There have been a number of updates to the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship in 2015. As part of the series’ ongoing commitment to improving safety and fairness, all cars have this year been fitted with Cosworth’s aliveDRIVE – a data logging video capture system that records the onboard camera footage on a Fuji memory stick that the stewards can review after every practice session, qualifying and race, allowing them to visually analyse the drivers’ control of the vehicle.

In this month’s edition of Race Tech Magazine, they take an in-depth look at the system and, you can read excerpts from the article below…

The British Touring Car Championship has forged its popularity with spectacular wheel-to-wheel racing. For the fans, it’s fantastic, keeping us on the edge of our seats. For the championship organisers, though, that uncompromising battle on the racetrack can cause headaches in the stewards’ room afterwards as they seek to determine whether contact was intentional or not…

“This new system is simpler and more consistent,” enthuses Jeff Allam, the BTCC Driving Standards Advisor. “It gives us reliable and accurate information.” He also notes that having the car data directly streamed to the stewards gives them reassurance, knowing that there are no discrepancies with the data acquired. This new setup also produces a much faster response time, as data can be accessed almost instantaneously.

As a former class champion himself, Allam is effectively a poacher turned gamekeeper. He reveals that when investigating contact incidents in the past, the stewards encountered a familiar problem: if the driver claimed they had braked going into a corner, the unreliability of the previous systems made it difficult to prove to the contrary. With the Cosworth aliveDRIVE in place, the game has changed…

If you want to read the full article, you can view a PDF of it here.