In 2015, NASCAR will become the first major sport to employ an officiating system where the primary officials will not roam the field of play but instead huddle in a transporter that will travel from track to track. Other sports have instant replay, where an official uses video to rule on disputed calls. NASCAR will go way beyond that, using a combination of video and a computer software program that determines penalties followed by an automatic review by a human. The drivers, crew chiefs and teams have had tutorials on the system. It appears impressive, with its 45 high-definition cameras perched in clusters high above the racetrack capturing video and sending it to a hauler located in the television compound so it can operate with server capacity totaling 960 gigabytes of total ram. It appears well-thought-out; the officials screen the pit stops, and crews are alerted to penalties in real time. The officials have the ability to start and stop the video as well as fast-forward, rewind, zoom in and zoom out.
NASCAR Officiating Trailer Fact Sheet
– 53-foot 2014 custom Featherlite trailer
– Eight officials at work/review stations
– Four admin/technical work stations
– Work/shop area
– 24 tons of air conditioning; enough to cool a 12,000-square-foot building
– 960GB of total ram between all servers; equal to 240 desktop computers
– 60 video cards (2 per server); each with the ability to process 134 billion textures per second
– 40TB of storage; equivalent of 10,000 high-definition, full-length feature movies
– Ability to move 90GB of network traffic; enough bandwidth to move 18,000 songs per second
NASCAR virtually guarantees more accuracy with the new system, especially with two specific rules: (1) a driver, on entry and exit, cannot enter a pit box more than three stalls away from the driver’s own pit stall; and (2) a tire changer, tire carrier and jackman cannot have their feet on the ground in the pit stall until the approaching car is one stall away. In the past, the official assigned to a pit stall would not have the vision to see those penalties. Now the software program will see that violation much easier than an official would standing on pit road, and much easier than the pit crews actually performing the work.(See full article at ESPN.com)(2-14-2015)
