Baron Services Meteorologist Serves as Personal Weather Forecaster for the Andretti Green Racing Team at the Indianapolis 500

The
Andretti Green Racing Team was weather aware at the rainy

Indianapolis 500 on May 27 with a Mobile
Threat Net system and Heather Hope, a Baron Services Meteorologist, in the pit
providing weather updates every minute.

Heather
Hope worked closely with Brian Page, the pit crew Aerospace Engineer for car
#11, Tony Kanaan. During the race Hope provided minute by minute
weather updates, NOWCasts and forecasts, such as the exact location of the
rain, distance of rain from the track, rainfall rates and speed of the rain and
storms. This information was given via headset to Page who then performed
necessary calculations and shared the critical weather information with the
other four Andretti Green pit crews. As storms grew closer, Hope’s
weather updates became more important and played a major role in each pit
crew’s strategy. The strategy paid off for driver Dario Franchitti who
won the Indy 500.

The
Andretti Green Racing Team regularly has a Mobile Threat Net system in each of
the pits for a race, but for the Indy 500, they wanted a professional
meteorologist on hand to interpret the data. Mobile Threat Net is a
ground-based storm tracking system that provides current and forecasted weather
information such as Radar, Lightning, Hurricanes, and Severe Storm Cell
Identification. The wireless weather data is transmitted through the
signal of XM WX Satellite Weather. In addition to using a Mobile Threat
Net for updates, Hope employed FasTrac a patented storm tracking system from
Baron Services that allows meteorologists to track storms and their effect on
cities and towns to the neighborhood level, while also pinpointing the exact
arrival time at a certain location.