Mouser congratulates Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan at its Mansfield Texas headquarters

On a beautiful Thursday evening in Mansfield Texas, I was happy to join the folks at Mouser Electronics in welcoming Tony Kanaan – the winner of the Indy 500. The KV Racing car Tony drove to victory is sponsored, in part, by Mouser.

“We are so proud of Tony that we wanted to give him a special welcome. He has been trying for 12 years to win the Indy 500,” said Glenn Smith, Mouser President and CEO. “We wanted our employees and racing fans in the community to be able to cheer him on in person.” Also on the stage with Tony was Mansfield Texas Mayor David Cook and Jimmy Vasser, race strategist and co-owner of KV Racing.

Mansfield Texas Mayor David Cook, along with Mouser President Glenn Smith (right), presents Tony and his wife Lauren with a key to the city and proclaims June 6th as Tony Kanaan Day.

Mouser sponsors Kanaan's KV Racing Technology #11 IZOD IndyCar Series team. Glenn Smith thanked this year's co-sponsors for their support of the Mouser racing program. They include TTI, Sager, Amphenol, BIVAR, ebm-papst, Fluke, Hammond Manufacturing, Harwin, LEMO, Molex, Murata, NKK Switches, Ohmite, and Phoenix Contact.

Mouser seems like a great fit to a racing program. The technology needed in an IZOD Indy Car racer abounds and Mouser has pretty much all the electronics bases covered. The Mouser headquarters has more than 500,000 different part numbers in their warehouse and their web site, Mouser.com, has products from more than 450 electronic component manufacturers. That same site also has in excess of 5 million downloadable data sheets, supplier-specific reference designs, application notes, and engineering tools.

A winning panel: Glenn Smith, Jimmy Vasser, Tony Kanaan, James Sullivan

Indy Car is a complex venture. The major sub-systems for Indy racing are a bit on the expensive side. All IZOD Indy Car teams must buy their chassis from Dallara. The price is $345,000 each and aerodynamic packages designed for different circuits are reported to add another $150,000-$200,000. A team typically goes through three chassis for each driver/year. And then you will need an engine. Honda and Chevrolet provide engine packages and the rules allow the use of eight engines for around $1 million/year. Chevrolet supplied Tony's engine.  The single- or twin-turbocharged 2.2 L V6 engines produce anywhere from 550 to 700 HP to propel the 1,565 pound cars.

And there are entry fees of maybe $12,000/car/race. McLaren Electronic Systems is the single engine control unit supplier and Magneti Marelli Motorsport provides powertrain technology and fuel components for all teams of IZOD IndyCar. The cars also have a power distribution unit and an all-important telemetry system that provides voice contact with the driver and sends a ton of sensor data to the pit crew. The cars have a Sportvision RACEf/x system using radios made by Afar to provide wireless data telemetry for both the pits and coordination of TV coverage. The pits monitor speed, throttle, steering angle, brake pressure, track location, and traction in real time on a graphical display.

The team does a lot of wind tunnel testing on their cars. According to Tony, this particular car had been saved especially for the 500 and fine tuning of the cars aerodynamics was a crucial factor in the win.