NASCAR races may take place on a track with only left turns, but that doesn’t make the sport any less dangerous. To ensure the safety of all racers in addition to leveling the playing field, NASCAR puts all vehicles involved in the race under rigorous inspections.
What was previously a paper-based multi-step inspection process has now gone paperless thanks to Windows 8.1-powered devices including the Surface Pro 3 that will be deployed this weekend at the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
NASCAR worked in collaboration with Microsoft to develop the Windows 8.1 Mobile Inspection Application to aid in direct data entry as well as viewing historical data of previous vehicle inspections to identify trends. The software giant has also highlighted how the Snap feature in Windows 8.1 is utilized to simultaneously view different documents that were once large paper notebooks. The app also allows for real-time information to be displayed on the status of all 43 cars prior to a race.
Documenting these inspections was previously relatively inefficient as the process could take about 5 hours to complete. Now that the process is digital, information can be easily and quickly shared to supervisors and race control, and takes half the time to get the job done.
According to Fred Prendergast, Vehicle Inspections Tools and Procedures Engineer at NASCAR: “We saw the need to carry this process into the future… This Windows-based application improves operational efficiency and empowers our Officials to be more productive.”
Now that Windows 10 is announced, and Microsoft’s commitment to enterprise customers reassured, the company will be working to get as much feedback as possible from organizations like NASCAR to improve the OS. Windows 10 is expected to be released in late 2015 so the software giant has ample time to do so.
Check out the video below to see how NASCAR utilizes the Windows 8.1 Mobile Inspection Application.
Image Credit: Microsoft
