The MTC, a data center on wheels that is actually a 53-foot semi trailer, will serve as the at-track home base for NASCAR's Timing and Scoring system and can serve as a platform to launch new technology initiatives, said Mason Vincent, NASCAR's director of timing and scoring. The MTC provides NASCAR with a high-tech work space to collect and process timing and scoring data; It replaces the current timing and scoring system with a mobile system that can travel from race to race, Vincent said.

The MTC will be outfitted with more than 40 AMD Opteron-based servers and AMD Turion 64 laptops, which can provide quicker timing and scoring updates, he said.

"The way we currently handle tracking the cars is we have antennas embedded in the tracks, and the cars have transponders on them," Vincent said. "As cars go around, we capture data as they go across that antenna and the software puts the cars in the proper order. Right now, we actually take up two sets of servers that we set up in the scoring stands. We have to move those servers from week to week from track to track. What the MTC is allowing us to do is set up a consistent work space, so we have better equipment to work with."

It will also allow NASCAR officials to "start thinking forward to try to figure out a way to track the cars with what we're calling a track positioning system so we can eliminate the dead spots between the two antennas, which are anywhere from 800 feet to 1,500 feet apart," he said.

Steve Worling, manager of IT infrastructure for NASCAR, said the idea for the MTC began a couple of years ago when IT staffers sat down and looked at how technology was growing in the race environment -- and at the racetrack itself.