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British Touring Car Championship Tracks Tires
At the racetrack, tags are again read when the tires are allocated to teams, and by the fixed pit-lane readers each time a vehicle enters or exits during a race. Those interrogators can capture a tire tag's unique ID number on a car moving at a speed of up to 40 miles per hour, at a distance of several meters—the lane itself is approximately four meters (13 feet) wide. Three readers are placed on each side of the pit lane, where the tags will come within a few meters of them as a car passes on its way to the pit for servicing during the race. Two readers on each side are used to capture the tire tag data, while the third captures the ID number of an EPC Gen 2 RFID tag attached to the vehicle itself.
This information is then sent, via a cabled connection, to Web-based software known as Datalinx Tyre Tracking—which interprets and stores data related to the tire IDs, indicating which tires are being used, and by which vehicle. The data is then available, in real time, to the BTCC's technical scrutineering staff, which oversees the race teams' tire usage and maintenance. In the future, fans may be able to access data regarding the number of allocated tires that have been used by their favorite team, as well as determine if that team is using a set that is new, or one that that has been broken in during practice.
Datalinx Tyre Tracking also disseminates the information to interested parties. "This may be the organizers, to ensure that the tire usage is within the rules; the teams, to see which tires are being run where; or the media, to know who is on new or used tires," Fletcher says. Dunlop also utilizes the data to monitor the supply chain, tracking each tire's date of manufacture and shipment to the BTCC, its arrival at the race organizer's site, its installation onto a car and, finally, its removal from that vehicle (based on the readings of a new RFID tag). Thus far, the system is reducing the manpower required by the BTCC to track tire usage, and is also providing Dunlop with better visibility into its supply chain. Although Lionetti declines to reveal the price for the tags, he notes, "The benefits [from greater supply chain visibility] outweigh the costs."
One challenge for Dunlop involved ensuring the tags could be read when cars pass at up to 40 miles per hour. According to Lionetti, the company has achieved a 100 percent read rate despite the vehicles' speed—and the even greater speed at which the wheels revolve.
Dunlop currently only tags its BTCC-destined tires. However, Lionetti notes, "We are looking at other opportunities for this technology."
In a similar application, Goodyear attached RFID tags to its tires destined for race cars competing in NASCAR (see Goodyear Using RFID for NASCAR from Cradle to Grave). In that case, NASCAR teams leased sets of tires for each event, then returned them at the end of the race, whether they were used or not, to ensure a team could not stockpile tires or have more than another team. Dunlop drew on Goodyear's NASCAR experience, Lionetti says, to help it determine where and how to embed the tags on the tires.
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This information is then sent, via a cabled connection, to Web-based software known as Datalinx Tyre Tracking—which interprets and stores data related to the tire IDs, indicating which tires are being used, and by which vehicle. The data is then available, in real time, to the BTCC's technical scrutineering staff, which oversees the race teams' tire usage and maintenance. In the future, fans may be able to access data regarding the number of allocated tires that have been used by their favorite team, as well as determine if that team is using a set that is new, or one that that has been broken in during practice.
Datalinx Tyre Tracking also disseminates the information to interested parties. "This may be the organizers, to ensure that the tire usage is within the rules; the teams, to see which tires are being run where; or the media, to know who is on new or used tires," Fletcher says. Dunlop also utilizes the data to monitor the supply chain, tracking each tire's date of manufacture and shipment to the BTCC, its arrival at the race organizer's site, its installation onto a car and, finally, its removal from that vehicle (based on the readings of a new RFID tag). Thus far, the system is reducing the manpower required by the BTCC to track tire usage, and is also providing Dunlop with better visibility into its supply chain. Although Lionetti declines to reveal the price for the tags, he notes, "The benefits [from greater supply chain visibility] outweigh the costs."
One challenge for Dunlop involved ensuring the tags could be read when cars pass at up to 40 miles per hour. According to Lionetti, the company has achieved a 100 percent read rate despite the vehicles' speed—and the even greater speed at which the wheels revolve.
In a similar application, Goodyear attached RFID tags to its tires destined for race cars competing in NASCAR (see Goodyear Using RFID for NASCAR from Cradle to Grave). In that case, NASCAR teams leased sets of tires for each event, then returned them at the end of the race, whether they were used or not, to ensure a team could not stockpile tires or have more than another team. Dunlop drew on Goodyear's NASCAR experience, Lionetti says, to help it determine where and how to embed the tags on the tires.
