WELLBEING – DRIVER ENGINEERING
Loss adjusters A team of engineers and scientists are monitoring the chemicals in racing drivers’ sweat, with the aim of improving their health, and making the car faster in the process By ANDREW COTTON
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here are two organic elements to a racecar that can directly affect performance and which, particularly in endurance racing, need to be replaced regularly. One is the tyres, which degrade and ultimately cost performance, or risk failure. The other is the driver, who similarly degrades over time behind the wheel, and runs a real risk of crashing. While much is known and studied about the tyres, and indeed the car is set up to extract the maximum from them before they expire, very little has been published about driver performance, particularly in long-distance races. A team of scientists and engineers were recruited by IMSA’s Wayne Taylor Racing (WTR) lead engineer, Brian Pillar, as part of a new Driver Science programme in a bid to better understand what a driver goes through behind the wheel in order to improve performance. The Driver Science team have begun a study that it hopes will make the car faster, more reliable and safer, by paying more attention to the component behind the wheel. One of the most interesting parts of the relationship is that one of the drivers in the WTR team, Ricky Taylor, has a younger brother, Jordan, who also races in the IMSA series professionally, and both
Very little has been published about driver performance, particularly in longdistance races 20 www.racecar-engineering.com APRIL 2022
have taken part in the study. They share very similar approaches to life and racing, which makes the scientific comparisons between them both valid and interesting. WTR is a multiple champion team, and has found success in major races, particularly the Daytona 24 Hours. It races in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar series, which features a combination of race lengths ranging from 100 minutes to 24 hours. The team competes with an Acura DPi, one based on an ORECA LMP2 chassis, but fitted with a 3.5-litre turbocharged engine, Xtrac gearbox and runs on Michelin commercial race tyres.
Health plan The team has been involved with the scientists for a few years now, monitoring its drivers in all areas, including inside the car during a driving stint. Wearing patented patches and harnesses, the study team has been able to monitor such as fluid loss through sweat, blood flow, muscle and cognitive wellbeing, to gain an insight into the overall health of the team’s drivers as they complete their stints. The target for the Driver Science team is to provide live updates to the pit wall in order that the team is able to extract maximum performance out of its team of drivers at any point during the race. The team, meanwhile, is hoping to ensure its drivers are fit and ready to drive at all times, allowing them to better make strategic decisions. What the programme is trying to achieve is to have a driver who performs at their optimal level for the entire duration of their stint behind the wheel, and recovers quickly enough that they can do so multiple times. Key to the study is a revolutionary new patch that gathers data on the driver through their sweat. The patch monitors
WTR driver Ricky Taylor (right) gives up his data to CoreSyte’s Scott Ackerman in the pit at Daytona via a patch on his arm. One target is to eventually provide live data to the pit wall
