Earlier this season, The Weather Company teamed up with Chevrolet Racing to offer forecasting data that might help its teams get a competitive edge in races.
The Weather Company, a subsidiary of IBM and the source of data for The Weather Channel, offers a network of 275,000 personal weather stations and millions of IoT devices delivering constant streams of atmospheric data into an AI-enabled platform that projects conditions with a half-kilometer granularity.
The data and forecasts—which draw on 162 weather models—are now integrated into Chevrolet’s race-day software to help its NASCAR, IndyCar and IMSA (sports car racing) teams. This relationship builds from a partnership between NASCAR and The Weather Company launched last year that assists race operations with decisions on when to delay of suspend racing due to storms.
“In motorsports, critical strategy decisions are made on the fly, in real time, in a high-pressure, high-speed environment,” said Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek, the global head of The Weather Company’s business solutions marketing. “The core weather data that we provided to NASCAR is similar here, [but] the way that it’s being used is very different. The way that the data is presented and consumed by Chevrolet Racing is going to be very different.”
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As an example, Boockoff-Bajdek said that this data can guide car setup decisions such as choice of shocks, tire pressure and springs. The hyperlocal weather forecasting can also determine when to pit. Hypothetically, if a car needs to pit by lap 240 but the forecast expects rain to arrive by lap 230, the crew chief could skip the stop knowing the weather break might save the need for a stop.
Chevrolet points to the Pennsylvania 400 at Pocono Raceway in 2016 as evidence of the power of weather data. Though not yet using The Weather Company’s proprietary data then, the team realized heavy fog was fast approaching the track. The crew opted to have Chris Buescher stay put when most of his competitors were making pit stops. Buescher was in the lead when the seventh caution was flagged, and NASCAR ended the race early, granting the rookie driver his first Cup win.
“Now they’re able to understand how their teams perform under specific weather conditions and make fast decisions on the track in real time that hopefully will have a positive impact on the outcome of a race,” Boockoff-Bajdek said.
The Weather Company is working with Cognitive Combustion—a motorsports consultancy offering machine learning and modeling services—to help Chevy visualize and ingest the information.