The all-seeing eye

The role of the NASCAR crew chief is changing, thanks to the relentless march of artificial intelligence

- LAWRENCE BUTCHER

The traditional image of a NASCAR crew chief is an analogue one, sat atop their pit box in isolation, reliant on an accumulated internal databank to make judgement calls on race strategy. The modern reality, however, is a far more digital affair.

The big, manufacturer-backed teams now utilise mission control operations similar to those pioneered in Formula 1 and, while telemetry data is still far sparser in Stock Car than single-seater racing, teams do now have some real-time feeds from their cars. Importantly, they also have data on what their competition is doing. The final calls on strategy still rest with the crew chief, but they are now backed up with considerable engineering resource, including machine learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) strategy systems.

The march of AI is everywhere, its scope seemingly endless, be it at the core of autonomous driving technology or harnessed by companies to figure out our personal habits. AI, and the machine-learning algorithms that underpin it, have revolutionised the way data is processed, and it is only natural race engineers are looking to use this to their advantage.

In the case of GM-backed teams in the Cup series, they are doing so through an application called Pit Rho, developed by specialists Rho AI.

Racing roots

According to company founder, Josh Browne, a former Chrysler engineer and NASCAR crew chief, ‘The idea was lifted straight from Formula 1.’ Back when Dodge was still in the Stock Car game, there was a degree of knowledge exchange between racing programmes that fell under the Daimler Chrysler umbrella and Dieter Zetsche, then head of Daimler, had an interest in NASCAR.