Even amateurs can do some sophisticated things with data capture these days. This graph shows that I am much kinder to the brakes than my teammates!

Credit: Paul Kruse

Race Capture Pro will do all of the above, but the most exciting feature is the possibility of real-time telemetry. With most current systems, you have to wait until a pitstop, or even the end of the race, before you can pull the flash card and get your data. For solo drivers, this isn’t much of a problem. Data analysis, like texting, is best left until you’re not behind the wheel. But for team activities, like the ever more popular Chumpcar and Lemons grassroots racing series, this will be a huge boon. Race Capture Pro uses bluetooth to feed data to an Android phone, and from there, to the Internet. The Android app will also function as a dash display, providing useful info like lap time deltas (how much faster or slower the current lap is compared to a reference). Brent Picasso, Autosport Labs’ founder, also tells me Google Glass integration should also be possible (that’s something I very much want to see).

If you’ve ever spent time at a track day or grassroots event, you can’t help but notice IT-types are heavily represented in the paddock. Autosport Labs is aiming Race Capture Pro directly at them by including a scripting language, called Lua, that can control the inputs and outputs on the unit. This might be for something as simple as turning on a fan based on temperature readings, or it could involve collecting data at higher resolution at a particular corner based on GPS coordinates, through to controlling the position of a wing (DRS for the masses!). If the ingenuity seen in your average Chumpcar or Lemons paddock is anything to go by, the sky is probably the limit.