Nominal partners with Pratt Miller Motorsports at Rolex 24 Daytona to bring real-time engineering software to endurance racing
Jan 23, 2026 with Bryce Strauss
Key Points
- Nominal deploys its real-time engineering data platform at the Rolex 24 at Daytona with Pratt Miller Motorsports, consolidating telemetry analysis across what McCord describes as a firehose of data into a single stack replacing six to eight separate tools.
- Nominal helps Pratt Miller optimize fuel strategy in 24-hour endurance racing by tracking throttle usage and burn rates in real time, enabling the team to force rivals into longer pit stops while minimizing their own.
- The partnership extends beyond race weekends into Pratt Miller's simulator operations and customer Corvette programs, mirroring how Nominal's aerospace and defense customers integrate simulation and live-operation data.
Summary
Nominal, the engineering data platform co-founded by Bryce McCord, Cameron McCord, and Jason, announced a partnership with Pratt Miller Motorsports timed to the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the opening endurance race of the IMSA season. Pratt Miller is the organization behind the Corvette Racing program, which McCord describes as the most dominant sports car racing team of the past 30 years.
What Nominal is actually doing at Daytona
Nominal's role centers on real-time and post-session data analysis across what McCord says is a firehose of telemetry — terabytes generated over the race weekend. The platform consolidates data management, monitoring, and analysis into a single stack, replacing a workflow McCord observed firsthand where engineers were cycling through six to eight separate tools to root-cause a single problem.
For endurance racing specifically, fuel strategy is the dominant variable. A full tank lasts roughly one hour, making 24-hour race management a complex optimization problem. Nominal is helping Pratt Miller's engineers track throttle usage and fuel burn in real time, with the strategic goal of forcing rival cars to consume more fuel, extending their pit stop refueling time while Pratt Miller's car gets back on track faster. McCord frames this as non-trivial math running on dense telemetry.
Scope beyond race day
The partnership extends beyond the 10-race IMSA season. Pratt Miller also builds and fields customer Corvettes for other teams and operates driver simulators. Nominal is being integrated into that simulator workflow so that data from sim sessions feeds back into the same platform used during live race operations. This mirrors, according to McCord, how Nominal's aerospace, defense, and energy customers operate — the difference in motorsport being the immediate win-or-lose feedback loop that accelerates adoption.
Telemetry infrastructure
Sports car racing sits in a regulatory middle ground on live data. NASCAR prohibits pulling data off the car during a race. Formula 1 runs a high-bandwidth mesh network with continuous streaming. IMSA allows limited live telemetry to pit-side engineers monitoring stations in real time, but restricts data rate and source types. High-volume data comes off the car physically — a technician swaps a data stick at each pit stop. Secure driver communications also run through a physical umbilical plugged in during stops; radio communications outside that window are open to all teams.
Pratt Miller has been building proprietary race software internally for roughly 25 years, and its engineers are considered pipeline talent for aerospace firms. Nominal's positioning in this partnership is as an accelerant to that existing capability, not a replacement of it.