Case Study: Hendrick Motorsports achieves faster, real-time race-day decision-making with Microsoft Azure

NASCAR team speeds access to decision-making data with cloud computing

Hendrick Motorsports, the record 11‑time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion with 650 employees, needed faster access to race data to make time‑critical decisions during a 38‑race season. With limited series telemetry, engineers had to consolidate vast historical and real‑time streams themselves, and the team wanted high‑performance computing without the cost and maintenance of on‑premises infrastructure.

Working with Microsoft Services, Hendrick deployed Windows 10 across 650 seats in under three months and standardized on Azure, Azure Machine Learning (Cortana Intelligence Suite), and Office 365 (OneNote, OneDrive, Skype for Business) to automate processing, scale compute by the minute, and enable secure, mobile workflows on Surface and Panasonic Toughbook devices. The changes sped data turnaround (teams report solving jobs in roughly half the time), cut image/patch cycles from as much as 5.5 hours to 2 hours, halved IT support time for builds/upgrades, and improved collaboration and decision‑making on race day.

Hendrick Motorsports

David Hood

Engineer and Data Scientist