Clear-Com Wireless Systems Keep Corvette Racing Team On The Right Course

The Corvette Racing team has invested in the latest IP intercom technologies from Clear-Com including the Eclipse HX Digital Matrix, FreeSpeak II Digital Wireless systems and the Agent-IC Mobile App.

The Corvette Racing team designs and builds race scars for street-course endurance events. “Our races are anywhere from 100 minutes to 24 hours long,” said team engineer Matt Cummings. “When you’re trying to keep cars and drivers going for that long, and also keep crews and engineers engaged, communication becomes incredibly important.”

In 2019, Corvette Racing switched from two-way radios and single-channel intercoms to the newer Clear-Com systems, a move Cummings, now in his seventh year with Corvette Racing, described as one of the biggest evolutions in the program’s history in terms of quality and productivity.

Races can average 25 to 28 pit-stops, so the ability to communicate internally among the car crews about when those occur helps everyone get ready for the controlled chaos that is a motorsports pit stop – where every second matters. “It's easy to make or lose time in the pit lane,” he said. “It's really hard to make time on the course.”

Using the Clear-Com systems has also made race-day setup easier and faster. The team’s intercom matrix and panels are built into its pit stand, which is manufactured in England by Clear-Com Partner MRTC and shipped for pre-race assembly at the team’s U.S headquarters. They also often use the same system layout for each event as its core template and then decides on-site if additional channels are needed.

“What’s great about the EHX software is I can program it on the fly, which I do often” he said. “I probably don't go through a race weekend without reprogramming the intercom at least a few times. We can add or subtract channels as needed and also set up channels for private conversations between specific groups or with just one person individually without having to disturb everyone else.”

A typical beltpack allocation for a race is extensive and can include, Cummings and other electronics engineers, crew chiefs and car chiefs, a race engineer and assistant for each car, controls and simulations engineers, up to three people from the General Motors (GM) PowerTrain team, a Bosch support engineer, a team manager and up to five executives each from GM and Pratt Miller (parent company of Corvette Racing), with channel allocations closely mirroring these.

In 2021, Corvette Racing also explored remote race management using Clear-Com’s Agent-IC mobile app. Team engineers in the United States connected on their phones to a race site in Belgium and were able to maintain reliable communications with crews and drivers, a perfect workflow option for people who don’t need to be on-site for a whole race but still need to be in touch.

The Corvette team is confident that wireless systems like Clear-Com are the future of racing comms. “These systems allow us to run a race more effectively,” Cummings said. “We spend millions of dollars to build the fastest race car. We also need to have the best wireless intercoms to communicate in the most efficient manner.”

You might also like...

Designing IP Broadcast Systems

Designing IP Broadcast Systems is another massive body of research driven work - with over 27,000 words in 18 articles, in a free 84 page eBook. It provides extensive insight into the technology and engineering methodology required to create practical IP based broadcast…

NDI For Broadcast: Part 3 – Bridging The Gap

This third and for now, final part of our mini-series exploring NDI and its place in broadcast infrastructure moves on to a trio of tools released with NDI 5.0 which are all aimed at facilitating remote and collaborative workflows; NDI Audio,…

Designing An LED Wall Display For Virtual Production - Part 2

We conclude our discussion of how the LED wall is far more than just a backdrop for the actors on a virtual production stage - it must be calibrated to work in harmony with camera, tracking and lighting systems in…

Microphones: Part 2 - Design Principles

Successful microphones have been built working on a number of different principles. Those ideas will be looked at here.

Expanding Display Capabilities And The Quest For HDR & WCG

Broadcast image production is intrinsically linked to consumer displays and their capacity to reproduce High Dynamic Range and a Wide Color Gamut.