In every CARWOW review, Matt calls this thing his “specialist timing gear”, but what actually is this? What can it do? And should you buy one? Well, in this video I want to answer all that starting with what it is.
This is a RaceBox, a 10Hz GPS receiver that’ll set you back around £280 if you wanted to pick one up yourself. If you aren’t familiar with why 10Hz GPS is necessary here, check out the video on my tech channel TechteamGB explaining how GPS works and why 10Hz is useful for something like this. The TDLR is that it’s more accurate and because you get 10 updates in the same amount of time as your phone would get just one, you get better accuracy for timing things like 0-60 runs, and tracing your racing line around a track.
The RaceBox isn’t the only accessible 10Hz GPS receiver, the more popular option is the dragy, but if you’d prefer a display you can glance at while it’s in use this is definitely a better option, and is likely why CARWOW chose this as their device of choice so they can stick a go pro in front of it and see the numbers climb. It sticks to your windshield with the included suction cup, and can either be fully wireless using it’s built in 2000mAh battery or be plugged into USB with the included magnetic cable. If you need to mount it somewhere where the internal GPS antenna can’t see the sky it also comes with an external antenna you can attach.
The RaceBox has two main functions, drag timing, and lap timing. Let’s start with the former. It’ll show you four different metrics at a time, in it’s “speed” mode it’ll record 0-30mph, 0-60mph, 60-130mph and 0-130mph. In “Distance” mode it reports time taken to travel 60ft, 1/16th of a mile, 1/8th mile and ¼ mile. You can swap the units to metric if you’d prefer, although for me, and it looks like for CARWOW, the “Custom” option is best. I have it setup to record 0-60mph, 0-100kph, 70-0mph and 60-0mph, but you can set it up for any measurement you like both metric and imperial. The only catch is for the “distance” measurements that report a distance rather than time, that’ll report either in feet or meters and you’ll have to change the units if you want a specific measurement recorded in the units you prefer.
This thing is insanely accurate, it reports down to one hundredth of a second or two decimal places and the RaceBox team says that on a clear day with good line of sight to the satellites above, it should be as accurate as 20cm, or around 8 inches, and even on a bad day with less than ideal visibility to the sky it should still be accurate to within a meter or lower. All of that means for timing your 0-60, or ¼ mile times, it should be pinpoint accurate.
The other feature, the track timer is clearly less important to Matt, but still an awesome use of this thing. You’ll want to use their app to connect via WiFi to the unit so you can upload up to 64 different tracks either fully custom or from their impressive database of existing tracks. You can see them all on their website that I’ll link in the description, right next to the Amazon affiliate link to buy one or check out the price when and where you watch this, but they’ve already got most if not all UK and USA tracks, and even the Nordschleife. In fact, when you include all the different variations you get on each circuit they say they’ve got over 2000 so you should be set.
But just in case they don’t have it, or maybe you are doing a rally stage instead, you can use their app to map out custom tracks. You can do both open and closed circuits, the difference being closed use a combined start/finish whereas open have separate. In closed circuits you can add up to 4 split points and one start/finish, on open it’s start, 3 splits and finish. You can also map out custom tracks on the device itself without the app if you’d prefer.
Since we are talking about the app, and since Matt doesn’t show it in their videos, let me give you a quick tour. You have four pages, drag, track, devices and more. Devices is the page you’ll want to upload tracks to the unit, but the one I’ve used the most is the drag page. There you will see all your drag sessions, every run in each session too and all four metrics you were recording at the time. You can see both an overview if you did multiple runs, and you are able to select each run individually. It even lists the GPS accuracy and how many satellites were connected!
You can assign what vehicle you did the run in with the settings menu at the top right, or tap on any individual result to see the full details like your altitude, distance covered, slope angle and corrected for slope angle time, plus a full graph of speed, altitude and g-force throughout the run. The “Details” button at the bottom gives you a handy breakdown of the key inter-steps, like on this 0-60 run it lists 0-10, 20, 30, 40 and 50, and max g-force. The “Compare” button lets you compare runs both in the same session, and from others, handy for comparing vehicles like this Golf R run to my S4, or just between setup changes.
For the track sessions, it’ll list all your saved results both as a whole and highlights from your laps. You can open it up to see more detail, including the lap time, max and minimum speed, and maximum lateral and cornering g force. If you tap on a specific lap you can see a map at the top of where you were at a given point of time, along with a graph of speed and g-forces. Because I’m using a custom map it hasn’t loaded anything behind my location data, although it may be able to load in a map if you are racing at one of their pre-made circuits but I haven’t been able to test that myself. You’ve even got a summary to see total length and your sector times.
Interestingly, if you do use their app, all your sessions are automatically uploaded to their website where you can export the raw data. When you download one of those files, you get a full list of every data point it captured during that run, including time and date, exact lat/long, altitude, speed, G-Force and heading. The RaceBox team say they would never share any of that data, or even access it without your explicit permission for support purposes, but it might be something to keep in mind that they will have a copy of your data and it sounds like the only thing stopping them from accessing it is their policy rather than say end-to-end encryption. I can’t say I’m worried at all, but thought I’d mention it.
So, should you be rushing to the link in the description to buy one for yourself? Well, it’s a cool gadget to have for sure. If you do track days regularly, drag or circuit, or are a race team I can see a good benefit to you having one. I’d still err towards the dragy instead as it’s smaller and easier to mount securely, but if you want to see how you are doing while driving this is excellent. The limitation of only recording the four measurements you selected on the device is a bit frustrating, but having the raw data available through their website should make up for that.
If you are more of an enthusiast who pops out for a Sunday drive, this might be a touch excessive. It’s a fair amount of money for what would be more of a toy than a tool but hey it’s your money so if you want one I certainly wouldn’t stop you. I really like it, and I’m excited to make full use of it on this channel in reviews and a whole lot else. If you want to see that, do hit that subscribe button and turn on the bell notification icon so you don’t miss a video!