Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship organiser TOCA is proud to announce that Getac will be an Official Technology Partner of the BTCC throughout 2022.
Getac is providing rugged tablet devices and automotive software solutions to the BTCC Technical Team for scrutineering and technical checking purposes in order to help digitise and streamline its procedures.
“The collaboration with Getac helps us move towards far more efficient paperless processes within our systems,” said Alan Gow, Chief Executive of BTCC. “The championship had a number of paper-based practices that only serve to slow down our operation and the support we need to provide to the race teams.
“Turning to digital made absolute sense in order to bring real-time control and visibility in vital areas such as scrutineering and technical checking. The speed with which we will now be able to do this enables more efficiency in the procedures and allows teams more time to get on with preparing for the race itself.”
Previously, the scrutineering process has been largely paper based, with the BTCC Technical Team keeping records and then later manually entering that data. Their role is to check that all competing vehicles fully comply with the relevant technical and safety regulations.
For the 2022 season, Getac is contributing UX10 10.1-inch Windows Tablet PCs and bespoke cloud-based vehicle-checking software to digitise the scrutineering process. TOCA will be equipped to fully digitise their data recording around scrutineering – increasing transparency, accountability and, most importantly, speed.
Getac hardware and software will work in synergy to help increase response time through digitisation.
Getac has been supporting TOCA/BTCC since the 2019 season, replacing all of TOCA’s legacy IT infrastructure with a combination of S410 semi-rugged notebook PCs and A140 fully rugged tablets. These devices created an integrated IT solution that powers all aspects of the BTCC’s behind-the-scenes operations.
The devices are used by both race control and championship officials, where they can be used for a wide range of operational activities. This includes everything from race control, regulation compliance, onboard video review, post-race car inspections and accident data management (as part of a joint project with the FIA).
These rugged mobile devices offer seamless efficiency and reliability throughout the race control, the paddock and pit lane during race weekends and beyond. With this extended agreement, each BTCC team will use a Getac tablet with custom technical software as part of the scrutineering process, saving time and administration in their communication with the BTCC technical team. These Getac tablets will also allow teams to perform other tasks on a case-by-case basis, such as diagnostic data capturing.
The BTCC’s other major technical partners such as Cosworth and Goodyear will also use the devices in the monitoring of engine and tyre performance throughout each race weekend.
Getac rugged devices were welcomed by the BTCC personnel, who had previously used consumer-grade laptops and devices. Those often failed from damage due to the environment they were used in and frustrated users with short battery life and slower processors which meant key tasks such as car inspections and data collection often took longer than needed.
For the BTCC, the partnership with Getac demonstrates its commitment to technology, given its huge UK and global TV broadcast reach and audiences who overwhelmingly use smart devices in their lives.
“Race weekends are often full-on, and like the speed of the cars, time simply flies by,” concluded Gow. “So, it is really pleasing to see how digitising our technical and scrutineering processes has enabled us to use some of the time saved to focus on other things – to ensure teams are looked after and the race weekend attendees and broadcast viewers continue to enjoy the great spectacle of the BTCC.”
