PRESS RELEASE — INDIANAPOLIS and BOSTON (May 26, 2022) — Just five races into the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season, Andretti Autosport and Zapata Computing have identified valuable use cases — and approaches to address them — regarding the use of accelerated analytic capabilities to realize a real-time performance edge on race day. Engineers, data scientists and race strategists from both organizations are working side-by-side and using Zapata’s Orquestra® platform for building and deploying quantum-ready applications® in the Zapata Computing | Andretti Autosport Race Analytics Command Center (R.A.C.C.) before, during and after each race.
The results to date have identified new approaches that can help generate predictive insights, measure and optimize performance and inform race strategy. Specifically, the teams are capitalizing on critical Andretti Autosport data sets to build advanced ML models to better understand tire degradation analysis, identify fuel savings opportunities and improve yellow flag predictive modeling.
“Andretti Autosport’s core business is motorsports engineering, and we’ve relied on conventional data handling and analysis specific to our field for decades,” said Eric Bretzman, technical director at Andretti Autosport. “Each year we collect and process more information than the last. Modernizing our infrastructure will add efficiency and power. There are critical new challenges on our job list today that we are fortunate to share with Zapata Computing to set the direction of our future engineering infrastructure.”
To date the team has discovered several analytical strategies that could give Andretti Autosport a competitive edge in the future. Along with Andretti’s engineering team, Zapata engineers are constructing a roadmap of additional use cases to explore, including:
- Deploying a hybrid infrastructure that leverages both cloud and edge computing capabilities. Orquestra helps this initiative because deployment is natively hybrid multi-cloud and on premise/edge.
- Developing enhanced visualization capabilities to accelerate decision making on the racetrack while monitoring model performance and adding model interpretability.
- Exploring acceleration and enhancement of optimization tasks and time series forecasting via quantum-inspired and quantum-enabled algorithms.
“Each race can potentially generate terabytes of data measuring all facets of the experience that you can imagine, such as the vehicle, track conditions, the driver, the pit crew and more,” said Yudong Cao, CTO of Zapata Computing. “The insights hidden in those data points are invaluable when it comes to squeezing out every ounce of performance possible on the racetrack. Most of what we are using today to ‘connect the dots’ is driven by advanced machine learning on classical computers, but we’re already seeing some tremendous opportunities to implement quantum-inspired methods on classical hardware — and then use those methods on quantum hardware backends as they mature on their path to being useful in enterprise production environments.”
For more information about Zapata Computing and Andretti Autosport, see the original partnership announcement at https://www.zapatacomputing.com/news/andretti/
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About Andretti Autosport
Andretti Autosport, led by racing legend Michael Andretti, boasts a wide racing portfolio rooted in tradition and designed for success.
Under the banners of Andretti Autosport and Avalanche Andretti Formula E, the Indianapolis-based team fields multiple entries across the INDYCAR SERIES, Indy Lights, the FIA Formula E World Championship and the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship. The team also competes as Walkinshaw Andretti United in the Australian Supercars category through a partnership with Walkinshaw Racing and United Autosports. Additionally, the team fields an entry in the Extreme E championship via Andretti United Extreme E.
The global racing enterprise boasts four INDYCAR SERIES championships, five Indy Light titles, one Pro Mazda championship, a Silver Class GT4 Championship and has captured victory five times at the famed Indianapolis 500. The team also holds two X Games Gold Medals and five U.S. rallycross championships.
To share in the Andretti story, please visit online at AndrettiAutosport.com and follow on social media with #AllAndretti.
About Zapata Computing
Zapata Computing, Inc. builds quantum-ready applications® for enterprise on Orquestra®, the computational workflow platform for quantum computing. Orquestra integrates best-in-class classical and quantum technology, including Zapata’s leading-edge algorithms, open-source libraries in Python, and more. Zapata has pioneered new quantum-classical methods in ML, optimization and simulation to maximize value from near-term quantum devices, and partners closely with hardware providers across the quantum ecosystem such as Amazon, D-Wave, Google, Quantinuum, IBM, IonQ and Rigetti. Learn more at ZapataComputing.com.
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