More details and information regarding the EFI systems that Sprint Cup cars will be equipped with have emerged with a recent piece on a San Antonio, Texas based blog. In a story that was primarily about the Freescale Technology Forum conference, NASCAR’s EFI switch took center stage as Freescale is going to be the company supplying the processors for the EFI units McLaren is developing for the series.
Freescale’s 32-bit Power Architecture engine management processors will be the literal brains of the system and they have some track record. According to the blog piece, these processors are used by one or more OEMs in their factory engine management systems. As has been written and said before the units provided to teams will be tamper proof and race officials will have “special electronic tools” at their disposal to catch any monkey business, and we believe there will be monkey business, because there is always monkey business. Hey, it is only cheating if you get caught.
Teams have been testing units at tracks that the Sprint Cup Series does not visit, so if you have a decent circle track in your area, keep your eyes peeled, you may be able to sneak a peak at a big time hero driver making some test laps at your local track incognito!
The next open EFI test is scheduled for July 7th at Kentucky, two days before the Sprint Cup main event on Sunday. The cars in the race will all be carb’d, but on that test day it will be EFI-a-palooza in Kentucky. Moving forward, NASCAR has announced that EFI can be run at any sanctioned Goodyear Tire test session, which would allow teams a lot of laps on the systems to work on their setups ready for next year.
Freescale is talking about advancing the ECU so that it could “push out” information to enhance the fan viewing experience by showing live data on television or some other medium. NASCAR broadcasts already do a lot of that stuff so we’re not exactly sure what they plan on “adding” but with speed, g-forces, throttle position, and a couple other piece of information already available, we’re wondering if they’ll show ignition timing or something else that 98% of the NASCAR viewership knows nothing about.
Download an app on your phone, tap into the track’s local wifi signal and check out the data. That would be pretty cool even if it is just throttle, brakes, rpm and mph.
Brian,
Look at the display on the GM lap in Germany with a 2012 ZR1. That g-force, speed and rpm display was cool.
my brother inlaw works for Freescale in Austin and is a late model car geek (drives a G8) he might know a lil more bout this
In addition to G-force and other chassis related info, don?