Pentecost Saturday, 18 at the Nürburgring, At Manthey Racing, all eyes are on two screens. More precisely: on a virtual floor plan of the Nordschleife and many circles. Who is now wondering what circles have to do with motorsport? Each circle represents one of the 200 racing cars that are involved in the top 40 qualifying of the 24-hour race. Olaf Manthey alone has five vehicles here on the track - and thus five circles to watch. It is a machine-to-machine solution (M2M), which Telekom developed together with its premium partner GPSoverIP. It facilitates the work of race management and racing teams. M2M means the automated exchange of data between end devices such as machines or vehicles with each other or with a central control center.
In this case, the DMSB (German Motorsport Association) and the VLN (Organizer community endurance championship Nürburgring) commissioned the GPS location system in order to be able to reliably check compliance with the maximum permitted speeds at endurance events. For example, when the yellow phases say: Get off the gas! So far, the race management had to rely on the eye of the marshals. This year, for the first time, all 24 cars were equipped with the new system at the 200 hour race.
What can be said about technology? The core of it all is a telemetry box the size of a cigarette box. It is installed in the vehicle and is equipped with a radio module, a GPS receiver and an M2M SIM chip, among other things. Special attention is paid to the SIM chip, which is firmly soldered to the circuit board to better withstand vibrations while driving. "This increases reliability and protection against manipulation," explains GPSoverIPCEO Andre Jurleit. There is also a CAN module that registers telemetry data from the racing cars, such as oil temperature or fuel pressure, and two roof antennas. The data is sent to the GPSoverIP servers via GPRS via the Telekom mobile network. They are then processed there and made available to the racing teams and race management via tablet or PC.
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At the same time, the data in the associated Racing App updated. What added value does the app offer? While the spectators can follow the vehicle positions in real time on a virtual map and receive information about the drivers, the race management can activate yellow phases for sections of the route with a click in the app - and even send a violation report to the teams by email. The teams get access to the telemetry data of their racing cars and can coordinate pit stops better. "As a control measure, the system is perfect, because you can hardly control the route and your own cars better during a race," says team boss Olaf Manthey, who has been equipping his vehicles with the M2008M solution since 2.
With that takes Manthey Racing a pioneering role. Only since this year has the GPS system been compulsory for long-distance races in Germany. What does he appreciate most about this system? “We used to use the stopwatch to check how long the cars had been on the road and to estimate when a pit stop made sense,” says Manthey. “Today we see on the screen exactly where the cars are and how certain parameters change in the course of the race. It makes our work a lot easier. ”