If it is not specified in your racing class rules, where is the best place to mount a transponder on your racing car?
People will often say it doesn’t matter. But does it?
Surely putting it out front has got to be better?
Let’s do a bit of investigation, a bit of maths and find out for sure.
Not sure what a transponder is?
The transponder is a device used to precisely time your racing car lap times round a track.
There are various types but the aim is the same – precision lap times, typically down to 1/100th of a second.
Without it your car is a ghost on track! No times, no race positions, nothing.
Having a working transponder is critical.
You need to rigidly mount the transponder somewhere on your racing car (or kart) but where (and does it even matter?)
Does it matter where you mount your transponder?
The context is important here.
1- Qualifying/Time Attack etc.
In qualifying, when it is just your racing car against the clock, then the location of the transponder is not important.
This is because your transponder takes the same amount of time to go around the track as the rest of the car.
Unless you move the transponder during the lap (hmm … 😉 ) then it does not matter where it is located.
So mount it as safely within the chassis as possible.
However…
2- Racing
In races, the place to mount a transponder does become important.
Take this close racing finish:
As you can see, the red car (at the top) crosses the line slightly ahead and is declared the winner.
In this formula, all the cars are all the same and they have their transponders mounted in the same place. But if they had them mounted in different places then the circuit timing system could have got the result wrong.
Effect of mounting transponders in different places
Looking more closely.
What if the top red car had its transponder at the back (1) and the white car had its transponder at the front (2)?
I’ve annotated the image with 1 and 2 in yellow circles (see zoomed in below):
Well in this case, the timing screen would (wrongly) declare the white car crossed the line first.
Eek.
It would not have been by much – maybe less than 0.03 seconds – but it would not be correct.
It is important to be aware, race results are effected by this.
Yes, they typically get visually corrected but why risk losing the win to what people subjectively see?
Therefore the transponder location is more important than people realise.
A real-life story…
When I bought my first racing car, the guy was well aware of needing to mount the transponder at the front.
So much so that he put the transponder right at the front of the racecar – actually IN the fibre-glass nose cone!
A somewhat “all-in” approach I thought.
All motorsports are officially non-contact, however, in practice, bodywork can get damaged and the nose cone is especially vulnerable.
If it came off, along with my transponder, then I’d be a ghost as far as the race timing system was concerned. Not good. Not worth it.
Therefore there is clearly a balance to be struck:
You want is to mount the transponder as far forward as possible but with the least risk of damage.
Quantifying the compromise
It is possible to try and quantify the effect of this compromise in terms of lap time lost by looking at the speed of your racecar and the accuracy of the circuit timing system.
In other words, to determine where the transponder position will make a difference and where, in practice, it won’t.
For subscribers, I’ve put together a little spreadsheet, that automatically calculates everything I’m about to describe. If you’d like it (for free) just fill in the form below to get it, or, as you’ll see it is quite easy to create yourself.
How sensitive is the transponder location?
If you can calculate the time delta effect of placing the transponder in different positions on the car you will know if it is worth building out a special bracket for the transponder or whether mounting on the first solid bit of car will be ok.
The time delta is effected by two things:
- the distance from the very front of your racing car, to where the transponder is located ( (a) in the cartoon below ), and
- the speed with which you cross the start-finish line.
Below is a heat map I’ve put together (that is in the spreadsheet) to help you quantify the time delta for different positions of transponder location for your racing car.
How To Use The Table In 3 Steps:
- Measure the distance from the front of your racecar to your transponder (a)
- Determine the speed you cross the start-finish line
- Then read along to find the time delta of that mounting place, versus having it right at the very front of the car
For example, say you mount your transponder 0.7 metres from the front of the racing car, and you cross the finish line at 100 mph.
In the spreadsheet, you just need to input these two values to get the answer but the maths is pretty simple and goes like this:
- Convert speed into metres / second (100mph = 44.704 m/s)
- Take the inverse (1 over) of this value to get the time taken to travel 1 metre in seconds (1 / 44.704 = 0.0224 seconds to travel 1 metre)
- Multiply this by (a) the distance your of the transponder from the front of the racecar (0.0224 * 0.7 ~ 0.02 seconds time loss difference)
0.02 seconds – is not a lot of time.
However, 0.02 seconds IS within the timing tolerance of the transponder.
If it can be detected, it would be enough to put you behind.
Looking at the table again you can see that if you were able to mount your transponder within 0.2 metres (20 cm) of the front of the racing car, then the time loss would be basically ZERO seconds.
What this is telling you is that you can mount the transponder anywhere up to 20cm behind the front of the car, and it will have little or no difference to the time.
It gives you the freedom to find a much more secure and solid location to mount the transducer without losing out to someone who risks putting it right out front.
Great news.
What else is the data telling us?
Interestingly, the slower you cross the line the more important the forward placement of the transponder becomes.
The below image is the same data from the table but presented as a 3D surface.
It is not very often that a 3D graph is useful (data viz 101) but in this case, it is really quite powerful.
What it is saying that the speed becomes exponentially more important the slower you cross the start-finish line.
If your series is fairly low speed then the placement of the transponder will have a big difference.
Have a check on the table again or in the spreadsheet to see how sensitive your series.
If you have a very slow series (kart??) now is the time you might consider a special bracket to mount the transponder further forward.
In Summary
Many series specify a location for the transponder to avoid any issues.
Furthermore, a finish as close as in the picture above is also typically called visually – although that might only be done for the winner…
In all circumstances, it is a pain to have to deal with the uncertainty and disappointment this could throw up – especially if you are the one to lose out on the win or podium etc…
I’d, therefore, recommend, that if you have freedom of placement, that the best place to mount a transponder is as follows:
- Get your transponder as far forward as possible, but in a secure place
- Check on the table above (or precisely in the spreadsheet) for the time delta trade-off you are making placing it further back
- If you are in a slower class, consider what you could do to get more solid structure further forward
Getting this right really could mean the difference between your car winning and losing.
Want to take the guesswork out of setting your tyre pressures? Try this article including a free calculator: https://www.yourdatadriven.com/how-to-set-your-racing-car-tyre-pressures-perfectly-every-time/
Wondering what the tyres are actually doing? This article should help your visualisation:https://www.yourdatadriven.com/tyre-slip-angle-explained/
