Windows Phone used for tracking in Rallye International de Bourgogne

We've seen Windows Phone in space, now we can see it being used in a full on rally race. Evidently, 10 cars in the Rallye International de Bourgogne for 2011 will be sportin' a Windows Phone with custom GPS tracking software. Reason? So you can follow where the cars are on the live Bing maps, of course. Granted, there are a 120 cars involved, so 10 is but a drop in the bucket, but with distributing the phones according to  "the top seed in the back of the pack", there should be a relatively even distribution amongst all the racers.

The race evidently will run for two days and instead of having the phones plugged in (what, no cigarette lighters in rally cars?), the phones will be running with the screen off and all services turned off except phone and data. The phones are reportedly HTC Mozarts running NoDo (guess they couldn't get dev unlocked).

Anyways, it sounds like a cool use of GPS, Windows Phone and custom software by Vivien Chevallier and we look forward to seeing how the whole experiment works out.

Read more at MonSmartphone (French) and follow the race here with the Live Map. (Thanks, Michael B., for the heads up!)

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.