From Alex Nieten
CONCORD, NC (February 4, 2026) – Continuing World Racing Group’s efforts to improve safety in motorsports, the organization will expand upon its use of incident data recorders (IDR) with the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series.
The IDRs, developed by the FIA and already utilized by groups like NASCAR and IMSA, will be installed on World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series teams’ cars for the entire season, starting at Volusia Speedway Park’s Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals. Last year, the device was tested on 30 cars in the last 13 races of the season.
The small, lightweight device records crash accelerations when a predetermined impact threshold is reached.
To help study and analyze the data collected from each event, World Racing Group is leveraging support and experience from NASCAR, which has utilized the same device across all of its series for several years.
With the help of NASCAR’s engineers and the technology, “the sky is the limit” for the potential of what could be learned, according to World Racing Group Fleet and Safety Manager Tom Devitt.
“With the help of John (Patalak, Vice President of Safety Engineering at NASCAR) and his team, if we have video, we can match the video to the graph of data collected from the device,” Devitt said. “I’ve seen some of the studies they do on other stuff, and it’s really, really intensive what they do, as far as what they’ve done for NASCAR.
“There’s probably stuff in there that we don’t know we’re going to learn.”
Patalak has a doctorate in biomedical engineering and has worked with NASCAR for over 20 years. He echoed Devitt’s sentiment about the unknowns of what could be learned but highlighted that the data will open the door for a variety of possibilities.
“The data recorder isn’t going to change anything that is happening in that particular crash; it simply records it,” Patalak said. “But that’s where the safety evolution can begin. You can go back and study it and learn from it. As you’re measuring things, you can learn how to improve them, and you’ll know quickly whether or not it is improving. Not just by trial and error or by putting things in the race car and seeing how they crash, but by using different engineering tools or test fixtures. We have all sorts of tests we can do that mimic the data that is coming out of the car. For instance, we can use a crash test dummy and run tests to see if a different seatbelt or mounting angle, or different foam in the seat, could reduce the loads on the driver. We know with confidence what the loads are that we put into the car because we measure them with the data recorder.
“I think the more data you get, the more powerful it becomes. The more data you capture, the more confident you are in what the data is telling you.”
Having the device on a multitude of cars will not only help speed up the process of collecting data, but help with the study of how crashes affect different drivers. Patalak stated how age, stature, weight, pre-existing conditions, bone density, and general health are all factors that play into a driver’s tolerance to acceleration and play into the study of the data.
So, while studying the data, there will not be a number where a line can be drawn that says things are either good under it or bad above it. A plethora of factors will have to be accounted for in every case study.
“The benefits to the drivers and safety in motorsports is when you collect enough of that data to start to see trends and do some statistics and understand the direction of the crash, the severity of the crash,” Patalak said. “The severity can be talked about in the change in velocity, it can be talked about in peak acceleration, or the Gs. There are lots of different ways to look at that data and see how it correlates to what the drivers are experiencing in the car when they undergo that crash.”
Along with being able to provide the data to the teams, Devitt hopes to utilize the data to help improve safety across the sport, such as with seats, mounts, facilities, and more. The data collected from the 13 races last year have already put those conversations in motion. And while the device will currently only be used with Sprint Car teams, Devitt said the goal is to eventually have it on every car across the organization – Late Models, Modifieds, etc.
“We wanted to start small with one series, so we can refine it, and then when we do go to the other series, we’ll have a process,” he said. “The more consistent we are with that, the better we can read the data and comprehend it.
“Of course, we don’t want to see anybody crash, but it is inevitable; it happens. If we can learn from it and make it better, maybe we can prevent an injury in the future.”