Motorsport team Black Falcon used a 3D scanner from SHINING 3D to verify that a race car had been correctly rebuilt after suffering a serious crash during the Nürburgring 24 Hours, geometrically inspecting the repaired areas before returning the car to competition at the Nordschleife. The verification is one part of a broader technical partnership the team built around the introduction of its new Porsche 911 GT3 Cup.
A workshop-to-track inspection step
The crash left the car damaged enough that a full rebuild was required instead of a straightforward repair. Because the car would return to competitive running on the Nordschleife, one of the most demanding circuits in endurance racing, Black Falcon needed a way to confirm the repair had been executed correctly before committing it back to the track.
Rather than relying solely on visual checks or conventional measurement tools, engineers scanned the repaired sections using SHINING 3D’s FreeScan Trak Nova, a portable optical measurement system built for large-scale industrial inspection. The scan data gave the team a way to assess the geometry of the rebuilt structure directly, adding a distinct verification stage between the workshop and the car’s return to racing.
Two Decades of Racing Pedigree, Now Running on Digital Foundations
Black Falcon has competed at the Nürburgring for more than two decades, a run that includes two outright wins in the Nürburgring 24 Hours and over 300 class victories. That pedigree took on a digital dimension with the launch of its current Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car, built through a technical partnership with SHINING 3D that now touches multiple stages of the team’s engineering process, from chassis and crash-structure analysis to routine documentation of surfaces worn down by long-distance racing conditions.
The technology’s reach extends past inspection and into development. The team’s aerodynamic splitter is one example: scanning captures its geometry digitally, and that data feeds straight into computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, giving engineers a lower-cost alternative to physical methods like wind-tunnel testing. Starting from a scan rather than rebuilding the part manually in CAD also lets Black Falcon carry real-world component data directly into its digital engineering decisions, instead of treating the physical car and its digital models as two separate references.
Inside the FreeScan Trak Nova
The scanner underpinning Black Falcon’s workflow, the FreeScan Trak Nova, is built as a detachable system pairing a handheld scanner with a separate tracking unit, the FreeScan UE Nova, which doubles as a handheld laser scanner with what SHINING 3D describes as the largest field of view on the market. The system runs fully wireless, with built-in computing modules in both the tracker and the wide-range scanner to process data in real time, and swappable batteries to keep scanning through long sessions without interruption. Its combination of wide-range laser scanning for capturing overall structure with dynamic tracking for fine local detail lets it fuse both into a single dataset, which is what allows a team like Black Falcon to move from a full chassis scan down to a closely inspected repair area without switching equipment.
Accuracy is a central design point: the system is rated to 0.02 mm accuracy and 0.062 mm volumetric accuracy over a 12 m³ working volume, verified in SHINING 3D’s own ISO/IEC 17025-accredited lab against VDI/VDE 2634 Part 3 and ISO 10360 standards, the same metrology benchmarks used in industrial inspection more broadly.
A patented video photogrammetry feature removes the need for the coded markers typically required in large-object scanning, instead using a calibration rod and real-time video capture to maintain volumetric accuracy across a scan area up to 2,600 x 2,200 mm. The two components are lightweight by design, 1.2 kg for the tracker, 1.6 kg for the wide-range unit, and pack into a single portable case, a detail that matters for a motorsport team moving equipment between workshop and trackside during a race weekend. The system won the iF Design Award 2026 for its product design.
Digital Verification Is Becoming Standard Practice on the Grid
Black Falcon’s use of 3D scanning to verify a rebuilt race car reflects a broader strategy across motorsport toward treating scanned geometry as a routine engineering step vs. an occasional measurement tool.
That strategy shows up at every level of racing. For instance, Red Bull Racing built quality inspection into its Formula One development cycle through a partnership with Hexagon, using metrology and scanning systems to measure and verify components before they reach the track, including early access to a new scanning system that gave the team a six-month head start over the rest of the field.
Further down the grid, the Kawasaki Puccetti Racing World Superbike team used a handheld 3D scanner to capture its motorcycle’s geometry and refine the aerodynamics of a new fairing, a change credited with a measurable speed increase and a race win.
Elsewhere, NASCAR used life-size 3D prints to optimize Olympic luge aerodynamics, applying its motorsport aerodynamics workflow to a completely different sport. Engineers built a custom scanning rig that let Digital Reality Scanning specialists capture high-resolution, marker-free 3D scans of luge sleds and athletes during a Luge World Cup event in Park City, Utah, scans that were then converted into digital models for CFD analysis and, ultimately, life-size 3D printed replicas used for wind-tunnel-style aerodynamic testing at NASCAR’s own R&D facility.
Across Formula One, World Superbike, and now Olympic sliding sports, the signal is the same: a scan is becoming the starting point engineers trust most.
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Featured image shows SHINING 3D and the Black Falcon team. Photo via SHINING 3D.
