How tech drives the World Rally Championship

The World Rally Championship (WRC) is one of the most technologically advanced sports events in the world and relies heavily on sophisticated comms to bring the thrills and spills of its sport to a huge worldwide audience.

The WRC's global audience rivals that of Formula One and MotoGP motorcycle racing but faces significantly different challenges.

Whereas the other sports take place on racing circuits with state of the art facilities, rallying often takes place in remote locations.

Speaking at Gartner's ITxpo in Cannes, Simon Long, managing director of International Sportsworld Communications, which owns the rights to and runs the WRC, said: "This is a sport that's incredibly hard to follow. It's pretty challenging. Technology underpins all we do."

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Due to the remote nature and large geographical spread of each event, (stages cover around 400km per event) there are also obstacles such as differing power supplies, communications standards and languages.

The WRC has brought in a single portable-communications system that can be plugged in at each rally and allows the event to operate more efficiently.

Long said: "We needed a single technology to raise the game."

Using a combination of GPS, satellite tracking, broadband technology and even an aeroplane, the championship can keep its audience, teams, drivers and sponsors up to date during each rally.

To make this possible, the WRC has been working with networking and hosting company Easynet which provides and maintains its broadband network, allowing live timings and data to be transmitted around the world.

Easynet also hosts the WRC website, which gives fans access to real-time stage timings, results and the latest news.

For live time splits, the WRC uses satellites and GPS data points on each stage, allowing the information to be available about two seconds after each car has passed through.

Previously, marshals would use a stopwatch and write timings on paper, sending the data back to rally HQ, with results sometimes taking hours to emerge.

An aeroplane is also used to maintain a line of site between cars and the rally HQ, allowing telemetry information such as speed, revs, gears and braking to be available in almost real-time.

This information is not only useful for rally fans around the world but also the teams and drivers who can adjust their strategies according to the data as it comes in.

Long said: "It's critical for the teams, it's critical to the drivers."

Each car produces around 20MB of data per stage - and with around 90 cars competing in each event, a huge amount of data is produced.

Long added the tech is also vital to safety on each event. The access to the data allows the rally organisers to respond to crashes and other incidents as information is available much quicker.