Hendrick Motorsports
• Case Study
Championship NASCAR team uses Z by HP workstations to gain an edge on the racetrack.
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Beyond The Race Track
Stock car racing has grown to become one of the largest spectator sports in America, with a fandom that is expanding across the globe. Every year, NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) sanctions more than 1,500 races at over 100 tracks in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Europe.
Hendrick Motorsports, one of NASCAR’s most decorated teams, has earned 18 driver’s championships and more than 350 wins across all three major series since the team’s inception in 1984. Hendrick Motorsports boasts some of the most recognizable names in NASCAR history, including Jeff Gordon—who now serves as Vice Chairman at the company.
“Half-seconds matter, both on the track and in our data center.”
Matthew Cochran
Director of Information Technology at Hendrick Motorsports
In a business where milliseconds matter and information is fuel, high performance, built-for-data-science computing solutions are as necessary as brilliant engineering, gifted drivers, astute crew chiefs, exceptional parts, as well as some good luck. To quickly and reliably process the massive amounts of data needed to extract insights that bring home wins, the team at Hendrick Motorsports relies on the Z by HP lineup of workstations, laptops, and monitors. Matthew Cochran, Director of Information Technology at Hendrick Motorsports, explained, “We are in the business of speed. Horsepower, performance, and reliability make Z by HP the perfect partner for us.”
Objective
Empower racing teams to deliver data-informed, track-optimized race cars in time for each race
Approach
Mobilize Z by HP lineup to fast-track simulations, vet ideas, deploy insights, and comply with regulations
Driving Big Data
Before computers, sensors, and massive data sets, races depended on a driver’s split-second decisions. Today, advances in technology mean that data analytics inform everything from car design and driver strategy to how the team supports the car before, during, and after the race. Cochran acknowledged, “Since the introduction of electronic fuel injection, stock car racing has become a data-generating sport. We have a tidal wave of information coming at us every day. The trick is learning how to use it.”
Alba Colon, Director of Competition Systems at Hendrick Motorsports, adjoined, “As machine learning and AI become more important to the sport, we need more powerful compute technology to handle it.”
The number of data inputs Hendrick Motorsports fields on a daily basis is staggering: telemetry, communications, competitive analysis, high-res images, historical data, weather, driver input, testing, aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), NASCAR’s six input channels, simulations, and Hendrick’s own robust database all feed an ever-expanding pool of information.
However, the team must contend with more than just the volume of massive data streams. Those inputs also need to be analyzed incredibly quickly to derive actionable insights in order to apply learnings to the next race, which might be as soon as the next day.
“Z by HP saves our ultimate precious resource, which is time.”
Alba Colon
Director of Competition Systems, Hendrick Motorsports
After all, while NASCAR racing might appear fairly straightforward—drive as fast as you can—the reality is much more complicated and nuanced. Scott Lusted, Manager, Aerodynamics Engineering at Hendrick Motorsports, revealed, “Every track is very different. We use data to understand each environment and to make critical decisions for every part of the car. And, we have very tight windows for making those decisions.”
“We do a lot of testing, both in the lab and on the track,” Colon added. “We can’t do it alone. We need amazing partners like HP.”
Navigating Changing Requirements
Making an arduous business even more challenging, over the last several years NASCAR has imposed new regulations, including limiting the amount of wind tunnel testing time, capping testing spend, severely restricting on-track practice time, and prescribing how many employees are allowed at the track on race day.
“A racetrack is an extreme environment, and we need extreme equipment to get the job done.”
Alba Colon
Director of Competition Systems, Hendrick Motorsports
The powerful Z by HP lineup is helping Hendrick Motorsports close those gaps.
With only 20 minutes of on-track practice time and tight tolerances on what can be modified, it’s imperative that when the car is unloaded at the track it’s as close to race-ready as possible. Z by HP gives Hendrick Motorsports the power to deliver confidence that the car is as close to perfect as possible. For example, “The primary way that we drive improvements is with simulations,” Lusted stated. “The HP Z8 Fury enables us to vet ideas in simulations, so that only the most viable ideas move forward, and we can make the most of wind tunnel time and on-track practice. This machine has doubled improvement.”
He continued, “Post-processing time—extracting data out after a simulation—used to be a major time sink. It used to take over an hour. With the HP Z8 Fury, it takes just six minutes.”
Also, Z by HP and HP Anywhere allow Hendrick Motorsports engineers to securely participate from the offsite Team Operation Center (TOC), keeping the on-track roster within regulations without compromising expertise.
The Need For Speed
“Half-seconds matter, both on the track and in our data center,” Cochran noted. In such an urgent environment, questions and ideas need to be triaged fast, so learnings can be applied to the next race and no opportunity is missed.
For instance, Hendrick Motorsports will load high-res images of cars in real time to assess damage and make decisions about what to fix, as well as telemetry data to inform the team about when and what type of pit stop, as well as predict tradeoffs between various components, such as whether to change an air filter or a tire.
To manage data processing, Hendrick Motorsports used to maintain three high performance computers. “With the HP Z8 Fury, we run the workloads of the three machines, and still have capacity to do more,” Lusted shared.
Additionally, each Z by HP laptop and workstation delivers more power right where it’s needed. Cochran elaborated, “A race chief will have 15 different screens, and they need to decide which to look at to help the driver get to the front of the pack. The power of Z by HP means we can take data to the cloud, modify it, extract insights, and turn it back around to the crew chief or race engineers to make decisions and do it faster than the competition. That translates to wins.”
He confirmed, “We saw a 250% increase in processing speed with the HP Z8 Fury which means we can iterate and get to the right answers faster, and ultimately show up with a better car.”
IT Matters
- Multiple cores and NVIDIA GPUs seamlessly run compute-intensive apps
- Slash post-processing time from one hour to six minutes
- Replace maintenance and management of three computers with a single high-performing Z by HP
Business Matters
- Quickly and reliably process massive data volumes including telemetry, high-res images, aerodynamics, and computational fluid dynamics
- Deliver actionable insights faster to enhance win ratio
- Boost processing speed 250% to deliver better cars, faster
Outperforming Partners
Robust components, a dedicated, NVIDIA RTX™ high-quality GPU and a preloaded selection of trusted data science software differentiate the high-performance mobile workstation from the average laptop computer. The mobile workstation redefines the category and paves the way for data professionals to perform more work wherever they want to be.
Find out how the HP ZBook Studio and the HP ZBook Fury can enable your organization’s data scientists, data engineers and data analysts to produce more in less time. Z by HP data science workstations are designed with configuration options that optimize performance, memory, storage, display, GPU and software to bring iteration with flexibility to data science.
About Hendrick Motorsports
Since 1984, Hendrick Motorsports has earned a record 14 car owner championships in NASCAR’s premier division. The organization fields four full-time Chevrolet teams on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit with drivers Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, William Byron and Alex Bowman. Hendrick Motorsports has earned a total of 18 driver’s championships and 350 wins across three major series. In May 2021, Hendrick Motorsports became the winningest team in NASCAR Cup Series history after breaking the record held for more than 60 years by the legendary Petty Enterprises.
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Hendrick Motorsports is a customer of HP and was provided Z by HP products and sponsorship payment.
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