday at the Honda Grand Prix, the Luczo Dragon Racing team will be supercharged by HP technology at every stage of the race.

Award-winning HP workstations, mobile PCs and HP OfficeJet printers are used to design the cars and manage everything from the telemetry to the engine of the team’s car during the race. Raphael Matos, 2009 Apex Brazil IndyCar Rookie of the Year, will be behind the wheel of the HP-powered Luczo Dragon race car. Davey Hamilton, one of the most experienced drivers in the IZOD IndyCar Series, will pilot a second HP Luczo Dragon car for three races.

Using HP technology, the Luczo Dragon Racing team is able to maximize performance on and off the track. HP technology is used in every aspect of performance, engineering, reliability, management, mobility, robustness, raw computing power and design.

“During a race, we need to run a lot of data through the systems at one time,” said Gil de Ferran, president and managing partner, Luczo Dragon Racing. “The compute power that HP provides is critical to our performance and our drivers. We can rely on the HP workstations and notebooks to provide fast performance every time without crashing.”

Off the track, engineers use powerful HP workstations to enhance parts design, data collection, storage, analysis, simulation and optimization. To prepare for each race, engineers on the Luczo Dragon Racing team run simulations to understand how the car’s setup will affect performance for a given track. The team needs to understand the behavior of the car and the effect of changes in performance.

Effectively, the team tries to develop and optimize the car through simulations and optimization routines. These simulations and test runs generate massive amounts of data. The multicore processing power of HP servers and workstations allows the team to run multiple simulations and optimizations at once – increasing the team’s efficiency.

After miles of practice runs, the team identifies areas on the car that need to be fine-tuned for maximum reliability and functionality – using HP workstations the team is able to redesign each aspect of the car for optimal performance.

On the track, the team uses HP notebooks to monitor every move the car makes and remotely adjust suspension, telemetry and engine systems for optimal performance during every second of the race. While the car speeds around the track at 220 miles per hour, it is critical for the team to be able to analyze the information they’re receiving from sensors on the car and immediately understand where performance deficits may lie.

“In the past, running simulations to prepare for a race would often take 10 times the real-time speed,” said de Ferran. “With today’s technology from HP, extremely complex lap simulations can happen faster than real time. This has allowed us to change the way we do business – keeping us ahead of the game instead of one lap behind.”

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