Michael. I don’t believe it’s a transponder issue per se. We spent days looking at the raw data that was collected directly from the transponders and pushed into their database and it’s reliable. We did this for each event in 2024 and 2025
Under the covers the Yellow, Red and X2/TR2 transponders are pretty much identical. They all use 512kHz, low interference for the carrier frequency. The power output is also identicial. It’s around 10mW so they don’t interfere with each other (the average cell phone is ~800mW) and they are all active devices. The 2 big differences between all transponders are the ping rate and the business model.
The red transponders ping faster/broader. This makes sense as the yellow is claimed to be good up to 160Km/h and the red is good up to 260Km/h, so when you are traveling at 234 feet per second compared with 146 feet per second it stands to reason you have to ping at least 1.66 times faster to hit the timing loop.
The X2/TR2 transponder works exactly the same as the red and yellow ones (I believe its the same basic circuitry under the covers) Data is always collected, however the data is hidden behind a pay wall so if you don’t have a subscription you can’t see it, but it is collected regardless.
When we pulled the data for all 4 races last season and compared each transponder type (we know what transponder types are based on the number) they all performed well with very low average failure rates. Overall, the red transponders performed best followed by the yellow transponders followed by the new X2/TR2. I believe this is consistant with the X2/TR2 transponders being built down to a price.
However, the variance is statistically insignificant.
The track timing loop actually made a bigger difference than the transponder type. Mosport is by far the worst but there are some reasons for that outlined below.
I believe we have identified 4 key issues that cause anomalies with the MyLaps software…
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Missing Transponders: People enter the track without transponders but, it’s how this is handled that causes issues. If they complain they are reinstated in the position where they finished the race, if they don’t complain they are either scored in last place with no timing information or as a DNS. Nothing is consistent and it needs to be. Sometimes protests are not upheld until days later and the results are already published.
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Dissociation between Transponders/User: This one affects me and is a pet peeve, but also affects many other people. Basically, a users transponder pings just fine and its logged in the database, but the backend MyLaps software can’t/won’t associate the transponder number with a user. Below is an example with my transponder. If I look up my times by transponder number everything is there, if I look it up by my name or plate number the timing information is missing. It’s also not consistent. For some reason it only happens to me during Friday Practice and Endurance; and it’s every Friday. Saturday and Sunday are always fine. Again, this is a MyLaps/Orbits software issue, not a transponder issue. The other big issue is wrong names are sometimes associated with transponders which also is illustrated below. 570 should be Dave Minnett.
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Timing loop issues and Bike Collection: This is primarialy a Mosport issue. When bike pickup collects a bike and they haul it back over the timing loop when exiting the track - it pings. Thus it appears as though the user has finished the race. A good example of this was at Mosport last year where Stans bike stopped on the grid and he parked it, but was still credited with a finish instead of a DNS or DNF when the bike triggered the timing loop from the bike pickup trialer. He was honest enough to let me know.
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Orphaned Race results: This is by far the biggest and hardest problem to deal with. Results show up in the wrong class/heat/race or dont show up at all. Here is a great example. These are the results for Middleweight Production, P1-500 and P1-250 from Mosport in 2025, however It also includes Holly Varey’s result indicated as 2 Stroke Open which was 3 races before and Bill Van Leeuwen’s indicated as P1-350 from 4 races later. Their results are missing from their proper races. Also, P1-250 was won by Dean StCroix and Holly Varey was second, but it shows Stan won and the results make no mention of Dean or Holly in P1-250. Again, Stan was honest enough to point this out to me.
MyLaps is getting on for 40 years old now. I believe there are better solutions on the market
BTW, This is not a new problem. Kirby also ran into these issues. I have all the MyLaps and SeriesTracker data going back to 2017 and its all very inconsistant and even back then there were a lot of manual changes.
Anyway, that’s my $0.02, although do I think it was a worthwhile exercise looking at the numbers as we now have empirical data that illustrates what the main issues actually are.
